发信人: oceann (dany), 信区: English
标 题: New England Transcendentalism and Romantic Age(转
发信站: 哈工大紫丁香 (Tue Aug 5 21:12:53 2003)
The Treaty of Paris in 1783 put an end to the American Revolution; the victory
of the American people gained for them­selves the right to establish an i
ndependent nation? and brought the history of America into a new age. On April
30,1789»in the presence of an immense multitude, George Washington stoo
d on the balcony of Federal Hall in Wall Street to take the oath of office as
the first president of the United States. Washington’s government consisted o
f such outstanding politicians as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Alexander Hami
lton, and Edmund Randolph, the purpose for which Washington organized such a g
overnment was none other than a deliberate effort to unite the -two politicall
y conflicting parties, since Jefferson and Randolph were understood to be of A
ntifederalist views, while Hamilton of Federalist bent. Washington had done a
great work in establish­ing the government and making it strong. The outbr
eak of the French Revolution considered by many as a continuation of the the American Revolution gave the Americans more confidence in establ
ishing an independent, democratic nation of their own, but on the other hand i
t also challenged the unity of the government, since its top leaders’ attitud
es toward the French Revolution var­ied..
Americans did not give up their ambition for more ex-d growth of the natio
nal strength toward the end in century further enlarged their ambition. The Am
erican realized the significance of an indispensable port for the shipment of
American in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, and the enting Napoleon from est
ablishing his huge colo-west of the United States, which would balance i domin
ion in the North America, and eventually ing rights and the safty of all the i
nterior settle-)rtunity for the Americans came in 1802, when a four thousand F
rench soldiers were destroyed in iiti by the insurgents led by their black lea
der /erture and yellow fever together.
The doctrine consisted of two major ideas. One was the idea of no coloniza
tion, according to which Europe should be forbid­den to establish any new
dependencies in the Western Hemi­sphere. The other was the idea of noninte
rvention, which declared that European nations must no longer interfere in the
affairs of the New World nations in such a way as to threaten their nation&sh
y;al independence. It is obvious that the real significance of the doc­tri
ne lies in the American regional monopolist.
The first half of the nineteenth century witnessed a develop­ment, mor
e rapid and vast than ever seen before, of government, trade, transportation,
manufactures, agriculture, and an expand­ing system of roads and waterways
. Along with such a wide­spread development, cultural and religious instit
utions also got developed and expanded, which were expressed either in the app
earance of such brilliant men of letters as Bryant, Cooper, Irving, Poe, and E
merson, or in transcendentalism prevailing be­cause of the influence of Em
erson and Thoreau. Inevitably atten­dant upon the. unprecedented expansion
in territory .population, and industrial activity, the United States began, e
arly in the nine­teenth century, to experience such social disorders as ec
onomic crises, and moreover, the entrenchment of slavery , monopoly, and privi
lege became an intolerable threat against the enterprise of free men. In the f
ace of this unexampled situation, the best of the American writers of the period responded with a swelling tide of the newly growing national
literature devoted to humanitarian re­form movements. They advocated resp
ect for the common man, human and civil rights, supported or participated abol
ition and other reforms. New reform movements and organizations flour­ishe
d , among which transcendentalism was of principal impor­tance.
American transcendentalists were radical individualists , the typical repr
esentatives of whom were literary men rather than logical system builders .thu
s it is difficult to arrive at a full defi­nition of Transcendentalism. In
addition, the compel impact of alien philosophers and write] idealistic philo
sophers as Kant, Hegel writers as Wordsworth, Cole ridge, a Goethe, and the Hi
ndu wisdom of this more difficult to make a final assessment Generally speakin
g, an intuitional ideal:
Current to rationalistic and authoritarian veiling, Transcendentalism was
a phallus Aryanism. Transcendentalists rejected t gee of Locke in favor of the
idealism old the transcendental knowledge in the mil they held the belief tha
t the imagination tee which would enable man to transfer once and logic, and t
o arrive at a direct; Other words, intuition could surpass r truth. Being beli
evers of a theological err held that the divine immanence of God verse and the
individual, thus it was pc dance between the microcosm of the macrocosmic Ove
rsoul of the universe Spirit is immanent and is the only reality;
Nature stood as the symbol of Spirit. B emphasized the divinity of man, th
e sign individual, and the possibility of the self-ual, being in the full conv
iction that the himself to the maximum of his potenti;social pressures. As to
literature, transcc classical conception of order, imitation^ tne literary wor
k as the organic express of the writer. Because of the importance as represent
atives of American Transcentalism has become a major concern of American liter
ature.
