LITR
4232: American Renaissance
University
of Houston-Clear Lake, spring 2003
Sample Student Research Project
Kristine Vermillion
LITR:
4232 American Lit.
17, April 2003
The American Renaissance in Literature and
History
The period of the American Renaissance in literature was indeed a revival
of intellectual and artistic achievement in a nation with a history like no
other. The writings and history of
the time are inextricably lined in a large majority of the writings, classical,
representative and popular alike.
One particular aspect of American history that predominated the 19th
century scene was that of the western frontier and the national issue and dream
of “Manifest Destiny” as defined by the patriotic song lyrics, “From sea
to shining sea.” In the magic of Irving’s wilderness it can vaguely be seen.
In the words of Apess, Boudinot and Seattle the lingering conflict
between continental inhabitants both old and new, an important aspect of the
frontier, is brought to the forefront. Cooper’s,
Natty Bumppo, is regarded by most as the “quintessential frontiersman” who
is “neither save or civilized man, but rather somewhere between savagism and
civilization, the ‘beau’ ideal of the frontiersman, with all the goodness
and greatness that a pioneer could have in the circumstances of pioneering” (Aquilla
5,6). For this reason many regard Cooper’s writings to be the
historical roots of the pop culture Western genre in literature and film.
Fuller, Stanton, Emerson, Thoreau, Olmsted, Vellejo, and Whitman all had
something to say about the issues of the Western frontier whether it be the
rights of Mormon women, protesting the Mexican-American war, recounting frontier
history or writing poetry about pioneers, all were influenced and involved.
Building
upon this premise is the following essay which explores the influence of
frontier history on two important transcendental writers.
The
Frontier in Transcendentalism
Seldom do students read the history of American literature and the
history of western expansion as if they have anything to do with each another,
but when looked at as if they are indeed contemporaneous the similarities and
connections between the two are indicative of a strong relationship. In
coinciding studies of the literary movement called “transcendentalism” and
the parallel history of Western expansion during the nineteenth century, one may
note, as Lucy Lockwood Hazard has in her introduction to her engaging essay
titled, “The Influence of the Frontier on Transcendentalism,” that a
influential relationship does indeed exist between the two movements.
In her writing, Hazard notes that while the chief authors of
transcendentalist literature were writing: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, important frontier history was taking
place. For instance, while Emerson
was writing Nature, Kit Carson was
guiding Fremont in his “scientific” expeditions. While Thoreau was writing about his trip down the Concord and
Merrimac rivers, Joe Meek was trapping in the rivers of the west, and while he
was at Walden Pond the Bear State Republic was declared in present day
California” (Hazard 147). These
examples show that these writers were indeed writing during a rich period in
Western history, and besides a mere chronological correlation between their
works and events in the history of their times, their works also contain a
considerable amount of frontier sentiment though realized in different ways by
each author. This shows, as
Hazard’s title suggests, that these leading
transcendentalist authors were influenced by the expansion of the
frontier and the idea of the mythic West, and this influence can be seen in
their writings as it permeated transcendental thought.
Often referred to as the “father” of American literature, Ralph Waldo
Emerson as a poet, preacher, orator and essayist wrote about the new nation’s
needs and her prospects, thereby becoming an important American artist.
During his life he was both reputable and highly recognized, as he was
also strikingly controversial and severely criticized.
He started out his career as a minister as was the family tradition, but
upon the death of his first wife and the death of a son from his second
marriage, he abandoned his faith as he felt abandoned by his God.
As a result of the loss of his first wife and the substantial inheritance
she left him, Emerson began to travel the continent, buy books and write books
(Carr 1515). His travels,
especially those that took him to the west had a lasting influence on his
writing. In 1849, a restless
Emerson, made his first trip into the Western frontier as he was invited to
lecture in Cincinnati, Ohio. During
this trip he is said to have written in letters home and in his journals about
all the vast differences of the Western lands, including the vegetation and the
differences in the fort structures than those in New England.
