American Renaissance & American Romanticism:
terms & themes from objectives

modernization and tradition

[from LITR 4232 Objective 3. To use literature as a basis for discussing representative problems and subjects of American culture (Historicism), such as equality (race, gender, class); modernization and tradition; the individual, family; and community; nature; the role of writers in an anti-intellectual society.]

modernization = "change" vs. "traditional values"

Ongoing revolution in values and material life that began in Ancient Greece and was reborn in Renaissance Europe and the Enlightenment.

Modernization is a sociological concept involving many aspects of human and natural life:

human equality (in opportunity or possibility if not in fact)

secularization

urbanization (farms > city)

rise of middle class

nationalism (i. e., identification of a person as "an American" rather than a member of a tribe, family, or state)

authority of tradition is replaced by authority of empirical science and observable human behavior

pace of change constantly accelerates, with occasional pauses (e. g., the 1950s)

lifespans lengthen; population increases

in most material terms, modern life offers a better standard of living than the past did

reactions against modernization include fundamentalism, "family values," nostalgia for earlier times

Standard contrast with "modern" is "traditional"--modernity threatens tradition; it disrupts and unsettles older ways of life

Modernity and change are confusing, disorienting--desire for simplicity of past (which wasn't really simple, just familiar)

> popularity of occult or supernatural + conspiracy during rapid change: people want to understand in familiar, personal terms

"Modernization" is relevant to study of the American Renaissance because 

The American Renaissance is the period when Americans first began moving to cities in large numbers and experiencing the other changes listed above on a large scale.

Some literature of the period shows changes of intellect, lifestyle, and nature that resulted and how people adjusted. (Literature as engagement)

Much "Romantic" literature (such as "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and The Last of the Mohicans or The Scarlet Letter) is set in an earlier or more rural time and place.