The American Renaissance

The American Renaissance represents one of the most important moments of the United States in the 19 th
century → to be remembered is Matthiessen's publication in 1941 about this topic: “The American
Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman”. The book refers mainly to the periods
1830s and 1860s, but within the book the author only focused on five years, from 1850 to 1855, a period
which represents a moment of huge flourishing of American culture and literature.
In addition to this, in these five years the most important authors of the 19 th published one of their books:
the key characters are Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Hawthorne and Melville → they had in common that
they all came from the north-west and were all men. These key figures tried to define and explore the
American identity by inventing new modes of expression, new ways of writing in literature because they
wanted to self-identify through their works and not through the Europeans' ones.

Starting from the 1970s, Matthiessen's characterization of the literary period started to be challenged from
different perspectives → people who had been silent up to that moment started to make their point and
express their opinions; he was criticized because he had overstated the relevance of these authors at the cost
of excluding someone else like female, black authors and male authors who were interested in the social and
cultural transformation of the period (the masses). Another reason why he was attacked was also because of
his acceptance of the idea of American exceptionalism and supremacy. Anyway, when we talk about this
period, it's important to explore the socio-political context of USA, also because these elements help to
define more clearly what American Renaissance is.

Influence of European Romanticism → the main difference between European and American
Romanticism is that in America it coincided with a period of national expansion (which wasn't
happening in Europe) and with a moment when the country from a cultural point of view was
discovering a distinctive American voice. These two elements characterized the American
Renaissance → being linked to a national development and trying to be independent from Europe;
the romantic ideas mainly centered around art as inspiration, the spiritual and aesthetic dimension of
nature and the art as the best expression of universal truth. European Romanticism became so
influential especially because it matched some elements typical of the American experience such as
the American revolutionary spirit, gave the possibility of breaking free from strict religious traditions
from the past and in the religious field the romantic ideas were very welcomed by the opponents to
Calvinism and strict Puritanism, opposing to their idea of predestination and the impossibility of the
individual to influence the course of his life.
The Romantic spirit particularly suited the American democracy because of the stress on
individualism and the affirmation of the importance of the common man.

Jacksonian Democracy → it's relevant because it gives a political and social background. Jackson
was the 7th President of the United States, a very controversial figure among historians, reflected the
best and worst tendencies of the new Republic and considered himself as “man of the people”. His
influence was so great that we refer to the period when he was in charge as “The Age of Jackson” in
1828 and 1848, even if his power lasted less, from 1829-1837; his election in 1828 was seen as a
revolution, because he had nothing in common with the presidents before him → he was a military
man with no formal education and no knowledge of politics, was an outsider and wasn't a part of
intellectual or cultivated people.
He was born on the frontier in Carolina from Irish immigrants parents: when the American revolution
broke out, he was only 13 years old but he became a soldier and fought in the war → sadly he was
the only one to survive, because his family died and remained alone after the war: he had a very
violent personality and it's believed that his aggressiveness and also his search for adventure was
linked to his experience on the frontier when he was little. Because of these experiences, Jackson was
the classic example of the “self-made man”, who started from the frontier and eventually got to the
White House. Eventually he came to represent all the citizens who were struggling to improve their
lives and achieve wealth.
- Limits of Jacksonian democracy → Jackson was also the symbol of American democracy, because
he advanced the clauses of equal rights in many fields and situations, attacked the privilege to
wealth and created a mass-political party, but there are some limits to this idea of democracy:
- Spoiled system → he sustained the “spoiled system” and especially accepted the principle of
“rotation in office”, where government officials were nominated on the basis of political ties (he had
his favorites who worked for him, sustained his ideas and became extremely powerful), rather than
on a lifetime's permanent civil service. Also, party loyalty was very important, because in exchange of
loyalty towards the President, people were awarded with government jobs → this whole practice
was named “spoiled system”, where the President used to corrupt the officers and win their approval.
This clearly opposes to the merit system, where officers were given jobs on the basis of their merit
and not on political ties.
The spoil system was legal and remained active until 1883, when the Pendleton Act came in and
reformed the way these jobs were given.
- Behaviour with Native Americans → Jackson was an expansionist, so he believed in the idea of
owning their land and expand in their territory. He became a hero of Indian wars when he conquered
the victory in 1814 in Alabama, where the tribes were forced to give a large portion of their land to
the United States, then the Act promoted by Jackson brought to the relocation of the Indians from
where they were to Oklahoma. For these reasons he was profoundly hated by Indians, who started
calling him “Sharp Knife”, whereas the white pioneers called him “Old Hickory”, which is an
Americanism to define someone who's tough and obstinate.
- Slavery → his relationship with slavery was sort of controversial, because he decided not to disturb
the slavery issues in a period when the issue of slavery was very discussed; essentially, he considered
the problem non-existent.
So, it was thought that Jackson stood up for a more egalitarian country, but his vision of democracy
only applied to white people and stopped at the color line.