Besides the above discussion of the historical background of the first few
decades of the nineteenth century, which exerted direct or potential influenc
e upon the American literary life of the period, some mention should be made o
f agencies which furthered the spread of the new literary spirit and provided
other concrete aids for the growth of literature. In 1815 North American Revie
w was founded by Edward T. Channing, professor of rhetoric at Harvard; the mag
azine published Channing’s conceptions of origi­nality, individualism, an
d the superiority of intuition over reason, which stood as a landmark of ideal
ism and individualism pointing toward transcendental thought, and influenced m
any prominent American men of letters , like Emerson, Thoreau , Holmes , and R
ichard Henry Dana. From this time onward, there was a vast enlargement of the
periodical field .various, journals mushroomed within a couple of decades, pro
viding writers with more vehicles of publication. The rapidly growing lyceum was another influen­tial agency which afforded occassions fo
r literary men to voice their opinions and read their works, and at the same t
ime trained audiences central as well to the development of literature, with h
igh aesthetical values and literary taste. Other factors accelerat­ing the
rise of a national literature included the significant growth in the number o
f private academies, as well as the rapid expansion in public education.
The rapid development of the American politics, economy, and culture in th
e first few decades of the nineteenth century led to the growing acuteness of
the sectional struggle between the North and the South, the central point of t
he struggle being over slavery. Beginning about 1830,abolitionist and above al
l free-soil feeling grew more powerful in the Northern states, many anti-slave
ry groups like William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator were es­tablished, and
the people, who supported the free-soil policy and insisted that slavery must
not expand one inch farther, were | greatly increased in number. Meanwhile, in
the southern states j their leaders and big plantation owners declared slaver
y a posi­tive good, and “the cornerstone of our republican edifice. “The
successfully attained economic gains for their through organized strikes and
boycotts. The year 1 that the American Federation of Labor was founded that th
e working class had become a major force in city, and that the workers realized they could not fend their rights and interests unless they we
re whole.
As good and evil always stand as a pair, the meant of the material civiliz
ation in American social pied with various kinds of corruption, When the in ju
st over and the reconstruction was just on its we major literary voices of the
period began to question meant and the cost of making it, and challenged the
generally accepted by emphasizing the disturbing ideal and reality. Such autho
rs as Whitman and Ma attacked the social evils bitterly, as Whitman did.
The official services of America, national municipal, in all their branch
es and departs crept the judiciary .are saturated in corruption falsehood, mal
-administration; and the ju tainted. The great cities reek with respectability
as non-respectable robbery and scoundrelism.
The prevalence of those social evils satirized I veiled that a new mercena
ry spirit was growing American life. The impact of the spirit swept over Ameri
can society, and there was no exception to really speaking, the literature of
this period who different from that of the preceding age.
II. THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERATURE
The development of American literature to be surveyed here is undoubtedly
characterized by the rise of romanticism. Al­though the years 1815 to 1820
have been regarded by many liter­ary historians as the"pivotal period"in
the rapid rise of romanticism.
As a result of the impact of European literary romanticism and the Americ
an literary men‘s efforts in responding to such a movement, there rapidly cam
e into being the rise of romanticism in America, which brought into American l
iterature a swelling tide of unexampled freshness, freedom, colorfulness, and
expan-siveness. Such a flourishing literature also resulted from the pow­e
r (imagination, and opportunity quickened by democracy, nation­alism,and t
he rapid growth of economy, as mentioned above. Al­though the American lit
erature of this period was romantic in character, resembling the Continental l
iterature of the time, it was by no means an imitation; the best of the Americ
an writers of the period created a new national literature, which possessed su
ch a rich native character and tradition that it was soon recog­nized as A
merican by the critics at large.
Basically, romanticism represented an attitude toward the realities of man
, nature, and society, which had its sources in the stirring events both in Eu
rope and in America, it was not an or­ganized system. Romanticism was rebe
llious in spirit, standing in reaction, against the neoclassical spirit then p
revailing in Ameri­can literary life. Different from the neoclassical who
stressed for­mality, order, and authority, the romantic emphasized freedom
and individualism, believing that imagination was superior to ra­tionalis
m. Different from the neoclassical who was convinced of the validity of materi
al reality, the romantic preferred the innate or intuitive perception by the h
eart of man.To the romantic, idea­lity and elevation was a reality that wa
s more lofty and realistic than the evidence of the substantial things; and hi
s reliance upon the significance of the subconscious, inner life found express
ion in‘Intuitionalism and a profound interest in abnormal psychology illustrated by the works of such literary men as Emerson, Poe, and Hawt
horne. The romantic showed a profound admiration and love for nature ,the beau
ty and perfection of nature could produce .
