CHAPTER ELEVEN

1
CHAPTER ELEVEN

• An American Culture

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AN AMERICAN CULTURE

• By the 1830s, the United States was developing
  its own distinct culture as illustrated by
  movements in literature, the arts, and education.

Frederic Edwin Church conveyed the romantic
sensibility in Twilight in the Wilderness (1860).
The clouds glow with religious portent, and their
reflected light pervades Nature.
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JAMES FENIMORE COOPER

• In Search of Native Grounds
• Of American novelists before 1830, only James
  Fenimore Cooper made successful use of the
  national heritage
• James Fenimore Cooper was the first American
  novelist to explore native themes, settings, and
  characters.
• The Spy (1821),
• The Pioneers (1823),
• The Last of the Mohicans (1826)

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AMERICAN PAINTERS

• American painting reached a level comparable to
  that of Europe, where many of the best American
  painters still trained
• American painters such as Benjamin West, John
  Singleton Copley, Charles Willson Peale, and
  Gilbert Stuart excelled as portraitists
• American painting was less obviously imitative of
  European styles than was American literature

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JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY
John Hancock by John Singleton Copley
Paul Revere by John Singleton Copley
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WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE BY JOHN
SINGLETON COPLEY
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BEN FRANKLIN BY BENJAMIN WEST
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THOMAS JEFFERSON BY CHARLES WILLSON PEALE
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GEORGE WASHINGTON BY GILBERT STUART
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ROMANTICISM-TRANSCENDENTALISM

• The Romantic View of Life
• Romantic Movementwas a reaction against Age of
  Reason
• romantics valued emotion and intuition over pure
  reason, and they stressed individualism,
  optimism, patriotism, and ingeniousness
• Transcendentalisma mystical, intuitive way of
  looking at life that aspired to go beyond the
  world of the senses, represented the fullest
  expression of romanticism

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LEADING TRANSCENDENTALIST THINKERS

• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• THE leading transcendentalist thinker, urged
  Americans to put aside their devotion to things
  European and seek inspiration in immediate
  surroundings
• although he favored change and believed in
  progress, the new industrial society of New
  England disturbed him profoundly
• Emerson valued self-reliance and disliked
  powerful governments

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LEADING TRANSCENDENTALIST THINKERS

• Henry David Thoreau
• like Emerson, Henry David Thoreau objected to
  societys restrictions on the individual
• Thoreau spent two years living alone in a cabin
  at Walden Pond to prove that an individual need
  not depend on society, wrote Waldenanti-materiali
  sm
• Essay-Civil Disobedience explained view on
  proper relation b/t individual/state

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HENRY DAVID THOREAU, CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

• I heartily accept the motto, "That government is
  best which governs least" and I should like to
  see it acted up to more rapidly and
  systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts
  to this, which also I believe--"That government
  is best which governs not at all" and when men
  are prepared for it, that will be the kind of
  government which we will have. Government is at
  best but an expedient but most governments are
  usually, and all governments are sometimes,
  inexpedient. The objections which have been
  brought against a standing army, and they are
  many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may
  also at last be brought against a standing
  government. The standing army is only an arm of
  the standing government. The government itself,
  which is only the mode which the people have
  chosen to execute their will, is equally liable
  to be abused and perverted before the people can
  act through it. Witness the present Mexican war,
  the work of comparatively a few individuals using
  the standing government as their tool for in the
  outset, the people would not have consented to
  this measure. ?

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WALDEN POND, AS SEEN TODAY, WHERE HENRY DAVID
THOREAU LIVED FROM 1845 TO 1847 I WENT TO THE
WOODS BECAUSE I WISHED TO LIVE DELIBERATELY, TO
FRONT ONLY THE ESSENTIAL FACTS OF LIFE, AND SEE
IF I COULD NOT LEARN WHAT IT HAD TO TEACH, AND
NOT, WHEN I CAME TO DIE, TO DISCOVER THAT I HAD
NOT LIVED.

• http//ricklondon.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/wald
  en3.jpg

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Transcendentalist Intellectuals/WritersConcord,
MA
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Nature(1832)
Resistance to Civil Disobedience(1849)
Self-Reliance (1841)
Walden(1854)
The American Scholar (1837)
R3-1/3/4/5
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EDGAR ALLAN POE

• Poe epitomized the romantic image of the tortured
  genius
• haunted by alcohol, melancholia, hallucinations,
  and debt, he was nevertheless a master short
  story writer and poet, a penetrating critic, and
  an excellent magazine editor
• The Murder of Rue, Pit and Pendulum, poem
  The Raven

In 1845 Edgar Allan Poe, impoverished and an
alcoholic, was living in the greatest
wretchedness. His young wife was dying of
tuberculosis. That same year he wrote The
Raven, a poem about an ill-omened bird that
intrudes on a young mans grief over the death of
his beloved. Take thy beak from out of my heart
the man screams. Quoth the ravenfamouslyNevermo
re.
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NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

• Hawthorne rejected the egoism and optimism of
  transcendentalism
• he was fascinated by New Englands Puritan past
  and its continuing influence
• his best known works, including The Scarlet
  Letter and The House of the Seven Gables,
  concerned individuals and their struggle with
  sin, guilt, and the pride and isolation that
  often afflict those who place too much reliance
  on their own judgment