After returning home from this first trip to the west, he had decided to
travel there again, as he wrote to his family in a letter, “I learn Western
geography, buy maps and shall see a prairie before I die” (Richardson
477-478). He then set out with a
party traveling to Kentucky by the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
During this trip he visited Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, Eddyville,
Kentucky, and St. Louis, Missouri. This
trip greatly influenced his life, and as a result he frequently toured and
lectured as far West as he could get, (Richardson 479).
and his experiences there were consequently made manifest in his work.
The chief vehicle of publication for transcendentalist writers was “The
Dial,” which was the magazine for those who were a part of the Transcendental
Club, whom Emerson was the founder and leader of.
In the first issue, in an editor’s note, Emerson announced that the
purpose of “The Dial” was to present under various forms, “The spirit of
the times felt by every individual” (Hazard 166).
Though this spirit was evoked in many areas besides that of the frontier
west, the idea of the frontier was often present. Outside of the works that he published in “The Dial,”
Emerson’s contributions to transcendentalist thought include, Nature and Self-Reliance,
which both convey in varying ways, his fascination with the frontier.
Published in 1836, Emerson’s first book entitled, Nature,
though predating his first journey to the West, contains many illusions to the
power of the frontier lands and the power of the spirit that drew individuals
hence. This work is a discussion of
the material and spiritual in the world and is divided into eight distinct
chapters, each with a different focus: Nature, Commodity, Beauty, Language,
Discipline, Idealism, Spirit and Prospects.
The frontier in his writing is mostly contained in his reference to
nature and the woods as romanticized notions, for example in his chapter titled
“Nature” he writes, “In the wilderness I find something more dear and
connate than in streets or villages. In
the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man
beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature” (Emerson 1518).
Writing about the wilderness as such it can be maintained that he was not
looking east where the streets and villages were, but to that distant and
enchanting unknown land of the western frontier.
Another prominent attitude toward the frontier surfaces in his chapter on
“Commodity” as he argues that all men have an unprecedented right to be the
masters and owners of the land: “Beasts, fire, water, stones, and corn serve
him. The field is at once his
floor, his work-yard, his play-ground, his garden and his bed . . . Nature, in
its ministry to man, is not only the material, but is also the process and the
result. All the parts incessantly
work into each other’s hands for the profit of man” (Emerson 1519).
The idea here that the things in nature are servants to man and for the
profit of man brings the popular frontier notion of bringing the land into
submission to the forefront. Emerson’s
“frontier” idea that land in man’s inherent right is also seen in his
chapter called, “Beauty:” “Every rational creature has all nature for his
dowry and estate. It is his, if he will. He
may divest himself of it; he may creep into a corner, and abdicate his kingdom,
as most men do, but he is entitled to the world by his constitution.
In proportion to the energy of his thought and will, he takes up the
world into himself” (Emerson 1521). All
of his ideas here and his choice of diction, especially the words, abdicate and
kingdom, show that he is advocating the supremacy of man over nature.
His ideas when applied to the history of the times, especially to the
frontier, appear to serve as a justification for all movement west by saying
that land and ownership is the inherent right of every intelligent being.
In addition to Emerson’s outlook on the rights of man to the land and
his fascination with the frontier, he also goes to the extent of praising the
pioneer through his description what he thinks is the “transcendental hero.”
In his writing, Self-Reliance,
the heroic characteristics that he idealizes are found and are remarkably
similar to the necessary characteristics of the frontier pioneer. As the title conveys, self-reliance is the key trait:
“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string” (Emerson 1556).
Also included in Emerson’s idealization of the true transcendental man
are: courage, discipline and endurance, “. . . but God will not have his work
made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his
work and done his best; but what he has said and done otherwise shall give him
no peace” (Emerson 1556). Emerson
condemns society as the captor and destroyer of true men and states that the
only way to be a true man is to refuse to conform to society, which ultimately
links the pioneer, who is separated from his society and relying upon himself,
to the ideal man. “Society
everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of everyone of its members . . .
The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance
is its aversion . . . Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist” (Emerson
1557). Then, in the midst of his
sermon about non-conformity he issues his idea of the destiny of real men, a
destiny that distinctly parallels the nation’s idea of “Manifest Destiny:”
“And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent
destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards before a
revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort,
and advancing on Chaos and the Dark” (Emerson 1558).
