LITR 5535: American Romanticism

Sample Student Research Project 2006

Jo Lynn Sallee

20 November 2006

Timeless Teaching of Desire and Loss

            Before taking this class, I did not understand the notion of Romanticism as a writing style. The term “Romanticism” evoked visions of book covers depicting handsome heroes and swooning heroines.  I have now discovered the concept of Romanticism as a writing style originating in the pre-Civil War period.  It is a style that is full of contradictions, with no one set pattern to the technique.  

            The Romantic period actually encompassed the years beginning with the 1820s and lasting through the 1860s.  This period of time in the United States contained historical movements such as Manifest Destiny, the beginning of the push for women’s rights, communal Utopian movements, as well as the growth of slavery and consequent opposition to it.

            However, Romantic writing is not confined to this particular era.  Incorporated in this class, we have discovered pre-Romantic writers as well as post-Romantic writers also.  Their tales depict classic Romantic stories combining some of the requisite features of longing, desire, journey, and consequent loss.

            Four such authors and their narratives that have particularly piqued my imagination are the Christopher Columbus letters, Letter to Luis de Santangel Regarding the First Voyage and Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella Regarding the Fourth Voyage, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving, The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper, and Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston.  Classic desire and loss themes are magnified in these stories by a shared reverence of nature. Though mankind has changed throughout the ages, nature remains a constant unless altered by God or mankind.  The universal language revolving around nature connects human beings across generations, religions, and genders.   Nature touches the mind’s eye in a way that allows the modern reader to take a mental leap and be captured by the stories from long ago.   

Desire and loss quickly becomes evident through the shared veneration for nature by the above listed authors.  However, the four authors use nature’s language to proclaim different timeless messages. Regardless, because of the natural language shared by the authors, the reader can relate to the subsequent desire and loss issues depicted as readily today as when the stories were originally written.  

            Classic desire and loss is demonstrated through the revealing letters written by Columbus.  Although the letters were actually written in a pre-Romantic period, our text, The Norton Anthology of American Literature, describes it as “. . . a brief moment of wonder followed by a long series of disasters and disenchantments” (25), which classifies the letters as a journey which is included in the Romantic style.  In the Letter to Luis de Santangel Regarding the First Voyage, desire and euphoria are evident in the natural descriptions so vividly painted in words by the explorer.  He seems to have discovered a land where God and nature come together to display the perfect world.  In the beginning, Columbus describes the land as “very fertile to a limitless degree. . .”(26).  He goes into more detail as his euphoria seems to become limitless itself as he tells of lands that are “. . . “filled with trees of a thousand kinds and tall, and they seem to touch the sky”(27).  The tree imagery seems to allude to a heavenly connection between his newly found land and himself.  Perhaps Columbus desires himself as ruler of this paradise that holds “. . . birds of a thousand kinds . . .”(27).    

Columbus and the ruler fantasy that seems evident in the letters gains credence  when Valerie Flint reveals in her book, The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus, that Columbus wanted to be known as “the Admiral of the Ocean Sea”(133).  The timeless natural descriptions allow the modern reader to actively relate to the rapture, intoxication, and desire felt by Columbus that occurred centuries ago within his own personal Garden of Eden.

            The devastating loss for Columbus is depicted in the Letter from Columbus to Ferdinand and Isabella Regarding the Fourth Voyage.  As Adam fell from grace in Eden, so does Columbus in his new land.  The letter makes it obvious that his vision of Eden’s paradise has completely vanished.  Columbus opens the letter with “Of Espanola, Paria, and other lands, I never think without weeping,”(27) as his first thought. While he does not mention the beauty of nature, what is ultimately glaring is the lack, or loss of it in “. . .an  exhausted state. . .”(27).  Columbus makes a natural reference in his lament against his aggressors “enjoying its fruits . . .”(27) when he felt they should not get this benefit.  He gives his final and heartbreaking nod to nature when he said, “. . . I have wept for others . . . may the earth weep for me”(28).  Mother earth seems to be in mourning and actually weeping for the unjust losses through the natural language conveyed by Columbus.

In his or her American Romanticism final exam from 2005, [BH] relates the following:

Columbus described a new land as a beautiful paradise with lovely landscape.

His description creates imagery that is similar to the mythical biblical story of the

Garden of Eden.  The Romantic style of desire and loss is to create unhappiness

 with modern society, and make readers reflect about a previous, less complex

lifestyle that is in harmony with nature and was lost long ago.

