Leaving Europe Behind… In the 1800’s, excited by nationalism and Jacksonian democracy, Americans closed the door on European influence in the arts and initiated their own style to produced great American works of art.

Romanticism A style of European art that stressed the individual, imagination, creativity, and emotion. Draws inspiration from nature. American artists and writers turned to the American wilderness for inspiration. Many books featured the wilderness or Native Americans.

George Inness: Passing Clouds

Fireside Poets They used the hearth of the fireplace as an image of comfort and unity, a place where families gathered to learn and tell stories and read poetry. Some poets were William Cullen Bryant, Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and John Greenleaf Whittier.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Most influential and beloved poet of his era. Brought American history to life. His poems and books retold stories of history (#414) Evangeline The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere Song of Hiawatha

James Fenimore Cooper Wrote The Spy, the first great American novel. (#413) Wrote The Leatherstocking Tales, a series of five tales, the most famous one being The Last of the Mohicans. His famous character in this series was Natty Bumppo, a wilderness scout.

Herman Melville Wrote the novel Moby Dick, America’s greatest novel. (#416) This is the story of a man’s obsession with killing a white whale. It’s a novel full of imagery. Won fame by writing thrilling novels about his experiences as a sailor.

Washington Irving America’s first writer that gained international attention. Published articles that poked fun at society of the 1800s. (#413) Wrote Rip Van Winkle, tells of a man who napped for 20 years. Slept through the Revo! The Legend of Sleepy Hollow-The ghost of a Hessian comes back to haunt those who cut off his head! (Johnny Depp movie!)

Walt Whitman America’s greatest poet. (#416) He published his poems in nine editions of Leaves of Grass. His bold, unrhymed poems praised ordinary people.

Transcendentalists believed the spiritual world is more important than the physical and that people can find the truth within themselves. (The Inner Light) Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were leaders in this school of thought Transcendentalists began to look at society and write what they believed to be wrong about it. (Reform movements/civil disobedience) Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson – poets Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe - authors

Noah Webster Wrote the first American dictionary titled “American Dictionary of the English Language” which gave American spellings of words, not British spellings.

Nathaniel Hawthorne Wrote The Scarlet Letter. The novel explores the good and evil in a Puritan New England town.

Edgar Allen Poe He was a master of detective and mystery stories. He also wrote poetry.

American Art Influenced by Romanticism Hudson River School Albert Bierstadt produced HUGE paintings of the American west trying to capture how large the west was. John James Audubon-sketched birds, animals Enslaved Africans made baskets, quilts, pottery. David Drake signed his name to pottery

Asher Durand – Study of Nature: Rocks and Trees

Durand: The Beeches

Albert Bierstadt: Looking up Yosemite Valley

Bierstadt: Emigrants Crossing the Praire

Frederic Church: Niagara

Church: The Natural Bridge

Inness: Coming storm

Henry David Thoreau Americas first hippie! He wrote Walden, a tale of his two year experiment of living on lake Walden. In 1846, he was arrested for refusing to pay a poll tax because he felt the tax would go towards the Mexican War. He wrote “Civil Disobedience” to encourage other Americans to act in similar ways. Margaret Fuller was inspired by Thoreau. She argued for Women’s Rights.

Civil Disobedience

All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all say that such is not the case now. But such was the case, they think, in the Revolution of '75.(10) If one were to tell me that this was a bad government because it taxed certain foreign commodities brought to its ports, it is most probable that I should not make an ado about it, for I can do without them. All machines have their friction; and possibly this does enough good to counterbalance the evil. At any rate, it is a great evil to make a stir about it. But when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer. In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army(10)