Sample Student Research Project 2015: Essay
LITR
4328 American Renaissance / Model Assignments
Sample Student Research Project 2015:
Essay
Ana Harms
May 07, 2015
The American Renaissance and Poetry
When people think of poetry they think of a series of romantic rhyming
words, when in reality poetry can be in many different forms, from formal verse
to free verse. The time of American
Renaissance was the time for poetry. The American Renaissance is the Romanic
era; it is all about beauty in different forms.
There were many brilliant writers of this time who could portray this
beauty, beautifully, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Louisa Mary
Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau just to
name a few. The American Renaissance was the time for poetry, and many of these
writers made very big strides in their writing. Some of them aided with
colleges, some published papers and journals while others were not even
recognized for their writing in their own lifetime.
Each one had a different path but each had the same goal, a talent that
would give the world a different ways to see just how beautiful it can be. Each
one gave a little something to the Renaissance era to make it that much better.
Some used gothicism, some used transcendentalism, and some use
romanticism. Poe was a genius with
gothicism while Walt Whitman had a gift for showing us that free verse can be
just as well written as formal verse.
There was Louisa Mary Alcott who brought us the novel
Little Woman, and Emily Dickenson
whose reclusive lifestyle brought us many wonderfully written poems about love
and her life. Although these poets
were from the same time period each had a different style of writing, and each
had their own trials that made them who they were and what they wrote about.
Walt Whitman was a famous poet who did not always have it easy.
He struggled most his life with his family and his writing.
At a young age of 11, Whitman was forced to leave school and work to help
support his family. As a young boy
he was an office boy for a paper, it was there that he learned about printing
press and began to write. After many attempts at other newspapers and teaching
jobs, he became the founder and editor of the
Long Islander.
As an editor he was not well liked
because of his harsh opinions and tough critiques. So he left the paper and
began to write on his own. At the age of
36, he published Leaves of Grass; it
started with 12 unnamed poems and ended with over 300 poems before he died in
1892 (“Walt Whitman” Bio). He is most famous for this book alone. After the book
was published Ralph Waldo Emerson noticed it and gave it excellent reviews.
Saying that his free verse writing was original and wrote him a letter
explaining how great it was. Walt Whitman is known most for his free verse
poems. His book
Leave of Grass is a series of poems
that he put all together in a book. Critics say that these poems were of a
sexual nature and it was not easily welcomed. Although Walt Whitman’s style of
writing was free verse there were still structured. Walt Whitman liked to use
anaphora and catalog in his poems. In
There Was a Child Went Forth, he used the word “And” and “The” to start most
sentences, and he also followed it up with the catalog method as he list all the
things that this little boy is seeing.
“The
father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger'd, unjust,
The
blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,”
Walt Whitman is also recognized for using realism in his poetry.
The American Renaissance is more commonly know as the Romantic era.
Whitman was a little ahead of his time with the realism. He liked to write about
what he saw and what he knew. This is another reason why people were drawn to
Whitman, he was writing about something they could relate to.
In the Romantic era formal writing was common, most poets used rhythm and rhymes
to write poetry. Emily Dickenson used this particular structure with a little
twist. Emily Dickenson, now a famous poet was a recluse for most her life.
She was born and raised by well-known family.
Her grandfather was the founder of Amherst College and she also attended
school there. Even though she was
connected Emily spend a great deal of time at home.
She is said to have been a sufferer of depression and anxiety.
She was known as a recluse and in this time was when she wrote all of her
poems. It wasn’t until she died
that her sister found all of her poems that she had written and published them
(“Emily Dickenson” Bio). Her poetry
was very different, different in the way that her penmanship was different.
Dickenson’s poems are recognizable by the dashes and capitalization that she
randomly puts into her poems. Maybe not so random, had she had her poems
published before she died, she might have been able to tell us why. Her poems
start out with the common use of rhyming every line or every other line and then
she skips some lines, or some will not rhyme at all.
Even though she has her own style she still writes beautifully. Her use
of Romanticism keeps her in time but she borders on realism, which could come
from her depression state of mind.
Her view on the world and how she expresses it is breathtaking.
“Then,
as Horizons step,
Or
Noons report away,
Without the Formula of sound,
It
passes, and we stay—“
This
is an example from “A light exists in spring,” you can see the different
variation she uses in her poetry.
In this piece “A light exists in
spring,” she speaks of a light and I would think that she is speaking of an
actual light. With being a recluse, this might be what she sees when she looks
out the window as the sun is going down. And in that it makes it a rather sad
poem, that she see the nature-taking place but she cannot really enjoy it. But
it is so beautiful that you would think she is experiencing it.
Another poet of the Renaissance era is Margaret Fuller; she was a
feminist writer who was known for her assertive and intense manners.
She grew up with a lawyer for a father, who wanted nothing more than to
educate her. She was home schooled until her teenage years and by that time she
was more advanced than other children her age. Because of her whit it was
difficult for Margaret to make friends. She was said to of had this way about
her that wasn’t very friendly, maybe even cocky. As an adult she was in
prestigious circles that included Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Bronson Alcott. She
liked to surround her self with people who
“among the few important thinkers of the moment who were willing to see past the
facade of gender.” (Mary Beth Norton, 2012)
She wrote many reviews and essays and
was the founder of the journal The Dial.
She was a very intelligent woman for
her time but knew the challenges she would have to face as a woman.
She tried to overcome these stereotypes and worked very hard not to fail.
Margaret Fuller was a transcendentalist, she wrote many different pieces in her
life from her journal to her poems, one poem that stood out was “Winged Sphinx,”
this is a formal verse poem that is about someone going thorough a hard time and
getting through it. In this pome
most lines rhyme with the next, the verse is vey formal and hold up to her view
of transcendentalism.
“Still I slight not those first stages,
Dark
but God-directed Ages
In my
nature leonine
Labored & learned a Soul divine”
In
this stanza she uses God and nature to describe a journey that is being directed
by God, and something is to be learned though the experience. Her poetry is
definitely for the thinkers. Her intelligence shines through her writing and
that can be appreciated.
There are many things that set these poets apart, Walt Whitman mastered
free verse poetry, while Emily Dickenson used formal verse to express herself
and let us into her world. Margaret Fuller was in a league of her own with her transcendentalism
poetry. Poetry comes in many different forms, from formal verse to free verse,
and the beauty of poetry is that each can be translated in many different ways.
The American Renaissance is full of romanticism, gothicism, and transcendentalism;
it was a moment in time
where
people wanted to reminisce about the past and to see the beauty in it.
Each one of the poets did just that, showed the world beauty. Although
each poet was unique in his or her own way each had something to give back to
the American Renaissance.
References
"Emily Dickinson." Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2015. Web. 07
May 2015.
Norton, Mary. "Margaret Fuller: Woman of the World." The New York Times.
The New York Times, 21 Jan. 2012. Web. 7 May 2015.
"Walt Whitman." Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2015. Web. 07 May 2015
"Winged Sphinx, by Margaret Fuller." Winged Sphinx, by Margaret Fuller.
Web. 7 May 2015.
Whitman, Walt, and Malcolm Cowley. Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass: The First
(1855) Edition. New York: Viking, 1959. Print.
http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/4232/
"Great Star" flag of pre-Civil War USA