AMERICAN LITERATURE - THE ROMANTIC REVOLUTION: With the conclusion of the War of began dynamic changes in American life and modes of thought that created a native ro manticism of temper. Few periods in American experience have been so revolutionary. The rise of Jack sonian democracy, the beginnings of indus trialism, the enbroilment over slavery, the increasing urbanization of life, the emerg ence of reform movements, the two wars— these were forces more than adequate to break up the stiff soil and prepare it for the seeds of romanticism that came with every importation from Europe.
Associated with Irving in the writing of Salmagundi was a New Yorker whose literary course was to run less prosperously, but whose work is too native to be forgotten. James Kirke Paulding (1778-186o) never went abroad but chose to remain consciously provincial, a defender of America against all aliens. He was of plain stock, brought up in dire poverty entailed by the American Revolution. He joined the Irving group in New York city as a raw country boy. After a short apprenticeship he entered on the work that first brought him recognition—a series of humorous attacks on the English critics of American ways. In 1818 he pub lished an idyllic poem, The Backwoodsman, and after 1823 he devoted his pen largely to writing "rational fictions," producing some 7o short stories and five novels. In the field of the short story he was a pioneer, writing some of his best tales—amongst others "Cobus Yerks"--when Hawthorne and Poe were at the beginning of their apprenticeship. Of the five novels Konings marke, The Long Finne (1823) is the most amusing, and The Dutchman's Fireside (1831) is generally accounted his best. Paulding was not a finished craftsman, but he was an honest thinker and he wrote a homely vigorous prose.
Other members of the Knickerbocker group were Joseph Rod man Drake (1795-182o), Fitzgreene Halleck (179o-1867) and Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806-67) ; but they are unimportant in comparison with James Fenimore Cooper (1789-185'f ), a man of great creative vigour. His favourite theme was the receding wilderness, peopled with picturesque scouts and dignified Indian warriors. The "Leatherstocking Series"—five tales that trace the passage of the frontier to the western prairies and are given dramatic unity by the romantic figure of Natty Bumpo—has long been accounted his greatest achievement ; but he wrote much else, in many fields. The seven years he spent in Europe opened a chasm between the i8th century gentleman and his native country that was never bridged. In a long series of studies, the best known of which are Homeward Bound and Home as Found, he gave free rein to a somewhat truculent criticism of the degeneration in man ners and morals he professed to discover. In later years he showed a tendency to realism, and in such stories as Wyandotte and The Littlepage Manuscripts—Satanstoe, The Chainbearer and The Redskins—the older Cooper rivals his earlier work.
Controversy likewise filled many of the years of William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), a transplanted Yankee, who after distin guishing himself as a poet, removed to New York city and entered upon a long and honourable career as editor of the Evening Post. He did much to dignify American journalism. He was an ardent Democrat and he combated the Whig programme with much skill; but journalistic fame is transitory, and Bryant is remembered only for his poetry, which is Wordsworthian in temper. A far greater figure was Herman Melville (1819-91), whose fierce satire was as incomprehensible as it was repugnant to his generation. As a young man Melville sailed on a whaling cruise to the South Seas, and the experiences following his desertion at Nukuheva were recorded in Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847). On his return he settled down as a man of letters and in ten years published nine works, but he fell into a mood of pessimism, and at his death had long been forgotten. His greatest books are Typee, Mardi, Moby Dick and Pierre. Mardi—a confused account of wander ings about the South Sea Islands—is a fierce satire on western civilization; Moby Dick—a story of the pursuit of the great white whale—is one of the great books of American literature ; and Pierre, with its bitter irony, is a tale of incest and murder that marks the lowest depths of Melville's pessimism.