The romantic believed that he was the chosen and favored creature in natur
e whence he was free in using his talent to eulogize nature. The natural poetr
y of Bryant and Longfellow typically exhibited this feature of the romantic. T
he romantic also had a persistent interest in the prim­itive literature, s
uch as epics, ballads, and other forms of folk. lit­erature, in which he f
ound inspiration of various kinds. It is difficult to give a satisfactory defi
nition of romanticism, since it is not an organized system. Although such char
acteristics as pursuit of freedom, emphasis of individualism, a reliance upon
the good of nature and "natural" man, and an abiding faith in the boundless re
sources of the human spirit and imagination persist­ed in the works of man
y romantic writers, wide variations of the characteristics still existed in th
e works of different romantic au­thors. A good example is the similarity a
nd difference between Poe and Hawthorne. Both of them shared a spiritual questioning of romanticism, sought the reality of man in the hidden
recesses of the mind and the spirit, and probed the obscure sources of the hum
an behaviour and moral judgment. However, Poe embodied his revelations in aest
hetic symbolism, while Hawthorne exhibit­ed his symbolism in man‘s confli
ct with the vestiges of the past, indelibly fixed in his moral nature and his
social environment. Different from both of them, Melville drew his symbols fro
m land and sea for his probe into the shadowed heart of the universe.
Following the rise of romanticism, Transcendentalism or ro­mantic idea
lism appeared after 1830 in the works of such men of letters as Emerson, Thore
au, and Margaret Fuller. In spite of its foreign sources and impact, Transcend
entalism was essentially a product of the American background, which stood in
reaction against the rationalism of the Enlightenment, and as a revolt against
the cultural dominion of England, as Emerson‘s "The American Scholar "made c
lear. Romanticism and Transcenden­talism shared some similarities, like em
phasis of the significance of imagination, insistence upon individualism, and
pursuit of a literature that would discard neoclassical conceptions order, and
correctness, they gave to American literary fresh, significant aesthetic theo
ries but also a nur writers.
Because of the rise of romanticism and the transcendentalism, American lit
erature flourished in the nineteenth century.
First, there was a rapid anc crease in the number of the literary genres,
those quietly used by American writers of the period in) verse, the Spenserian
stanza, the sonnet, the ode, the metrical romance. Such a multiplication of t
he 1 enriched the variety of literary form, and provides more freedom and poss
ibility of choice in the prim literary creation.
Second, literary men exhibited a growing into and in its reproduction in t
he imagery of poetry romantic landscapes of fiction. The first evidence intere
st was found in the poetry of Freneau, his best is like "The Wild Honey Suckle
"described the be? And his inspiration, standing as a landmark which coming r
omanticism. Influenced by Sir Walter S Dwight perhaps was the the first Americ
an write nature as an essential part of literary technique. Some mention must
be made that Cooper‘s preference for theuse of dialect in his novels ,and his
somewhat stereotyped character who often lacked probability led to the critic
ism of many writers and critics, including Mark Twain who held that one of the
literary offences made by Cooper was that he failed to observe man, nature, an
d society as realistically as a writer should do. As to his mastery in dealing
with plot construction, his spendidlypictorial imagination, and his understan
ding of symbolism utiliaed in novel-writhing, he could hardly find parallel among hiscontemporaries.
Third, the majority of the American writers of the periodshowed a strong i
nterest in the imaginative in literature, in reaction against the rational dom
inant in American literary life since the eighteenth century. As the result of
the growth of such an interest, more and more writers began to lavish much of
their genius to seek the strange and horrible and the so-called naturalizatio
n in literature of the grotesque. It is undoubted that the tendency of gothici
sm was the consequence of the impact of»English Gothic romances , like T
he Castle of Otranto ( 1764 ) by Horace Walpole, yet American gothicism, diffe
rent from the English‘ Gothic romance which was characterized by the haunted
castles medieval background, mysterious murder, and fantastic contrivances, st
rived to depict the malign and grotesque in psychological form, and its develo
pment culminated in the superb craftsmanship of Poe and Hawthorne.
Fourth, as the result of the impact of Walter Scott‘s historical and metr
ical romances, American literary men began to paymore and more attention to th
e past; such an antiquarianismachieved its first expressions in the historical
legends of Washington Irving,like the Sketch BooK1819—1820),then in the hist
orical romances of James Fenimore Cooper,like The Spy(‘\.S21) The popularity
and influence of this antiquarianism soon made the return to the past one of t
he major literary trends in American literature of the period.