Transcendentalism → in the past, American Renaissance has been identified with both American
Romanticism and Transcendentalism: this last term focused on a philosophical and religious level and
finds itself in relation with Romanticism → they shared the importance of feeling over reason, the
individual freedom (Transcendentalism portrayed a less restrictive relationship between the
individual and God) and the response to nature which is ecstatic and enchanted. Transcendentalism
is a group of people centered in a specific place: New England and it's related to a specific part,
which is called “Concord”, a typical new England village and the first inland settlement of the original
Massachusetts Bay Colony.
It's surrounded by forest, so it was a peaceful village, but it was also close enough to Boston where
Harvard was founded, politicians and philosophers gave their lectures, full of book stores and
colleges (intense cultivated life). Concord is also remembered because it was the first rural artist's
colony and represents the idea of progress and urbanization → people would meet and have high-
minded conversations but at the same time they conducted a very simple way of living.
Even though close to such a dynamic town, Concord offered a peaceful settlement, a close contact
with nature but it was also the place where the first battle of the American Revolution took place and
the author Emerson wrote a poem exactly to commemorate this battle, which is called “Concord
Hymn”, where we can find elements such as nationalism represented by the flag, the farmers
represent the common men, everybody is fighting for independence and there's this shot against the
British army.
- What is Transcendentalism? → it wasn't a movement, but a loosely organized Club (1836)
including many variable participants such as abolitionists, ministers and people from the Church, who
came because they were interested in this individual relationship with God. This Club founded a
quarterly magazine called “The Dial”, whose editor was a woman called Margaret Fuller and then
later Emerson, but they were also engaged in “reform efforts”, abolitionism and issues of slavery and
utopian communities. In the whole, this Transcendental Club had no manifesto and insisted a lot of
radical individualism, which is pushed to the extreme and gives the idea of living outside society and
convention.

Expanding and Revising of the American Renaissance → in the last decades, Matthiessen's canon of
the American Renaissance has been questioned and expanded, because emphasis has been given to
other things, such as the historical context, that was essential to understand the literary work, there
was the need to put the works of Renaissance into a political frame and the desire to discover and
give room to alternative voices in the past. Therefore, there has been an expansion of authors that
had been discovered but who before were overlooked, so because of this expansion the canon has
changed along 3 different lines:
- Ideological analysis → the authors analyzed the canonical works and socio-political context around
them and their texts reproduced the dominant ideas of the time and testified to the acceptance of
the status-quo, favorable to the development of the capitalist system that relied on the exploitation
of wage workers in the North and slaves in the South.
These ideological critics have introduced new ways of considering these canonical works by
analyzing them in terms of important sociopolitical questions:
- Slavery and race
- American democracy
- Egalitarianism in society
- Women in society
- Expansionism through American wars and expropriation of Indian lands.
After the analysis of literary works through these questions, critics were convinced that the canonical
texts were in tune with the status-quo.
- Authors' active engagement → critics try to show how these writers were actively engaged with the
political debate of their time and how their works had a relationship to some racial, moral or political
issue of the time. To sustain their idea, they carried out many examples:
- Thoreau and Emerson spoke out against slavery.
- Whitman spoke about the gap between the promise of American equality/freedom and the reality
of slavery.
- Melville dealt with the degradation and suffering of individuals under developing industrial
capitalism.
- Hawthorne meditated on the Puritan past.
- Criticism's display → this approach recognizes the engagement and different roles there writers
had in some political and social issues of the period, but they weren't shouting their criticism out
loud, they were just writing about it in an indirect way. They didn't offer concrete political opposition
but used their literary tools, which were words and language to deal with these problems in an
artistic and indirect way.