The New England Renaissance 1800-1860

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The New England Renaissance1800-1860

• Gothic Fiction
• Romanticism
• Transcendentalism
• Individualism

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Gothic Fiction POE!

• Mystery
• Suspense
• Horror
• Symbolism
• Edgar Allan Poe Father of the Short Story
• 1809 birth in Boston, mother died in 1811, taken
  in by Allan family.
• 1836 married first cousin, Virginia Clemm, who
  died five years after a blood vessel bursting in
  1842. Last five years remained an invalid.
• Annabel Lee addressed to Virginia from Poe.
• Attempted suicide in 1848, had problems with
  depression, alcohol, and drugs.
• Found in a delirious condition October 7, 1849 in
  Baltimore gutter.
• He had disappeared for three days after a
  birthday party, he was on his way to see his new
  fiancee in Richmond.
• The Raven, Pit and the Pendulum, The Tell Tale
  Heart, Annabel Lee.

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Emily Dickinson Puritan/Gothic

• Born 1830 and died in 1886 in Amherst,
  Massachusetts.
• Represented a Puritan life belief systems while
  writings carry Gothic themes.
• Reclusion and limited social interaction carries
  into writings.
• Solitude, elements of nature, individual beliefs
  surface.
• Shakespeare, Emerson, Tennyson, Keats all sources
  of inspiration.
• This is my letter to the World
• The Soul selects her own Society
• Theres a certain Slant of light-
• I heard a Fly buzz-when I died-
• Interrupted thoughts, phrases, descriptions.
• Much Madness is the divinest Sense-
• Because I could not stop for Death
• Extended metaphor One things represented as
  another throughout a whole piece.
  (Carriage-death/a body).

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Nathaniel Hawthorne 1804-1864 Puritan
Criticism/Gothic Traces.

• Symbolism, allusion, psychology, Puritan traits.
• Traits of Gothic, Puritanism criticism, fantasy.
• Ancestors tied to Salem Witch Trials and Quaker
  Persecution.
• Moved to Ralph Waldo Emersons home in 1842 with
  wife.
• Showed continued development of the modern short
  story.
• Scarlet Letter, Rappaccinis Daughter, The
  House of Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance,
  The Marble Faun.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882 Henry David
Thoreau 1817-1862Pioneers of Transcendentalism
and Individualism

• Transcendentalism
• Spiritual connection between nature and people.
• The soul of individuals resembled the microcosm
  of the world, a unity of God and the world
  existed.
• Over-soul belief if you pay attention to
  feelings and inner thoughts, individuals would be
  able to glimpse the spirit that makes up the
  universe.
• Individualism
• Connection of the individual soul with God.
• Strong beliefs in personal intuition and
  flexibility in religion.
• Emerson Thoreau
• Self-Reliance Walden
• The Rhodora Merrimack Rivers
• Nature (Popularized editorials)
  Civil Disobedience
• The Dial A Plea for Captain
  John Brown

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The Romantics/Fire Side Poets

• Romanticism
• Objectivity and Power of Reason to discover the
  laws of the universe and in nature.
• In nature were truths of social and human laws.
• William Cullen Bryant 1794-1878
• Thanatopsis (View and thoughts on death)
• Translated The Odyssey and The Iliad by Homer.
• Helped get Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson
  elected.
• Oliver Wendell Holmes 1809-1894
• The Chambered Nautilus
• Most famous after-dinner speak of the time.
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807-1882
• The Village Blacksmith
• Poems embodied the New England philosophy of
  life.

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Additional Contributions to The New England
Renaissance 1800-1860

• Louisa May Alcott 1832-1888
• Studied under Emerson and Thoreau.
• Little Women series.
• True autobiographical account in Transcendental
  Wild Oats.
• Active supporter of womens suffrage, reform
  movements.
• James Russel Lowel 1819-1891
• Supporter of womens right and abolitionist.
• Editor of The Atlantic Monthly and North American
  Review, Bigelow Papers writer.
• Major influences as a critic and editor for union
  causes of Civil War.
• Herman Melville 1819-1891
• Moby Dick
• Themes of nature with good, evil, and reality,
  romantic qualities adventure.
• Preceded qualities seen in Call of the Wild
  author.

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Additional Authors (Continued)

• James Fenimore Cooper 1791-1851
• The Deerslayer
• Last of the Mohicans
• The Pathfinder
• The Pioneers
• The Prairie
• Washington Irving
• Diedrich Knickerbocker and Geoffrey Crayon
  pseudonames.
• LYCEUM MOVMENT Institutions that offered
  debates, lectures, entertainment in large halls.

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The Arts and New England Renaissance

• Art focused on early, then as the age commenced
  towards Transcendentalism, art was found in
  nature.
• John Singleton Copley, Asher Durand, John Neagle,
  Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Antonio Frasconi,
  Edouard Manet, Guido Reni, Sandro Botticelli.