Fifth, in addition to their interest in the historical, the grotesque,the
natural,and the variety of literary form .American writers of the period also
set about to be interested in the signifi­cance of the individual and of p
ersonality. The new interest was stimulated by Emerson‘s transcendental thoug
ht, and soon ex­panded to combine with the interest in the ordinary man an
d the familiar in human experience, as exemplified in the poetry of Walt Whitm
an.
Sixth, although American writers of the period shared some common characte
ristics in relation to aesthetic theory and literary tendency, regional influe
nces were always evident and powerful in shaping a new literature. Generally s
peaking, since literature is closely related to the development of politics, c
ulture, economy, and history, those writers who settle in a place more develop
ed politically, economically, culturally , and historically are prone to creat
e the best of literature of their age. By 1800 the city of New York became the
largest city in the United States, and hence it stood far several decades the
literary capital of the nation, where many of the prominent writers of the ag
e gathered and created their great work. Typical of the New York writers were
so-called Knickerbockers, whose name came from Irving‘s Knickerbocker‘s‘ Hi
story of New York(1809). The Knickerbockers were charac­terized by a large
-minded .romantic acceptance of life,as illustrat­ed by Bryant‘s serious religion and Irving‘s fantasy and bur­lesque, and they als
o made efforts to reveal a wordly sophistica­tion and witty gaiety. The Kn
ickerbockers were an informal group,among which the only member who achieved h
igh literary distinction was Washington Irving, two other great New York write
rs ,Bryant and Cooper, were often excluded from this group, although they dist
inctly shared to some extent the Knickerbocker spirit. The efforts and influen
ce of the Knickerbocker were ex­pressed in the tales of Irving, in the fac
t that the New York the­ater flourished and the development of newspaper j
ournalism of the city took the lead in the country, and also in the direct and
the light in which I regarded it. "His ambition came true in 1849, when his be
st-known book,77i(? California and Oregon Trial was published. In his remainin
g years, Parkman wrote a number of important books, including A Half-Century C
onflict (1892) , a two-volume history of "France and England in North America," which took him forty years to complete, and even a novel, Vas
sal Morton (1856), but none of them could be compared with The California and
Oregon Trial in terms of literary values.
Different from ordinary history by his contemporaries , which would chiefl
y deal with historical events ,Parkman‘s The Califor­nia and Oregon Trial
was centered on individuals, on dramatic situations, and on his strong, truth
ful sense of the historical places where he had visited. In addition to its st
ress on personal adventure, the work was also remarkable for its pictorial .de
tailed description.
In sum, the first half of the nineteenth century witnessed that American l
iterature of the period, which differed from a sin­gle line of development
, was characterized by growing complexity and diversity. Such characteristics
were embodied in the expan­sion of subject matters, the multiplication of
forms, and the rich­ness of style and technique. It is in this period that
an authentic national literature grew into maturity. Besides foreign tendenci
es and forms which contributed to the rise of American national lit­eratur
e .certain indigenous factors were of particular importance in shaping the new
literature, such as a dynamic moralism.a strong anti-traditionalism,the risin
g tide of nationalism and opti­mism following the victory of the War of 18
12, and the frontier and the untrodden nature beyond it. Among the brilliant w
riters of the period Irving and Bryant deserve special discussion.
The rise of romanticism and the prevalence successfully attained economic
gains for their membership through organized strikes and boycotts. The year 18
86 witnessed that the American Federation of Labor was founded, representing t
hat the working class had become a major force in American so­ciety, and t
hat the workers realized they could not effectively de­fend their rights a
nd interests unless they were united as a whole.
As good and evil always stand as a pair, the speedy develop­ment of th
e material civilization in American society was accompied with various kinds o
f corruption, When the Civil War was just over and the reconstruction was just
on its way, some of the major literary voices of the period began to question
the achieve­ment and the cost of making it ,and challenged the principles
once generally accepted by emphasizing the disturbing gap between ideal and r
eality. Such authors as Whitman and Mark Twain even attacked the social evils
bitterly, as Whitman did in Democratic Vw(as(1870):
The official services of America, national, state, and municipal, in all t
heir branches and departments, ex­cerpt the judiciary .are saturated in co
rruption. Bribery, falsehood, mal-administration; and the judiciary are tainte
d. The great cities reek with respectable as much as non-respectable robbery a
nd scoundrelism.
The prevalence of those social evils satirized by Whitman re­vealed th
at a new mercenary spirit was growing dominant in American life. The impact of
the spirit swept over every corner of American society, and there was no exce
ption to literature. Gen­erally speaking, the literature of this periold w
ould have to be different from that of the preceding age.