I agree with BH that Columbus thought he had found his own Garden of Eden.  However, I have to disagree with the statement that “harmony in nature . . . was lost long ago”([BH]).  The harmony of nature was not lost, what was altered was the perception Columbus had of the land, and those inhabiting it.  Harmony of nature is still part of modern life and hopefully will remain so as long as humans inhabit the earth.  This very natural language is what gives contemporary readers the power to relate with the desire and crushing loss for Columbus that did occur centuries ago.       

            A desire and loss journey is also displayed through nature in Washington Irving’s writing.  In contrast to the non-fiction Columbus letters, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, is a satirical short story actually written in the Romantic period and style.  Ichabod Crane sees security for his future as he becomes intoxicated by the beauty of nature.  He seems to grow in desire for the young Katrina through her connection with the natural.   

           Consequently, Ichabod is overwhelmed and lusts for the family farm that is situated by “[a] great elm-tree. . . which bubbled up a spring of the softest and sweetest water.  Ichabod Crane is mesmerized in a dream like manner by images of “martins skimmed twittering . . . rows of pigeons . . . unwieldy porkers . . . snowy geese . . . sucking pigs . . .”(5).  Ichabod so strongly desires the prosperous life that he could have owning the farm with Katrina that literally “[t]he pedagogue’s mouth watered, as he looked upon this sumptuous promise of luxurious winter fare”(5).  The narrative reiterates as it relates, “. . . his heart yearned after the damsel who was to inherit these domains, and his imagination expanded with the idea . . .”(5).  The modern reader is completely drawn into this classic tale of desire.  Through the language of nature  the author reveals “[f]rom the moment Ichabod laid his eyes upon these regions of delight, the peace of his mind was at an end, and his only study was to gain the affections of the peerless daughter of Van Tassel”(6).  Because of the fact that this kind of natural richness and the security it could bring would appeal to many people in this modern age, readers can still relate with Mr. Crane’s obsession through the language of nature.

            In his book, Washington Irving:  Moderation Displayed, Edward Wagenknecht reveals Washington Irving’s own appreciation and admiration for nature.  Perhaps he hoped his love for the natural would be able to reach readers for years to follow.  He quotes Irving as saying, “I think it an invaluable advantage to be born in the neighborhood of some grand and noble object in Nature – a river, a lake, or a mountain.  We make friendship with it, -- we in a manner ally ourselves with it”(39).   Irving is quoted later in life as writing that, “. . . I don’t know when I have been more conscious of the sweetness of spring . . . surrounding me with its delights”(40).  Old age had apparently intensified his enjoyment of nature which parallels the argument for nature’s lasting language.  

            However, for Ichabod Crane, the desire of nature gives way to nightmarish loss. Irving expands on the nature language used by Columbus by incorporating the gothic and supernatural.   After his rejection, Ichabod hears an eerie “groan” from a tree.  The road he travels is seen as “matted thick with wild grapevines, [that] threw a cavernous gloom over it”(13).  This menacing and gothic description of nature sets the stage for the inevitable loss for Ichabod Crane.  If he had seen the grapevines only a day before on the farm, visions of beautiful fruit and wine may have danced through his head.  Using gothic  light and dark to accentuate the good and evil of nature it is related that, “[i]n the dark shadow of the grove, on the margin of the brook, he beheld something huge,”(13) as he begins his flight from the “haunted” forest.  After his rejection by the fair damsel, nature only offers Ichabod a haunted and hasty retreat. 

            However, the reader is given hope when Ichabod sights “[a]n opening in the trees . . .”(14) which suggests a clear escape route for him.  It almost seems the trees have moved to aid him in his departure.  The timeless, and biblically linked star of hope is then offered as “. . .wavering reflection of a silver star in the bosom of the brook . . .”(14).  Though Ichabod had suffered classic desire and loss, readers are left with hope of his deliverance through the redemptive natural imagery. After all, his only crime was being over imaginative as well as wanting more than life and nature wanted to give him at that moment in time.  

            A poignant portrait of desire and loss linked with the natural was written in the Romantic period by James Fenimore Cooper.  Cooper’s text, The Last of the Mohicans, offers a landscape of burgeoning nature as the background for this tale.  In her essay from 2005, Yvonne Hopkins argues the importance of nature to this story:

            Resoundingly, the works of the early Romanticists present a multi-faceted view

            of nature as more than simply a backdrop against which humankind carves its

            destiny.  By the time Cooper develops his classic sage of frontier Romanticism,

            The Last of the Mohicans, the role of nature has become central to the struggles

            and the triumphs of the settlers in the new world.  As in earlier texts, the

            wilderness remains fraught with “hazardous chances,” and the power of nature

            to debilitate reinforces the sense of its psychological  grip on the outsiders: “the

            magnifying influence of fear began to set at nought the calculations of reason.”