The last great figure of the New York group was Walt Whit man (1819-92 ). Almost exactly contemporary with Melville, he was an embodiment of the great forces that reached their climax in the '5os—uncritical optimism, faith in democracy, an equali tarian and libertarian passion. He regarded himself as a prophet of the brotherhood of man in the democratic civilization of the future; and the successive editions of Leaves of Grass, from on, are a commentary on life as interpreted by a child of the En lightenment, with a transcendental faith in the goodness of man, and a robust scorn of all feudal and aristocratic cultures. The frank paganism of detail scandalized a Puritan reading public, and the bold levelling offended a genteel Victorianism. To these major sins he added that of a new and strange technique. With cool audacity he put aside the accent system of versification and sought a different music based on phrase rhythms—a system re pudiated by his own generation but later developed by the school of free verse. The democratic philosophy of Leaves of Grass was amplified in Democratic Vistas (187o), and in other works such as Specimen Days (1882). Rejected by his own generation, Whit man has come to be reckoned the chief figure in American poetry. With Melville he was a child of the mid-century, the one embody ing the glowing optimism of those buoyant times, the other driven to a bitter reaction.
The genius of southern literature was Edgar Allan Poe (18o9 1849). Virginian by adoption and preference, he was an isolated figure, set apart from his generation by his proud temper, the orig inality of his work and the severity of his standards. Poe was a refined craftsman who achieved distinction in the several fields of poetry, fiction and criticism. Historically his most noteworthy in fluence has been in the field of the short story. With the later popularity of that literary form his fame spread widely, and with that fame has come increasing recognition of his labours in the field of criticism.
. It was in Charleston, the capital of southern fashion, that southern literature found its most congenial home. The little city was the seat of magazines like The Southern Review—a rival of Poe's Southern Literary Messenger—and it prided itself on a solid and dignified culture. The outstanding literary figure of Charleston was William Gilmore Simms (1806-70). He worked in many fields—poetry, fiction, biography, local history, politics— but his greatest love was for historical romance. The series of revolutionary tales, of which The Partisan (183 5 ), Katherine W al ton (1851) and The Sword and the Distaff (1853 )—later entitled Woodcraft—are representative, is marked by a pronounced pica resque strain that lends vigour to pages otherwise inclined to be stilted and florid. Simms's best-known character is Lieutenant Porgy, who reappears in successive tales, a fat hero equally valiant as warrior and trencherman, whose pranks in Woodcraft make it the author's most amusing story.
It was this invasion of French thought, with its humanitarian emphasis, that opened the New England mind to the appeal of so cial reform, with the result that the decades following 183o were the golden age of New England humanitarianism. Under the lead ership of William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79) the Abolition move ment drew to its following many of the finest spirits of Massa chusetts. John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-92) was the chief poet of the movement, but the young Lowell contributed some excel lent verse. Other distinguished Abolitionists were Wendell Phil lips (1811-84), Theodore Parker, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher (1813-87). From the same humanitarian root came the diverse experiments in communal living, as Alcott's "Fruitlands" and the better known "Brook Farm." Founded by George Ripley (1802-80), the latter is com monly reckoned an offshoot of the Transcendental movement. It was a picturesque and stimulating experiment that attracted a notable group of young men, amongst others Hawthorne, George William Curtis and Charles A. Dana. Emerson, Parker and Margaret Fuller were frequent visitors, but they never joined the group.
Out of Unitarianism came likewise the Transcendental move ment, essentially philosophical in temper, that rejected the sen sationalism of Locke and adopted the intuitionalism of the Ger man idealistic school. The most distinguished members of a very considerable group were Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) and Henry David Thoreau (1817-62), around whom must be set A. Bronson Alcott (1799-1888), Margaret Fuller (1810-5o), Theodore Parker, George Ripley, Orestes Brownson (1803-76) and many others less known. The organ of the movement was the Dial (1840-44), edited by Margaret Fuller and later by Emerson. Transcendentalism represented the highwater mark of the New England romantic movement, the extreme reaction from the dogmatic Calvinism of earlier times.