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HERMAN MELVILLE

• like Hawthorne, Melville could not accept the
  transcendentalists optimism
• he considered their vague talk about striving and
  their faith in the goodness of humanity
  complacent nonsense
• in his most famous work, Moby Dick, Melville
  dealt powerfully with the problems of good and
  evil, courage and cowardice, faith, stubbornness,
  and pride

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WALT WHITMAN

• the most romantic and distinctively American
  writer of his age, Whitman believed that a poet
  could best express himself by relying
  uncritically on his natural inclinations
• his greatest work, Leaves of Grass, often shocked
  or confused his readers with its commonplace
  subject matter and its coarse language

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WALT WHITMAN, THE MOST ROMANTIC AND THE MOST
DISTINCTLY AMERICAN WRITER OF HIS AGE. (THE
NATIONAL ARCHIVES)

• What was Whitman's greatest contribution to U.S.
  literature?
• Who were the other great writers of his age?
• What were the general themes of U.S. writing?

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THE WIDER LITERARY RENAISSANCE

• pre-Civil War literary renaissance also included
  New Englanders Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John
  Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and
  James Russell Lowell
• Southern literature was even more markedly
  romantic than that of New England, as
  demonstrated by novelists John Pendleton Kennedy
  and William Gilmore Simms
• several historians achieved prominence during
  this period, including George Bancroft and
  Francis Parkman

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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DOMESTIC TASTES

• Charles Bulfinchs Federal style of
  architecture flourished in the North
• wood-turning machinery contributed to the
  popularity of the Gothic style
• Greek and Italian styles also flourished, the
  former particularly in the South
• new technology allowed the mass production of
  textiles with complicated designs, including
  wallpaper, rugs, and hangings

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DOMESTIC TASTES(CONT)

• combined with the use of machine methods in the
  production of furniture, new textiles had a
  profound impact on furniture in American homes
• more affluent Americans decorated their homes
  with the works of American genre painters,
  luminists, and members of the Hudson River
  School
• beginning in the 1850s, the lithographs of
  Currier and Ives brought a fairly crude but
  charming form of art to a still wider audience

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EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY

• common school movement, led by Henry Barnard and
  Horace Mann, urged creation of state-administered
  schools taught by professional teachers
• movement was based on an unquenchable faith in
  the improvability of the human race through
  education and a belief that democracy required an
  educated citizenry
• by the 1850s, every state outside the South
  provided free elementary schools and supported
  institutions to train teachers

Horace Mann
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EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY(CONT)

• historians have identified several reasons for
  the success of the common school movement
• common schools helped to Americanize immigrant
  children, and they brought Americans of different
  economic circumstances and ethnic backgrounds
  into early and mutually beneficial contact with
  one another
• they also instilled good employee values

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READING AND THE DISSEMINATION OF CULTURE

• as the population grew and became more
  concentrated, and as middle class values
  permeated American society, particularly in the
  North, popular concern for culture increased
• industrialization made it possible to satisfy
  this new demand
• improved printing techniques reduced the cost of
  books, magazines, and newspapers
• moralistic and sentimental domestic novels
  reached their peak of popularity in the 1850s

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READING AND THE DISSEMINATION OF CULTURE(CONT)

• Americans devoured reams of religious literature
• self-improvement books were popular as well
• philanthropists established libraries and public
  lectures
• mutual improvement societies known as lyceums
  founded libraries, sponsored lectures, and
  lobbied for better education

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THE STATE OF THE COLLEGES

• the cost of private colleges meant that
  relatively few students could afford them since
  students were hard to come by, discipline and
  academic standards were lax
• the college curriculum focused on the classics
  rather than on practical or scientific studies
  until the 1840s
• Harvard and Yale established schools of science
  Harvard allowed students to choose some of their
  courses, and instituted grades

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THE STATE OF THE COLLEGES(CONT)

• colleges in the South and West began to offer
  mechanical and agricultural subjects
• Oberlin College admitted women in 1837, and the
  Georgia Female College opened in 1839
• white males constituted the overwhelming majority
  of students, but only 2 percent of white males
  went to college

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CIVIC CULTURES

• cities and towns sought to become local and
  regional centers of learning, art, and culture
• in the East, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia
  vied for primacy
• in the West, Cincinnati, Lexington, and
  Pittsburgh sought to become regional centers of
  culture
• members of the professions were generally
  accepted as the arbiters of taste in cultural
  matters

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SCIENTIFIC STIRRINGS

• few Americans pursued science on more than a
  part-time basis, and few American scientists
  achieved international recognition in the half
  century after the Revolution
• Tocqueville attributed this to Americans
  distrust of theory and abstract knowledge
• nevertheless, Americans accounted for some
  advances national and state governments
  sponsored geological and coastal surveys and the
  Smithsonian Institution was founded

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AMERICAN HUMOR

• the juxtaposition of high ideals and low reality
  formed the basis for much American humor
• James Russell Lowells Bigelow Papers turned
  Down East humor to more telling satirical
  effect
• Seba Smiths character, Major Jack Downing, and
  Johnson J. Hoopers creation, Simon Suggs,
  provided satirical lenses through which to
  examine Jacksonian America