            (5,7)

            Ms. Hopkins recognizes and writes admirably regarding the integral part nature plays in this classic Romantic story.  She points to the fact that nature is not merely a setting for Cooper’s story.  Cooper expands nature’s language to the point that it is completely interwoven with the participants of the tale.

               In his book about Cooper’s life, James Fenimore Cooper Updated Version, Donald Ringe agrees as follows:

            . . . and it was especially suitable for the descriptions of physical nature that affect

             to so great an extent the ultimate meanings in his novels.  Cooper’s special

            gifts lay in narrative and description, through which he communicates his

            fundamental themes.  In Cooper, the description of nature is never just an adjunct

            to the tale, nor merely a framework for or backdrop to the action.  As Josh Conrad

            observed many years ago, nature for Cooper was always an essential factor in the

            problem of existence. (5)

            Desire is marked by a journey in this Romantic narrative. The author uses natural language differently to create a cruel and dangerous setting for his characters. Cooper provides Cora and Alice with Uncas, Hawkeye and Chingachgook, men of nature, for their dangerous journey.   Through the perils of harsh landscapes they must travel; therefore, readers realize men of nature are necessary to guide the women back to their father.

         The modern reader can understand Hawkeye as one with nature when described as, “[h]e wore a hunting-shirt of forest-green . . . and a summer cap, of skins which had been shorn of their fur”(29).  His body “appeared strung and indurated, by unremitted exposure and toil”(29).  Even his leggings “were gartered above the knee with sinews of a deer”(29). 

The Native American heroes are similarly described by Cooper in the class text.  Chingachgook is presented as a prime example of human nature as the author describes him as “nearly naked,” and having “a solitary eagle’s plume on his head” with “. . . expanded chest and ful-formd limbs . . . though no symptoms of decay”(29).  Uncas appears much like his father as “. . . graceful and unrestrained in the attitudes and movements of nature”(58). He is implicitly linked with nature through the mark of the tortoise.  Tamenund makes the nature connection clear as he relates that, “The blood of the Turtle has been in many chiefs, but all have gone back into the earth, from whence they came, except Chingachgook and his son”(310).  The language of nature makes the imagination wonder where nature stops on these men and humanity takes over.  Even today, through the timeless language of nature, one can understand how this crew would be the ones to take on a perilous nature journey.

            Incredible risk is laced through the desire of the journey, but the author pulls the modern reader into the story with beautiful natural visions. Although the sisters are aware of the danger they are in they can not help but to enjoy the following:

            While the eyes of the sisters were endeavoring to catch glimpses, through the

            trees, of the flood of golden glory, which formed a glittering halo around the sun,

            tinging here and there, with ruby streaks, or bordering with narrow edgings of            

            shining yellow, a mass of clouds that lay piled at no great distance above the

            western hills. . .(124)

Hawk-eye grasps this as a signal from nature to “seek his food and natural rest.”  This beauty and grace of nature is as breathtaking today as it would have been back then.  As human beings, we can timelessly revel in and relate to this kind of majestic display.

            However, as dictated by Romanticism, where there is desire and journey, there must also be a fall and ultimate loss.  If the characters of this story were allowed to live happily ever after, it would not fit the definition of the Romantic style.  The silence of the wilderness becomes described as “treacherous quiet”(327).  The peace that could have been perceived as beautiful has become menacing.  The sky is used as a backdrop as Uncas and Heyward see Cora in the distance “. . . all four were strongly drawn against an opening in the sky . . .”(336).  The vastness of the sky draws attention to the enormity of the job still before them.   

            Ultimate loss in this story comes with the death of Uncas and Cora.  Again, Cooper uses the nature theme to describe Uncas as he defends Cora in his final fight.  The Huron is depicted as “like a tiger” and Uncas “arose from the blow, as the wounded panther turns upon his foe”(337).  The use of the two large cats of nature relays concise mental pictures of heroics and honor to the modern reader as well as a reader situated in the Romantic period.

Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, is the final example of nature’s timeless language.  Hurston uses the natural in yet another way to convey Janie’s personal Romantic journey as a woman. The novel was actually written in the post-Romantic period; however, the author follows Romanticism depicting life travels from the rise of Janie’s womanhood and desire all the way through her devastating losses in life.

Janie’s desire is awakened as a woman while totally involved with nature as “[s]he saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom . . . arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming every blossom and frothing with delight”(11).    The author relates that with this natural display “[s]he had been summoned to behold a revelation”(11).  Janie then “got up from where she was and went over the little garden field entire.  She was seeking confirmation of the voice and vision”(11).  She looks to nature to answer her mounting questions about womanhood and life.

Desire is further expounded through the natural bee imagery when Janie meets Tea Cake and she intimates the following:  

He looked like the love thoughts of women.  He could be a bee to a blossom—a

pear tree blossom in the spring.  He seemed to be crushing scent out of the world

with his footsteps.  Crushing aromatic herbs with every step he took.  Spices

hung about him.  He was a glance from God. (106)

A reader in the year 2006 has no problem conjuring up sensual images of a man described in nature’s language.  One can almost see through Janie’s eyes and feel her love to imagine this man as readily today as when it was written decades ago.

            In her book, Rerooting the Sacred Tree, Rachel Stein analyzes Hurston’s use of nature and she says, “Hurston characterizes . . . sensuality . . .which for her the essential nature of nature itself, as symbolized by the image of the pear tree”(76).  She goes on to argue that “Hurston used metaphors derived from nature’s play to emphasize the connection between the natural world and the possibilities of a harmonious social order”(76).  Stein points to the sensuality which becomes timeless through the imagery.      

            Devastating loss is an inevitable spiral for Janie that begins with an all too natural and devastating hurricane. The character of a hurricane is depicted when it is related that “[t]hrough the screaming wind they heard things crashing and things hurtling and dashing with unbelievable velocity”(159).  Rachel Stein relates that, “boundaries between classes, genders, races, human and nature, living and dead no longer hold”(78).  Nature’s hurricane has leveled the playing field as nothing else could.   Hurston employs natural imagery again  when she relates that “[a]s soon as Tea Cake went out pushing wind in front of him, he saw that the wind and water had given life to lots of things that folks think of as dead and given death to so much that had been living”(160).  This mental imagery leaves no doubt to the severity of the situation when life as it is known by humankind is turned completely around.  The reader can actually feel the confusion that would accompany such a scene.

            The definitive loss and , death’s beginning for Tea Cake is revealed through nature in the disguise of a dog the couple did not know was rabid, “[t]he dog stood up like a lion, stiff-standing hackles, stiff muscles, teeth uncovered as he lashed his fury for the charge.  Tea Cake split the water like an otter opening his knife . . .(166).  Nature’s language brings the reader feelings of sheer terror along with hope with the sleek and fast otter image as savior.

Romantic desire and loss issues are timelessly related through nature’s language in these diverse narratives.  Resoundingly, these factors combine to make the amazing stories classic examples of Romanticism that will bridge the years lapsed between when they were written to the present time and into the future. Many authors and their stories fall out of favor for the simple reason that modern readers can not share in what the characters are experiencing because the language and situations presented are archaic.    

Desire and loss issues depicted through the timeless common factor of nature, allows contemporary readers to relate with, and study the characters involved in these four tales. Arguably, these stories are being taught in colleges today because of the authors’ natural style of writing. The natural writing element shared by the authors will allow professors to teach and students to enjoy and examine these stories for many generations to come.

Works Cited

[BH].   Sample Final Exam Answers 2005.  LITR 5535:  American Romanticism      (http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/White/Litr/5535/models)  Nov. 2006.

Flint, Valerie.  The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus. Princeton Princeton University Press,1992. 

Hopkins, Yvonne.  Sample Student Midterms, fall 2003.  LITR 5535:  American    Romanticism.  (http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/White/Litr/5535/models)  Oct. 2006.

Hurston, Zora.  Their Eyes Were Watching God.  New York:  Harper Collins  Publishers, 1990.

Reidhead, Julia, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. sixth. New York:  W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2003.

Ringe, Donald.  James Fenimore Cooper Updated Edition.  Boston:  Twayne      Publishers, 1988.

Stein, Rachel.  Shifting the Ground  Charlottesville:  University Press of Virginia, 1997.

Wagenknecht, Edward.  Washington Irving:  Moderation Displayed.  New York:  Oxford University Press, 1962.