LITR
4232 American Renaissance
Sample Student Research Project 2012
Essay
Velma Laborde
23 April 2012
Nature of the American Renaissance
The Enlightenment, the period preceding the Romantic
Era, focused on reason and science separate from God, religion and spiritualism.
In Dr. White's notes he states, "Enlightenment
thinkers and authors concentrate on the here and now of the material world.
Except for a comparatively few radical thinkers, most do not dismiss or reject
the idea of a transcendent God; instead, God is elevated or delegated beyond
their immediate interests and regarded as unable to be resolved or concluded"
(Periods). God and spiritualism were not disregarded during the enlightenment,
but its emphasis was moved to the outer edges and was not included in the reason
and science of the time. In response to the
Enlightenment, the Romantic Era ushered in a new way of thinking and wanted to
find a way to bring God and spiritualism "back to earth" (Dr. White's Notes).
Reason and spiritualism not
only co-existed alongside one another, but they were dependent upon each other
and essentially one and the same. One did not exist without the other. Nature
became the place where reason and spiritualism came together. Nature had the
unique composition of both the explainable and the unexplained. Nature had the
ability to bring reality and spirituality "back to earth" in both the literal
and figurative senses. The value of nature as a place to come together became
central to the literature of the American Renaissance as well as to the
lifestyle of a new and changing America. This paper will primarily
examine two American Renaissance texts, Ralph Waldo Emerson's
Selections from Nature, and
Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow, to explore the different ways each text uses nature in response to
both the re-emerging idea of nature and spirituality and the changing landscape
of America.
To examine nature as both
reasonable and spiritual, it is necessary to begin with Ralph Waldo Emerson. In
Selections
from Nature he asks, "Let us inquire, to what
end is nature" (3). He explicitly states, "All science has one aim, namely, to
find a theory of nature" (4). Here he connects the idea that science, or
knowledge, goes hand-in-hand with nature. Any pursuit of knowledge is also the
search for a theory of nature. Whether nature is defined as something that is
natural, as in a natural process, or whether it is nature, as in the nature that
exists outdoors, any theory of science or knowledge is in essence a search for
an understanding of what is natural or a part of nature. He explains this as,
"Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man; space, the
air, the river, the leaf" (5). For Emerson, nature and natural are
indistinguishable. Reason, or knowledge, is firmly connected to a search for
understanding what is natural. If the goal of knowledge, or reason, is to find
theories of nature, then everything returns to Emerson's original question: "Let
us inquire, to what end is nature" (3). The goal of knowledge is to find what is
natural, but what is the goal of nature? This is where spirituality also becomes
part of nature.
For Emerson, the goal of nature is transcendent,
which makes it spiritual. Similar to The Enlightenment placing God as beyond
understanding, the Romantic Era does the same for nature. By giving nature the
same place as God, it takes on the characteristics of God and of the beyond, and
vice-versa. Whether nature is godlike or God is like nature, is irrelevant. In
either case, nature takes on a spiritual presence. The spiritual and nature are
now both beyond understanding, but still a part of what is real. Emerson states
that "In the woods, we return to reason and faith" (12). He means this literally
and figuratively. He says, "Standing on the bare ground…I am part or particle of
God" (13). Standing in the woods a person is literally a part of nature and
therefore part of God. This is spiritual in a real and literal sense. In a
figurative sense, nature is a reflection of man spiritually and connects man to
God spiritually. He says while in a good mood the plants "nod" to him and
acknowledge him and this "effect is like that of a higher thought" (14). He goes
on to say, "the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered…is
overspread and melancholy today" and "Nature always wears the colors of the
spirit" (15). Man and nature are spiritually connected. Emerson says, "Yet it is
certain the power to produce this delight, does not reside in nature, but in
man, or in a harmony of both" (15). One does not exist without the other. For
Emerson, the true balance is found when man finds a way to embrace nature in
both its physical and spiritual forms. This is the way to return to "reason and
faith" and to redeem a society that has separated the two during the
Enlightenment. He says of man, "His relation to nature, his power over it, is
through the understanding" (23). Man's understanding that he is a part of nature
and his attempt to understand nature through knowledge are both required
elements to reach the spiritual. Understanding is real and yet, part of it is
not completely attainable. Depicting nature as something that is transcendent,
as well as something that transcends is part of Emerson's "return to reason and
faith" through nature and is further represented in other literature of the
American Renaissance.
