Unit 3 18001840 A Growing Nation

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Unit 3 - 1800-1840A Growing Nation

• History
• 1831 Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville reported on
  American penitentiary system
• 4 volume work - Democracy in America, classic of
  political literature
• complained that American literature was lacking

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History Overview (contd.)

• Later in this time period, great writers emerged
• Washington Irving
• James Fenimore Cooper
• William Cullen Bryant
• Edgar Allan Poe

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History Overview (contd.)

• When Thomas Jefferson became president, 3 more
  states signed on - Vermont, Kentucky, Tennessee -
  to original 13
• 1803 Louisiana Purchase - doubled nations
  territory
• 1837 Michigan became a state (more than 1/2 of 50
  states were in Union)

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History Overview (contd.)

• Upsurge in national pride and identity
• improved transportation (canals, turnpikes,
  railroads, sailing boats, steam boats)
• westward expansion
• boom in population

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History Overview (contd.)

• 1800s New York became a literary frontier
  (population in 1800 - 60,000)
• 2nd largest city, after Philadelphia (population
  in 1840 - 312,000)
• 1828 Andrew Jackson, elected president Peoples
  President (by popular voter rather than state
  legislators) Era of Common Man

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History Overview (contd.)

• Little political attention paid to women
• majority of blacks still slaves and counted as
  3/5 of a person for congressional purposes
• With all of this, this period saw the start of
  feminism and antislavery movements

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History Overview (contd.)

• Tragic aspect of the Jackson era - forcible
  Indian Removal and seizure of tribal lands (1838
  Trail of Tears)
• War of 1812 (2 1/2 years) fought to settle
  grievances with Great Britain
• neither side gained or lost
• many military heroes (Francis Scott Key, Star
  Spangled Banner)
• convinced other nations that America was on the
  world stage to stay

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History Overview (contd.)

• 1823 Monroe Doctrine
• 1818 Florida still a Spanish province
• Spain sells Florida, after Jackson invades, for
  5 Million
• 1835 Texas seceded from Mexico
• Alamo
• Republic of Texas 1837
• 1845 admitted to Union

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Literature of Time

• Washington Irving - first professional author and
  first literary figure to receive international
  acclaim
• Susanna Rowson wrote Americas first best selling
  novel, Charlotte Temple

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Literature of Time

• Americans favorite foreign writers of time
• Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott (Scotland)
• Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats
  (English poets)

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Literature of Time

• Known American Writers of Time
• Charles Brockden Brown
• James Paulding
• Fitz-Greene
• Halleck
• Caroline Kirkland
• N.P. Willis
• more lasting fame, biblical writer, Clement
  Clarke Moore, Twas The Night Before Christmas
  poem 1823

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Literature of Time

• 1833 William Gilmore Simms, Martin Faber
• 1809 Washington Irving, satiric, History of New
  York
• 1823 James Fenimore Cooper, frontier hero Natty
  Bumbo, The Pioneers
• William Cullen Bryant, Thanatopsis (age 17)
• Edgar Allan Poe

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Literature Review

• Puritans - religious fundamentalists who sought
  salvation
• Founders of Republic - were political realists
  pursued reason
• ROMANTICS - writers of early 19th century,
  artistic movement/state of mind, favored
  imagination over reason, intuition over facts

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Literature in Review

• ROMANTICS
• also, intense interest in and reverence for
  nature (man vs. nature) (ex. William Cullen
  Bryant)
• mystery (Poe)

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Tidbits of Time Period

• Landscape Painters (Hudson River School)
• Thomas Cole
• Asher B. Durand

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VOCABULARY

• Folktales stories handed down orally among the
  common people of a particular culture
• Setting the time, environment and conditions in
  which the events in a work of literature occur
• Short Story constructed to obtain a certain
  unique or single effect (Poe)

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VOCABULARY

• Blank Verse regular rhythm, a recurring pattern
  of stressed and unstressed syllables (meter),
  verse consisting of unrhymed lines of iambic
  pentameter is called blank verse
• foot basic unit of meter (1 stressed syllable
  and 1 ore more unstressed)
• iamb 1 unstressed syllable followed by a
  stressed

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VOCABULARY

• Sound Devices used to give writing a musical
  quality, usually
• Alliteration repetition of similar sounds,
  consonants at the beginning of words or accented
  syllables
• Consonance repetition of consonant sounds at
  the ends of words or accented syllables
• Assonance repetition of vowel sounds

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VOCABULARY

• Frame Story story told within the framework of
  another story
• Allusions reference to another literary work or
  a figure, place or event from history, religion
  or mythology

Notes gathered from textbook, The American
Experience, Prentice Hall