Good Morning! How does the idea of a week in the woods sound to you? Do you enjoy hiking? Or what about just walking in the woods? Climbed any mountains recently? Or Ever? What was that like? What is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen (it doesn’t have to be anything grand, just something that moved you beyond words)
Angels Landing Photo Riverside Church Scotland Lake Photo?
American Art and Literature in the Age of Reform
American Literature Comes of Age Romanticism Romanticism was an artistic movement that dominated Europe and America in the early 19th century Romantic writers elevated IMAGINATION over reason and INTUITION over fact Romantics reveled in NATURE Accented the fantastic aspects of human experience
Themes of American Authors American mythology Individualism Westward Expansion Reform Writers and Works James Fenimore Cooper – wrote about American characters in American settings - Last of the Mohicans, Leatherstocking Tales Edgar Allen Poe – dark emotion – Tell-Tale Heart, Raven, Pit and Pendulum Washington Irving- short storie s / tall tales – Rip Van Winkle, Legend of Sleepy Hollow
(European Romanticism) Transcendentalism (European Romanticism) “Liberation from understanding and the cultivation of reasoning.” “Transcend” the limits of intellect and allow the emotions, the SOUL, to create an original relationship with the Universe.
Transcendentalist Intellectuals/Writers Concord, 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
The Anti-Transcendentalist: Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) pursuit of the ideal led to a distorted view of human nature and possibilities: * The Blithedale Romance accept the world as an imperfect place: * Scarlet Letter * House of the Seven Gables
Art as Historical Evidence The Hudson River School emphasized nature and Americans’ ability to conquer nature during the Westward expansion of the Jacksonian period. The paintings of American Realists William Sydney Mount and George Caleb Bingham often depicted the common man’s everyday life and participation in politics by virtue of Jacksonian democracy.
#2 - #3 THOMAS COLE The “Father” of the HRS. Nobody had painted “America” before these artists. The Hudson Valley from the Catskills through the Adirondacks. America as Arcadia [Eden].
#4: “THE OXBOW” Thomas Cole, 1836 The dramatic clouds over the wilderness to the left speak of the uncontrolled power of nature. Tension between wilderness and garden [savagery and civilization]. OXBOW in the shape of a ? * Where is this headed? reflected the debate among Americans. * Would the wilderness disappear completely for the sake of civilization, or would the two exist in perpetual tension with each other?
#4: “THE OXBOW” Thomas Cole, 1836 The dramatic clouds over the wilderness to the left speak of the uncontrolled power of nature. Tension between wilderness and garden [savagery and civilization]. OXBOW in the shape of a ? * Where is this headed? reflected the debate among Americans. * Would the wilderness disappear completely for the sake of civilization, or would the two exist in perpetual tension with each other?
#11: “KINDRED SPIRITS” ASHUR DURAND He had a desire to create a harmony between man and nature. # to contemplate or paint nature brought him closer to the divine and could inspire one to lead a moral life. A memorial to Cole, 5 yrs. His junior. Cole, with his poet friend, William Cullen Bryant, discloses the meaning of nature to the writer.
The Classical Styles of Greece & Rome
Neo-Classical Architecture: U. S. Customs House, 1836
Jefferson Rotunda (Univ. of VA), 1819-26
The Capitol Rotunda
The “Burned-Over” District in Upstate New York
Annual Consumption of Alcohol
1816 American Bible Society Founded