The rise of romanticism and the prevalence of Transcenden.g with the speed
y development of politics, economy, in American society .brought the flowering
of Ameri-[re in the nineteenth century. many important writers id and created
their literary efforts to made the centu-•recedentedly fruitful in Amer
ican literature. Such a )f literature was most impressively seen in a period o
f "om 1850 to 1856>when a number of monumental mas-Imost unbelievably poured i
nto the stream of American Never before had American men of letters produced s
o iless works in such a narrow span of time. These its included Hawthorne‘s T
he Scarlet Le(ter(1850)and• of the Seven Gables (1851) ,Thoreau‘s Walde
n(lS5^) , Representative Me«(1850) and English Traits (1856), Moby-.Dick
( 1851)» and Whitman‘s Leaves of Grass^ith these great works, the hist
orians and critics hold common consent that American literature has grown̶
6;ity.ig the rise of romanticism in the first half of the nine-itury,a number of prominent romantic authors, besides rockden Brown, Irving, C
ooper, and Bryant as pioneers, /e on the peak of their literary creation, amon
g whom res were included as the novelists Hawthorne and the poets Longfellow .
Whittier, and Poe;the prose writ-son and Thoreau. However, by the end of the C
ivil War ;hem had disappeared from American scene or passed tive peak. Poe, Co
oper and Irving had passed away be-ireaking of the war. Thoreau and Hawthorne
succumbed e war, while Melville had abandoned fiction long before tarted. Some
of the brilliant authors associated with the elopement of American romantic l
iterature outlived the r, but they produced little thereafter to increase thei
r n. Representative of these writers was Emerson, who , 1 his last work of sig
nificance, The Conduct of life, in Bryant and Longfellow devoted their declini
ng years
Of the American writers who had achieved distinc­tion Whitman was the
only one who continued to write his mo­mentous work after the war was over
, and who, with Dickinson, reached the zenith of American nineteenth-century p
oetry.
The essential spirit of American literature in the first half of the nine
teenth century was that of romanticism, which found best expression perhaps in
poetry. In addition to such poets as Bryant,Poe and Longfellow who are chosen
for a detailed discus­sion, a number of prominent poets also deserve a sp
ecial mention. Born of Quaker parents on a farm near Haverhill,Massa Chusetts,
]ohn Greenleat Whittier(1807—1892)spent most of his first thirty years of lif
e in the beautiful countryside of rural New England. Since the responsibility
for study and expression was a Quaker tradition, Whittier was well educated at
home and at school. His interest in literature was inspired early, when a sch
oolmaster lent him a copy of the poems of Robert Burns. The volume, which desc
ribed the beauty and romance underlying ev­eryday life, was influential in
the awakening of Whittier as poet, but his imagination was nourished on the i
mpassioned mysticism and moral instruction of the classic journals, on the Bible, and on the few books that happened to be brought to him unt
il at the age of nineteenth when he published his first poem, "The Exile‘s De
parture. "His first publication encouraged him to think of his ambition and po
tential capacity to be a writer.
What was crucial to his literary career was his experience as editor, reco
mmended by William Lloyd Garrison who published Whittier‘s first poem in his
journal,the Newburyport Press,on a Boston paper in 1829,a post bringing him no
t only experiences of writing but also opportunities for publication. Then in
1831 his first prose volume, Legends of New England appeared, and meanwhile he
also published many articles and poems in various periodicals. Whittier achie
ved distinction as a mature poet through the publication of several volumes of
his poems from 1844 to 1857,which included Ballads and Other Poews (1844) , s
ame year.
To the present-day reader, Lowell‘s reputation rests both o his early poe
ms which are characterized by their simplicity, wit and urbane good nature, an
d on his anti-slavery expression which revealed his profound understanding of
humanity, freedom, an progress of society. In addition, Lowell also achieved,
wide recognition as critic, although his criticism lacked originality and pene
tration in comparison with Poe. Nevertheless Lowell holds an important positio
n in literary criticism of the period.
American Transcendentalism- produced two outstanding figures, Emerson and
Henry David Thoreau (1817—1862), th former has been noted for his achievement
in philosophy .the lat ter for his practice of his own ideal and for his lite
rary achievement. Born in Concord, Massachusetts, where he lived most of his l
ife until his death, Thoreau entered Harvard in 1833. After his graduation in
1837, he met with Emerson, and began his well known Journal. From 1838 to 1845
he lived as schoolmaster writer, tutor, assistant to his father in pencil mak
ing, and traveller; and them driven by his ambition to transact his own" princ
ipal business", he built a hut on land near Walden Pond and live in it .from J
uly 4,1845 to September 6,1847. His experience o\ this sojourns was recorded i
n detail and became the basis of his monumental Walden, which was published in
1854.
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