In seeing these remarkable similarities it must be stated that the
“Frontier” that Emerson was talking about in reality was that of the
individual mind and the journey involved in freeing oneself from the chains of
societal expectations and conditions, for the ultimate goal of the
transcendentalist was to transcend these things which led to true freedom and
liberation from all constraints. In
this state alone could men really be free. His choice of diction and his frequent allusions to frontier
ideas and attitudes reflects that he was greatly influenced by frontier history
and the frontier policy of his day. This
“father of American literature” and initiator of the transcendentalist
movement was indeed affected by the idea of the mythic west and the current
events of the frontier and his travels there, and he in return influenced a
great number of people.
One of Emerson’s most devout and beloved students, was Henry David
Thoreau, who became a contemporary in writing and a close friend, and it is
evident in his writings that he too was influenced by the frontier and mythic
west. Though a declared
transcendentalist and influenced greatly by Emerson’s work, Nature,
Thoreau approached transcendentalism and the expansion west from a totally
different perspective, a perspective that was quite dichotomous in comparison as
we will see in his two works, Walden
and Walking. Like Emerson,
Thoreau had been inspired by his travels. In
the fall of 1839, Thoreau and his brother, John, embarked upon a two week
rowboat excursion along the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.
Though not in the actual West, his experience on the rivers and in the
wild along with their encounters with Indians had a lasting effect.
Ten years later in 1849, after the tragic death of his brother, Thoreau
published, “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,” which gave his
account and thoughts of their journey (Woodlief).
In this writing, Edwin Fussell states in his book, Frontier:
American Literature & the American West, that “. . . the final
sentence suggests Thoreau’s idealized conception of the West – spacious and
free from clutter – almost as if he had in the back of his mind his
prospective isolation in Concord” (Fussell 175),
which may be the reason why he never felt compelled to travel as Emerson
did, for the essence of the frontier that he admired he already had in his
Concord dwellings. Though
stationary in his life, the West and the frontier were deeply internalized in
Thoreau as demonstrated by the markings of his pen.
Thoreau’s position on the West was a dichotomous one in comparison to
Emerson’s. While he was in
agreement with Emerson about the power and the pull of nature and the innate
human need to be a part of it, he condemned the idea of conquering and taming
the wilderness. In his most popular
work, Walden, Thoreau was building
upon the transcendentalist view that the mind is the true frontier.
Starting in 1845, he moved onto Emerson’s land at Walden Pond and for
“two years, two months, and two days” he lived a simple and self-sustained
life (Woodlief) While there he kept detailed journals which were published as, Walden,
in 1854. In Walden, he gives the reason for his stay in the woods, “I went to
the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential
facts of life, and to see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not,
when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” (Thoreau 1692).
Such reasoning is evidence that he too was calling into question the
societal values of his day while searching for true meaning in a sort of pioneer
experience. While at Walden Pond he
realized, or rather criticized his society, “The nation itself with all its so
called internal improvements, which, by the way, are all external and
superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered
with furniture and tripped up with its own traps ruined by luxury and heedless
expense . . . and the only cure for it as for them is in a rigid economy, a
stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose”
(Thoreau 1692-93). In effect it
seems as if the idea of pioneering and simplicity in the natural world had
become his “safety valve” in the face of “progress” and growth of the
government and nation. Of course,
it must be said again that the major idea of the frontier was in the cultivation
of simplicity of the transcendental mind, but as seen in his work, Walking,
the actual frontier West and its pull are explicitly stated.
In Walking, Thoreau begins by
just describing the value of moving about in nature, but as he progresses
through his thoughts in his writing the emphasis he gives to the actual West
increases with each line in frequency and intensity.
He describes that as he would take his daily walks away from Concord and
mundane city life his internal compass would direct him to the west: “My
needle is slow to settle . . . but it always settles between west and southwest.
The future lies that way to me, and the earth seems more unexhausted and
richer on that side” (Thoreau 1743). He
then goes on to say,
“Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.
Thither no business leads
me. It is hard for me to believe that I shall find fair landscapes or
sufficient wilderness
and freedom behind the eastern horizon. I
am not excited about the
prospect of a walk thither; but I believe that the forest which I see in
the western horizon
stretches uninterruptedly towards the setting of the sun, and that there are
no towns nor cities in it of enough consequence to disturb me.”
