1. American Renaissance 1800 – 1880 Romanticism, Transcendentalism, & Realism We will walk with our own feet we will work with our own hands we will speak our own minds -Ralph Waldo Emerson

2. Political and Social Milestones  The Louisiana Purchase – 1803  The Gold Rush – 1849  Education and Reform

3. Rationalism vs Romanticism  The rationalists believed the city to be a place to find success and self-realization  The romantics associated the countryside with independence, moral clarity, and healthful living.

4. Characteristics of the American Renaissance  Values feeling and intuition over reason  Places faith in inner experience and the power of the imagination  Shuns the artificiality of civilization and seeks unspoiled nature  Prefers youthful innocence to educated sophistication  Champions individual freedom and the worth of the individual  Contemplates nature’s beauty as a path to spiritual and moral development

5. Characteristics (continued)  Looks backward to the wisdom of the past and distrusts progress  Finds beauty and truth in exotic locals, the supernatural realm, and the inner world of the imagination  Sees poetry as the highest expression of the imagination  Finds inspiration in myth, legend, and folk culture  Rising to higher truths through nature and contemplation

6. New American Novelists  Herman Melville's Moby Dick  Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter  More of a “coming-of-age” than a renaissance

7. The Fireside Poets  Opposite of novelists – worked within European literary traditions  Used English themes, meter, imagery with American settings and subjects  Philip Freneau, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendel Holmes, James Russell Lowell

8. Transcendentalism  The idea that in determining the ultimate reality of God, the universe, the self, and other important matters, one must transcend, or go beyond, everyday human experience in the physical world.  Ralph Waldo Emerson influenced by ancient Greek - Plato  Also based on Puritan belief and Romantics  Based on intuition; optimistic  Henry David Thoreau Emerson’s close friend

9. Whitman and Dickinson 19th century’s greatest poets  Spoke to the masses  Universal brotherhood, democracy  Aimed for overall impression, free verse based on cadence  Obscure homebody  In nature, found metaphors for the spirit  Meticulous word choice, precise language, evoking feelings

10. Realism 1860-1914  Jack London  1876-1916  The Call of the Wild  Realistic view of man's relationship with nature  Mark Twain  1835-1910  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  Humor and regionalism