Nationalism and Sectionalism in Literature

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Nationalism and Sectionalism in Literature

• 1801-1850
• Objective 2.02

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Noah Webster

• America should record its own form of English.
• Became obvious as nationalism grew.
• American Dictionary of the English Language was
  published in 1828.

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Noah Webster
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Literary Renaissance

• Occurred in the early to mid 1800s.
• Americans beginning to form national and regional
  identity wanted to write about it.

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2 Major Groups

• Transcendentalists
• urged people to over-come the limits of their
  minds and embrace beauty.
• New Nationalists
• wrote of American identity and culture

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Transcendentalists

• Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature (1836)
• Henry David Thoreau must fight the pressure to
  conform to society
• Think of them as hippies of the 1800s.

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Emerson
Thoreau
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New Nationalists/ Knickerbocker School

• Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter
• Ideas of Puritans
• Edgar Allen Poe
• Terror and Mystery

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New Nationalists cont.

• James Fennimore Cooper Last of the Mohicans
• Wrote of Native Americans
• Washington Irving Legend of Sleepy Hollow

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Alex de Tocqueville

• Not American but wanted to write about it.
• Wrote Democracy in America told of his journeys
  through America
• Explained how the social conditions impacted both
  the individual and govt

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Art and Architecture

• Hudson River Schoolgroup of artists beginning in
  the 1820s known for landscape paintings, led by
  Thomas Cole
• George Caleb Binghamart of ordinary Americans
• Neoclassical Architecture made an impression in
  America w/ its Greek style.

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Thomas Cole, View from Mount Holyoke, 1836
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George Caleb Bingham, Raftsmen Playing Cards, 1847