LITR 4232 American Renaissance 2010 Student Midterm Samples #1. Long essay describing and focusing learning, challenges, issues concerning American Renaissance or American Romantic literature. (6-8 paragraphs)

Jennifer Martin

More than Words on a Page

          Dr. White’s course is unique in the aspect that it applies abstract literary elements to the period of American Renaissance.  The course accomplishes that with a selection of poetry, prose and terms that must be read and understood in a culturally historical context. There is also the added bonus of making passages matter by reflecting on why they are still read and how the terms pop up in modern culture.  This linking of the past to the present helps the student retain and apply useful literary styles in personal ways.

          The benefit of marrying abstract literary elements and historical relevance is that course contents become fuller, richer and more intimate.  Poetry and passages from novels become more than words on a page; they flesh out in greater detail and walk about against the historical backdrop in which they appear making them more like historical heroes rather than just ordinary characters.

          Poetry, as it is presented in the course, is doubly beneficial both for its historical context and for its ability to draw deeper interpretations from the words themselves. As Dr. White frequently says, “poetry takes you where prose cannot”, and that is especially true of the poetry selections in this course. Getting into the mind of the poet is just as intriguing as discovering why the poem is historically significant.  Emily Dickinson’s poetry, for example, is an excellent example of this. In, [he fumbles at your spirit], it is clear that Dickinson is trying to express the problem between the emergence of science and what it is doing to faith in general during her lifetime.  She likens the aspect of a religious experience with God to a musician playing the keys on a piano making a religious experience personal and not just the academic pursuit of science. Beyond that, her uses of “sound” words play on the sense of hearing in a way that prose in unable to recreate. This is similar to Walt Whitman’s poem, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”.  He makes a similar case for faith at a time when Americans were largely apathetic to the old traditions of religion and actively listened to the emergence of scientific progress. His point, like Dickenson, is made by expressing a desire to see and experience nature on a personal level rather than hearing about it in a scientific manner.

          Prose, as it is presented in the course, is better understood through a historical filter.  For example, a reader cannot fully understand the whole width and breadth of “Sleepy Hollow” unless the reader first understands why the Dutch element, with all its superstitions, is relevant to the story and why it is still repeated and read today. This cultural element of story telling is still very much in practice today. America has moved beyond the phrase of “melting pot” but has embraced “culturally diverse” meaning that there are still many different cultures that represent America today and all those cultures have their own superstitions and legends to tell creating a new American tradition of story-telling.  Similarly, much is lost from Cooper’s novel, The Last of the Mohicans, if there isn’t first an understanding about the gothic colors of red, black and white and how they are seen within the racial context of the time period.  If the reader does not have a firm grasp on why interracial relationships were taboo, or even interracial associations, then much of what Cooper tried to explain with his characters is lost.

          Terms, as they are defined in the course, are also applicable on the historical and modern level. Romanticism, sublime, transcendentalism and gothic are major themes and terms that are used in the class and their definitions can even be applied to popular culture today. Romanticism as we described in class, is an escape of the here and now. This description is perfectly illustrated by the story of Rip Van Winkle. In that story there are descriptions of a man who lives with an angry wife and all he wants to do is escape not only her, but any work that she needs him to do. Rip Van Winkle not only mentally escapes but literarily escapes his “here and now” and sleeps away much of his life. The sublime is also in that story amidst the beautifully terrifying descriptions of the mountains that give off a mysterious yet magnificent effect. Likewise, transcendentalism ascends from the here and now to a spiritual place above ordinary materialism. This term is highlighted by Emerson’s thoughts in Nature.  This more spiritualized expression of romanticism relates not only the human to nature but the human to the divine. Emerson says he is, “part or particle of God” that must transcend society, the everyday and even the adult mind in order to fully enjoy the transcendentalist nature. Alternatively, the gothic explores the dark and spooky in a way that does not repel audiences but actually draws them in. Poe’s Ligeia does an excellent job of this. He uses gothic colors of red, black and white; descriptions of his dead wife and the illusion of drug use by evidence of a murky mind to express the possible horrific reincarnation of his first wife.

          Application is the most necessary and interesting part of the American Renaissance course. Through application the student realizes how these poems, stories and terms play out in the real world.  As I have already pointed out that “Sleepy Hollow” and The Last of the Mohicans are examples of race. And using different cultures to make up modern American society is still a major theme today. This element is seen in movie and books today.  I was recently delighted when I discovered these themes and ideas reveal themselves in my recreational reading.  The New York bestselling novel, The Help by Kathryn Stocket is a modern example of some of the themes and ideas learned in class.  In that story the gothic colors of black and white against a racially divided society are compounded by the theme of women’s issues and feminine oppression. Not only is the black seen as negative and the white seen as the positive but the same theme of interracial friendships is highlighted through multiple character pairings. For example, I saw transcendentalism and the gothic play a role in the novel when a black maid leaves normal town society to go into the country and serve a “Nouveau riche” white woman in an old southern mansion. Being in the country so far away from the others in the city highlights the need for transcendentalists to return to nature in order to experience the divine. In this case, the characters transcend the color barrier and become friends despite a racially charged atmosphere and the master/servant relationship. It represents the gothic by using blood found in an upstairs room to stir images within the maid’s mind of someone (possibly a child) being murdered in the old mansion. In the same way, just this morning I bought my daughter the re-release Blu-ray edition of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and spent a very pleasant 92 minutes discovering that the same themes and terms were actually present in that classic children’s fairytale.  The romantic and the gothic are both present in the film along with the some other themes previously discussed. The main character, Belle, journeys from town and stumbles through a dark and scary forest only to come across a gothic castle filled with curses and enchantments. Then in sublime style Belle falls in love with a darkly foreboding but equally enchanting “beast”. This pairing suggests an interracial relationship between human and monster because Belle must first fall in love with the monster before seeing the prince inside. Even the father figure in the story expresses one of the themes from class. Belle’s father is an inventor who becomes curious about the way all the enchanted objects in the castle work. This is a nice example of the struggle between technological progress and the spiritual/supernatural.  While these elements were unseen by my 3 year old child they work their desired effect in making the story timeless and popular.

          American Renaissance is one of those classes that sticks with a student and becomes a tool for future life. The ideas, themes and stories learned in the course become sources for evaluating future stories and future ideas that the student will encounter throughout life. This course lays a foundation for looking at the modern world by evaluating it in historically significant ways. And the literary tools gained from this course become beacons of light in navigating a lifetime of learning.