While it is common to find
nature represented throughout American Renaissance literature as a spiritual
place, it is presented in different ways. Emerson made nature a comforting place
that is both reflective and a part of human spirituality and the beyond. In
contrast Washing Irving pushed nature and spirituality to a different dimension.
The fundamental idea that nature and spirituality exist together remained, but
he changed nature to meet a different part of what was happening during the
Romantic Era in
America.
The need to answer The Enlightenment with a return to faith left the American
Renaissance in a state of longing for something lost. The Romantic Era was
a time where people in
America
were moving away from nature, physically, as industrialization was beginning and
city life was growing (Brians, Nature page). Nostalgia for older ways of life,
for a return to a closer relationship to God or spiritualism, turned into
nostalgia for nature. This placed nature on a different dimension where it
became a lost, unknown, transcendent place, which was also scary. It was still
tied to spirituality but somehow separate from what is real and still reflective
of what could be, or used to be, real. Nature is presented in this way by Irving in
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
Nature in Irving's
story leaves Emerson's comfortable spiritual haven and transforms into a dark
wild spiritual nightmare, corresponding to the negative aspects of where
industrializing America was headed, rather than to
Emerson's promise of a beautiful coming together of reason and faith. Emerson's
sweet portrait of spirituality in nature took on a different face with Irving. They both use specific romantic styles
that flourished in the Romantic Era like the sublime, nostalgia and
correspondence and they both attribute spirituality to nature. The difference
between the two is the fear surrounding nature by Irving's incorporation of the gothic into his
styles of the sublime, nostalgic and correspondence. Both Emerson and Irving
portray nature as beautiful and transcendent, but Irving takes what is beautiful and transcends
it to something scary, not just beyond.
Irving's style is a reminder that nature is all of the
things Emerson says it is, but those things are feared as well as embraced.
An example is found in
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in the
two distinctly different descriptions of the Tappan Zee River. Early in the story the river is
described in a picturesque manner: "The wide bosom of the Tappan Zee lay motionless and glassy, excepting that here
and there a gentle undulation waved and prolonged the blue shallow of the
distant mountain" and "the reflection of the sky gleamed along the still water."
Clouds "floated in the sky" and the horizon "was of a fine golden tint." The
water is so still that a small boat seems "suspended in the air" (40). The scene
is Emerson-like in that nature is corresponding to the spirit. Everything:
nature, the Tappan Zee, Ichabod, and even
Sleepy Hollow correspond to this picture of nature and are "suspended" in place.
All are in a relaxed content state. Ichabod is happily strolling through the
forest on his way to see Katrina. Sleepy Hollow is happily remaining tucked away
from the new progressive and fast-paced
America. There is no wind blowing, nothing
pushing the water along, and the resulting stillness is beautiful and sweet.
Everyone and everything is satisfied and Irving reflects it in the snapshot of the Tappan Zee.
Yet, while Sleepy Hollow was content staying
the same and avoiding the new America
beyond its town, Ichabod was not. He was from Connecticut
and had traveled to Sleepy Hollow from the progressive new America. So, when Katrina rejected
him and his chance at wealth and the ability to move out of Sleepy Hollow was
crushed, he was "heavy hearted and crestfallen" (55). He took off home through
the forest where "the hour was as dismal as himself" (55). Time and Ichabod
correspond to on another. As he walks by the river it is described. Section 55
says, "Far below him the Tappan Zee spread its
dusky and indistinct waste of waters, with here and there the tall mast of a
sloop, riding quietly at anchor under the land." Everything is still suspended,
but it is no longer beautiful and sweet, but stifling and ugly. The glassy and
gentle water is now dusky and indistinct. The boat that was previously
"suspended in air" is now "at anchor under the land." What was light and airy is
now locked down. Irving's gothic description pushes nature into
a different spiritual realm. Nature is no less spiritual, and no less beautiful,
but it is now scary.