The movement may be studied conveniently in the journals and works of Emerson and Thoreau. Lecturer, essayist and poet, Emerson embodied all the diverse idealisms of the times. In his thought the disintegrating forces released by the Enlighten ment came to expression in a self-sufficing individualism that transmuted the Calvinist children of Adam into potential children of God who were called to live in harmony with their divine nature. The individual is superior to society and the State, and when he has realized his Godhood the State will cease to function. The major ideas of Emerson were elaborated in three essays that still retain their importance as prime documents for the student: Nature (1836), The American Scholar (1837) and the Divinity School Address (1838). In 1841 he published his first series of Essays, which with the Journals embody his most characteristic doctrines. Other collections of essays followed and in 1847 his first collection of poems.
Thoreau came more tardily to recognition. During his lifetime he was commonly regarded as no more than an echo of Emerson; but in recent years he has come to be placed on a parity with the better-known man. An extreme individualist he carried to their ultimate conclusions the premises of the Enlightenment, and in his rejection of all external compulsions he marked the farthest reach of the spiritual anarchism that derived from Godwin. The essay on The Duty of Civil Disobedience was a radical utterance even for those radical times. A Week on the Concord and Merri mack Rivers (1849) is an essay on life in New England, with discursive chat on books and philosophies; and Walden is a study in Transcendental economics—how life may be saved from enslavement to the daily routine.
In comparison with the Concord group the Cambridge and Boston writers have suffered in reputation with the passing years. Cultivated humanists, these latter derived largely from Europe and were less original and native. In his lifetime Henry Wads worth Longfellow (1807-82) was reckoned the most distinguished American poet, and from Voices of the Night (1839) to Evan geline (1847), The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858) and Hiawatha (1855), he was without a rival in popularity. But after the Civil War his influence declined, and his later work, although frequently marked by a fine craftsmanship and a sober beauty, was far removed from the interests of the age. With his quiet sentiment, gentle morality and humane view of life, Long fellow was a New England Victorian with a large infusion of German romanticism.
Somewhat younger than his neighbour, James Russell Lowell (1819-91) was a man with liberal instincts in whom a certain vacillation prevented the adequate expression of a rich and generous nature. Poet, critic, essayist, scholar, editor, diplomat, he was often bewildered by the changing ideals of his age. As a young man he threw himself into the Abolition movement and contributed some excellent- verse to the cause. Later he turned bookman and immersed himself in mediaeval and Renaissance literatures, pausing in his studies to write an occasional poem or essay, and to edit the Atlantic Monthly. From this quiet life he was drawn away on diplomatic missions, first to Madrid and later to London, and in his last years he was a distinguished figure if not an important creative writer. With Lowell may be grouped Oliver Wendell Holmes a brilliant talker and a genial writer of occasional poems. His most significant work is found in such chatty comment on things in general as The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1857), and in certain poems, often satirical, like "The One-Hoss Shay" and "The Last Leaf." Here also may be grouped a notable company of Boston historians. George Bancroft (1800-91), William H. Prescott and John Lothrop Motley (1814-77) contributed substantial works; but the most distinguished member of the group was Francis Parkman (1823-93).
The novelist of the New England renaissance was Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64). Of Salem stock, his literary career was dominated by the ghosts of the Salem past. A Puritan sceptic he joined in none of the great movements of his generation, beyond a casual year at Brook Farm that left him unchanged. His in tellectual contacts were few and his interests were persistently introspective and analytical. He began as a writer of symbolical tales and only late turned to the longer romance. Twice Told Tales (183 7) and Mosses from an Old Manse (1846) were a preparation for his greater works: The Scarlet Letter (185o), The House of the Seven Gables (1851) and The Blithedale Ro mance (1852)—a story of Brook Farm. Receiving appointment as American consul at Liverpool he passed seven years in England and Italy, the fruit of which was his longest romance, published in England as Transformation and in America as The Marble Faun (186o) . After his return in 1860 he accomplished little, but his position as the greatest artist that Puritanism has given to America was secure.