First Harvest A Period of Transition

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First HarvestA Period of Transition

• 1800-1840

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Major Authors

• Washington Irving
• James Fenimore Cooper
• William Cullen Bryant
• Edgar Allan Poe
• These were among the first professional writers,
  the first whose works are still widely read, and
  the first writers to show the new attitude of
  Romanticism in America.

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Classicism vs. Romaticism

• The end of Classicism came with the Age of
  Reason

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Classicism

• What is the universe like?
• The Great Chain of Being
• Religious God at Top Rocks at the Bottom
• Social King at Top Peasant at the Bottom
• Family Husband, Children, Servants
• To challenge the hierarchy amounted to sin
• One did not move out of their station in life
• It is a static system

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After 1800 -- Romanticism

• What is the universe like?
• A less static view much like a plant or a tree
• Not fixed growing
• Socially, if one were born the child of a
  shoemaker, one no longer had to be a shoemaker.
• Literature emphasized
• Nature
• Beauty
• Strangeness
• Now there was the imagination, and that played a
  part in ones perception of the world.

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New America

• Causes of Nationalism
• Immigrants America was seen as a refuge for the
  poor and oppressed of Europe.
• Land through work and industry one could become
  a successful farmer thus, basic equality was
  assured.
• New ideas people began to form new opinions of
  the world and thus developed a new identity.

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Real Events

• American Revolution
• War of 1812
• Rapid Industrialization
• Increasingly centralized economic and political
  systems

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More Big Events

• 1789 George Washington became the first
  President of the United States
• 1793 Eli Whitney perfected the cotton gin
• 1803 President Thomas Jefferson negotiates the
  Louisiana Purchase

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New Means of Transportation

• Steamboat up river travel now possible
• Railroad speed and size

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Doubts

• Communication was very difficult
• California and Oregon joined Union but were
  very remote the easiest way to reach them from
  the East was to travel 20,000 miles around Cape
  Horn
• Political Factions
• Slavery

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Romanticism (again)

• Nature is no longer a self-contained machine
  (i.e. watch)
• Imagination over Reason
• Individual over the common
• Expression of their own intuitive experiences

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Romanticism (again again)

• Valued
• Emotional
• Emphasized intuition
• Inner perception of truth was independent of
  reason
• Art is the imaginative expression of the inner
  essence of the individual
• HUMAN POTENTIAL!!!!! And thus . . .

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Humanitarian Reform

• Abolition of Slavery Movement
• Improvements in education

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Characteristics of Early Romantic Writers

• Nature
• Romantic emphasized the beauty, strangeness, and
  mystery
• The Past
• Particularly Cooper and Irving
• The Inner World of Human Nature
• Expression of writers most private inner being
  (Poe, in particular)

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More Dates

• 1790 c.1850 Industrial Revolution
• Began with textile industries and iron making
  techniques and enabled introduction of canals and
  steam power (affecting the industry itself and
  railroads/ships)
• 1793 Eli Whitneys cotton gin
• Removes seeds from cotton (had been extremely
  labor intensive)
• 1803 Louisiana Purchase
• 530,000,000 acres (15 million _at_ 3 an acre)
• Jefferson didnt like the idea because the
  purchase would be admitting that France owned the
  area

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Dates Cont.

• 1804-1806 Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
  The Expedition
• 1812-1814 War of 1812 between Great Britain and
  America
• Washington, DC was burned
• America declared war because of impressment of
  American sailors, trade embargos, violations of
  1783 Treaty of Paris (land), and perhaps to get
  English speaking Canada.

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Dates Cont.

• 1820 Missouri Compromise
• Prohibited Slavery north of 3630 line (north of
  AK) excluding Missouri.
• 1823 Monroe Doctrine
• Stay out of our Hemisphere
• Samuel Morse invents the telegraph

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The End

• Good night, and good luck.
• So long, farewell.
• Fare the well.
• See ya.
• Adios.
• Bye.