Representative Writers: LITERATURE OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC

In the early years of the 19th century several full-fledged American writers developed. The most notable among them were Bryant, Cooper, and Irving. These writers were recognized even in England. In different ways each of them tried to make his works American. Bird, Robert M. (1806-54), novelist and playwright--'Nick of the Woods'; 'The Gladiator'. Brackenridge, Hugh Henry (1748-1816), novelist--'Modern Chivalry'. Bryant, William Cullen (1794-1878), poet--'Thanatopsis'; 'To a Waterfowl'; 'A Forest Hymn'. Cooper, James Fenimore (1789-1851), novelist--'The Pilot'; 'The Last of the Mohicans'; 'The Spy'; 'The Deerslayer'; 'The Pathfinder'; 'The Pioneers'. Irving, Washington (1783-1859), essayist and short-story writer--'A History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker'; 'The Alhambra'; 'The Sketch Book'. Kennedy, John Pendleton (1795-1870), novelist--'Swallow Barn'; 'Horse-Shoe Robinson'. Simms, William Gilmore (1806-70), novelist and poet--'The Yemassee'; 'Atalantis'. Thompson, Daniel Pierce (1795-1868), novelist--'The Green Mountain Boys'; 'The Rangers'.


a 0 A


The Flowering of American Literature

The middle of the 19th century saw the beginning of a truly independent American literature. This period, especially the years 1850-55, has been called the American Renaissance.
More masterpieces were written at this time than in any other equal span of years in American history. New England was the center of intellectual activity in these years, and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) was the most prominent writer.

Emerson and Thoreau

Emerson began his career as a clergyman. He came to feel, however, that he could better do his work outside the church. Thus he became an independent essayist and lecturer, a lay preacher to Americans. He preached one message--that the individual human being, because he is God's creature, has a spark of divinity in him which gives him great power. "Trust thyself," Emerson said in his essay 'Self-Reliance' (1841). He believed it made no difference what one's work is or where one lives. Emerson himself lived in the village of Concord. There, as oracle and as prophet, he wrote the stirring prose that inspired an entire nation.
One person who took Emerson's teaching to heart and lived by it was his Concord neighbor Henry David Thoreau (1817-62). Thoreau lived a life of independence. He was a student of wildlife and the great outdoors. He was also a student of literature, who himself wrote fresh, vigorous prose. His masterpiece is 'Walden, or Life in the Woods' (1854), an account of his two-year sojourn at Walden Pond. "I went to the woods," he wrote, "because I wished to live deliberately"--that is, to decide what is important in life and then to pursue it.
The simplicity of Thoreau's life makes a strong appeal to modern readers. They are impressed too by his essay 'Civil Disobedience' (1849), which converted Emersonian self-reliance into a workable formula for opposing the power of government. He advocated passive resistance, including, if necessary, going to jail, as he himself did. Mahatma Gandhi, who was jailed so many times in his fight to free India from British rule, was strongly influenced by the ideas contained in this essay of Thoreau's.

Popular New England Poets

More conventional and less challenging than the Concord writers were the popular poets of New England. Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-94) won early renown with 'Old Ironsides' (1830), which told the story of the Constitution in such stirring words that people rallied and saved it from destruction.
His 'Last Leaf' (1833) and 'Chambered Nautilus' (1858) were also favorites. Holmes took time from his medical practice to write 'The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table' (1858), which first appeared in the newly founded Atlantic Monthly. The autocrat is a thin disguise for Holmes himself. Holmes was a witty conversationalist; and through his mouthpiece, the autocrat, he gave lively expression to a variety of opinions
The poems of James Russell Lowell (1819-91) were admired in his day. This wellborn Bostonian was versatile. He was editor of the Atlantic Monthly, a professor at Harvard, United States minister to Spain and then to England, a literary critic, and a poet.
Lowell's 'Vision of Sir Launfal' (1848) has long been popular. Fresher and more native is his 'Biglow Papers' (1848-67), rhymed verse in Yankee dialect used for humor and satire directed against the advocates of slavery. Hosea Biglow, the pretended author, is blessed with common sense and a strong New England conscience. By capturing the thought and speech of the American rustic, Lowell showed one way in which American literature could be truly national.
The favorite American poet in the 19th century was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82). He was a storyteller in verse. 'The Courtship of Miles Standish' (1858), 'Evangeline' (1847), and 'The Song of Hiawatha' (1855) use native incident and character. Longfellow was trying to give the United States legends like those of Europe. His lyrics too were admired. 'A Psalm of Life' (1839) was memorized by generations of schoolchildren.
Nearly as popular as Longfellow was John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-92), author of such well-known ballads as 'Barbara Frietchie' (1863). Whittier was a Quaker and thus a foe of slavery, which he attacked in both verse and prose.
After the Civil War he wrote 'Snow-Bound' (1866). This homely poem, based on the poet's childhood experiences, pictures farm life in an earlier day. It must have reminded many readers of their own rural childhoods.

Poe and Hawthorne

The major writer in the South during these years was Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49). Instead of American characters, themes, and settings, Poe wrote of timeless places and people. He did brilliant work in three areas: poetry, short fiction, and criticism. Poems such as 'The Raven' (1845), 'The Bells' (1849), and 'Ulalume' (1847) are vague in thought but hauntingly beautiful in sound.
Poe's short stories are of two kinds: (1) tales of detection, such as 'Murders in the Rue Morgue' (1841) and 'The Purloined Letter' (1845) (Poe's Dupin being the forerunner of Sherlock Holmes and other later fictional detectives); and (2) psychological tales of terror, such as 'The Fall of the House of Usher' (1839) and 'The Masque of the Red Death' (1842). Both types of stories observe the principles he outlined in his critical writing--that a story should be short, that it should aim at a definite effect, and that all its parts should contribute to the effect, thus making for unity. Modern short-story writers owe much to Poe's critical ideas.
Although Poe disliked most New England writing because it was too obviously moral in intention, he greatly admired the stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64). The son of a sea captain from Salem, Mass., Hawthorne grew up in that old port city rich in legends of the past. He steeped himself in the history of Puritan times and laid many of his stories in that period. The earlier settings made his tales shadowy and, because the Puritans were conscious of sin, gave the author a chance to explore the sinful human heart in his fiction. He did so in the stories 'Young Goodman Brown' (1835) and 'The Minister's Black Veil' (1837), as well as in his full-length masterpiece, 'The Scarlet Letter' (1850).
His fiction, seemingly simple, is rich and subtle. It is also often profound in its treatment of life's darker side, the side which the Puritans had freely acknowledged but which Hawthorne's contemporaries often chose to ignore.