(Thoreau 1744) To illustrate yet
once more Thoreau’s fascination and draw to the West the following must be
included: “Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a
West as far distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down.
He appears to migrate westward daily, and tempt us to follow him.
He is the Great Western Pioneer whom the nations follow” (Thoreau
1745). It is here
specifically that he attributes to the frontier the great mythic quality as the
sun god himself is pictured beckoning men West, thus showing the belief that the
sun itself was playing its part in the nation’s quest for “Manifest
Destiny.” This shows that these ideas of the mythic West and the current
expansion into the frontier had a remarkable influence upon Thoreau, but at the
same time it must be stated that his idea for the West was for it to remain wild
and free from the tyranny of civilization.
Thoreau’s view of the west was one that could be labeled as that of a
preservationist. In fact his
thoughts and writings are said to have had considerable influence upon the
famous preservationist, John Muir. His
main sentiment about the west and the wilderness is found in his statement, “
. . . that in the Wilderness is the preservation of the World” (Thoreau 1747).
So even though he idealized the west and enjoyed the popular imagery of
it, as seen in his mentioning of the Panorama art shows of the Mississippi River
in Walking (Thoreau 1747), he was an
outspoken opponent of the development and the taming of the West, along with
predominant attitudes about the west. This
stance is evidenced by the following description of his views concerning the
California Gold Rush, “He saw in the rush to the California Gold mines, ‘a
touchstone which has betrayed the rottenness, the baseness of mankind . . . That
so many are ready to get their living by the lottery of gold digging without
contributing any value to society and that the great majority who stay at home
justify them in this both by precept and example” (Hazard 167).
His criticisms concerning the events and politics concerning the west are
also vividly depicted in his rebellious work, Resistance
to Civil Government, also known as, Civil
Disobedience, in which he condemned the government for the Mexican-American
War. To him, everything about the
war was immoral and wrong, and this condemnation of the government is still a
very influential work today. Writing
about the mythic west and involved in protests concerning the reality of the
West, it is seen that Thoreau was indeed caught up in the frontier movement of
his day.
Emerson and Thoreau were both writing and contributing to transcendental
thought during a time saturated with the myths, ideas and politics concerning
the western frontier. Each man
watched the nation grow and witnessed many of the growing pains associated with
that growth. Influenced by the
history and talk of the time, both men, whether purposely or not, incorporated
the frontier sentiment into their writing.
Contextually the use of such sentiment and frontier language is
understandable and was probably quite useful in keeping their audience’s
attention. Historically it shows
that these prominent thinkers and writers were deeply influenced by many aspects
of the Western lands. Such a
connection shows that the use of the “new Historicism” technique as an
approach to literature and the use of literary works as primary sources in the
pursuit of history are each rewarding paths of research as they bridge the gap
between what have all too often become sterile and segregated fields of study.
Works
Cited
Aquilla, Richard. “The Pop
Culture West.” Wanted Dead or Alive: The American West in Popular
Culture. Ed. Richard Aquilla. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996.
Carr, Jean Ferguson. “Ralph Waldo
Emerson (1803-1882).” The Heath Anthology of American Literature.
Ed. Paul Lauter. 4th ed., Vol. 1. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company,
2002.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Nature.”
The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. 4th ed., Vol. 1. New York:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo.
“Self-Reliance.” The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul
Lauter. 4th
ed., Vol. 1. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.
Fussell, Edwin. Frontier:
American Literature & the American West. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1965.
Hazard, Lucy Lockwood. The
Frontier in American Literature. New York: Frederick Ungar
Publishing Co., Inc., 1961.
Richardson, Robert D., Emerson
The Mind on Fire. Los Angeles: Universtiy of California Press,
1995.
Thoreau, Henry David. “Walden.”
The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. 4th ed., Vol. 1. New York:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.
Thoreau, Henry David.
“Walking.” The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. 4th ed., Vol. 1. New York:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.
Woodlief, Ann. “Henry David
Thoreau.” [http://vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/index.htm]