Another place where Emerson and Irving meet
regarding nature is in the idea that nature and knowledge go hand-in-hand. Yet,
again Irving
takes it a bit further and creates something darker and foreboding with it. In
Section 17 of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,
the story is discussing Ichabod would sit with the “old Dutch wives” and listen
to “their marvelous tales of ghosts and goblins, and haunted fields, and haunted
brooks, and haunted bridges, and haunted houses.”
He in turn would share “his anecdotes of
witchcraft, and of the direful omens and portentous sights and sounds in the
air” (17). Irving
uses words and phrases like, “marvelous tales,” “haunted,” “direful omens,” and
“portentous sights” to describe nature in a sublime, gothic and over the top
manner. Using those specific styles makes the tales not only transcendent but
scary. His words incorporate the spiritual, as in “haunted” with both nature’s
brooks and fields with what is real like the bridges and houses. It becomes
all-inclusive: what is real is part of nature and it is all spiritual. Ichabod
would “frighten them woefully with speculations upon comets and shooting stars;
and with the alarming fact that the world did absolutely turn round, and that
they were half the time topsy-turvy” (17). Again
Irving
uses the sublime with words like “woefully,” “alarming” and “absolutely.” He has
mixed nature and knowledge by discussing natural phenomena like comets and
shooting stars, with the scientific fact of the world spinning round. He has
created a feeling that knowledge of nature is so beyond what is normal to
comprehend that it is something fearful and “alarming”. The Dutch wives
incorporated a fear of what is spiritual in nature, while Irving created a fear of knowing and
understanding nature. The two examples come together with Emerson’s view that
nature is both spiritual and real.
Yet, here again, as with the example of the
Tappan Zee river, the example of the tales exchanged between Ichabod and the
Dutch wives correspond to things that are occurring in America. The Dutch wives
are described as “old” and “ancient” and represent an old way of thinking in America. They use folktales and
stories that include ghosts and goblins and the supernatural. Ichabod’s stories
are no less scary, but they include a modern way of thinking like the world
turning round and comets. Dr White describes this paragraph in the text as a
“fascinating mix of premodern lore and modern knowledge” (17). The old and the
new come together in this paragraph and “mix”. This is what is happening in
Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow is trying to stay in the “old” but Ichabod has
infiltrated it with “new.” Ichabod was caught somewhere between the old and new
thinking. He was educated and had travelled and hoped to continue to do that,
but he had a fondness and love for the tales of Sleepy Hollow. In paragraph 16
he is described as having an “appetite for the marvelous…increased by his
residence in this spell-bound region.” There is something about Sleepy Hollow
that refuses to acknowledge the new America outside its borders and it
is rejecting Ichabod. Sleepy Hollow has been shown two paths that converge in
the middle of the old and new, but with a fear of both, it is unsure which
direction to take. The Headless Horseman, or at the very minimum the legend of
him, fills this role by ensuring the “new” is extinguished from Sleepy Hollow.
Nature has become an instrument that combines
the fear of what was, with the fear of what may be coming.
In Emerson's
Selections From
Nature, he brings spiritualism and reason
together through nature. The union is beautiful and enlightening. Irving
in The Legend
of Sleepy Hollow also brings spiritualism and
reason together through nature, but his outcome is different. It is still
beautiful, but scary and foreboding as well. Both answer Emerson's question,
"Let us inquire, to what end is nature" (3). For the American Renaissance,
nature is the place where spirituality and reason can come together. The coming
together of the two is frightening and not easy, but can produce amazing beauty
and understanding. Nature is an important part of the American Renaissance
because it symbolizes a changing
America
in both thought and spirit. Emerson and Irving portrayed the complexity of
America
by bringing faith and reason together through nature.
Works Cited
Emerson, Ralph Waldo.
Selections From Nature. (1836). Dr.
Craig White's Website.
Electronic.
http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/texts/AmClassics/Transcend/
Emerson/RWENature.htm.
Irving,
Washington.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. (1819).
Dr. Craig White's Website.
Electronic:
http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/texts/AmClassics/RomFiction/
Irving/sleepyhollow.htm.
Brians, Robert. Washington State University Website. Course
HUM 303. (1998).
Romanticism. Electronic.
http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/romanticism.html
