Puritans, Realists, Romantics, and Transcendentalists

Puritans, Realists, Romantics, and

Transcendentalists

What do you think?

Puritanism

• “Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” H.L. Mencken

Puritans Vs. Pilgrims

Pilgrims:• Small group of Puritans who

traveled on the Mayflower in 1620 to establish a “purified” church.

Puritans:• Settled the Massachusetts

Bay Colony about 10 years after Mayflower Pilgrims came over. Also pilgrims, as in seeking a new home because of religious convictions.

• Reconstruct not only church, but man and man’s institutions as well.

Puritanism: A New Start in America

• Persecuted in England for going against the Protestant church/government

• Religion was an individual, personal, and internal experience.

• The individual’s relationship with God was not determined by a member of the clergy or the government—it was direct

• Believed that all humans were damned (depravity), but that some were meant to be saved.

Even More Major Ideas:

• Fate was pre-determined-- one couldn’t “save” oneself, but if one led a good life, one would be able to see the “signs” that meant one were saved

• Only God’s grace was an individual’s salvation.

• Dissenters were punished severely: flogging, banishment, death (Salem Witch Trials)

• Business was an important part of community, as was education

Puritan Community/Values:• Contract-based (like

convenant with God) government—beginnings of democracy

• Valued: self-awareness, industriousness, temperance, and simplicity

Puritan “Look”

Salem Witch Trials

Salem Witch Trials: 1692

•19 men and women (5 men) convicted and hung for witchcraft•Daughter and niece of a prominent reverent fell ill. People called “witchcraft” and the witch hunt began•People accused others by “calling out names” in fits, or sickness=panic•Fear of the devil and his workings, paranoia born out of uncertainty and fear, factions in villages, competition with nearby towns, epidemic of smallpox•After less than a year, the court disbanded, all those in prison for witchcraft were pardoned and the “witch hunt” was over•Families were eventually given apologies and restitution

Puritan Writing

• Bible=model as people searched for connections between their lives and biblical events

• Each individual’s life was a spiritual journey, so recorded in diaries and historical documents describing the workings of God.

• Known for plain style of writing emphasizing clarity and avoiding complicated figures of speech

Puritan Writers

• Anne Bradstreet• William Bradford• Mary Rowlandson• Reverend

Jonathan Edwards

Anne Bradstreet•Born in England in 1612•Well-educated•Married Simon Bradstreet at 16, emigrated to Colonies in 1630•Wrote of her family, love for her husband, and love for God•Wrote privately, but brother-in-law brought some poems to England where they were published•Unusual for her to write poetry in this fashion as women were in more traditional roles in this society, but Bradstreet blended “depravity” with “hope” and didn’t challenge authority with her writing

Image Analysis: Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky•What do you notice about Franklin in this painting? What is the viewer supposed to think about him? What is he doing?

•What subjects or ideas are highlighted in this painting?

•What do you notice in the background?

•How does this image contrast with the ideals of Puritanism that we discussed?

•Based on this image (and it’s title), what can you glean or infer about the time period this painting is meant to represent?

“The Age of Reason”: Rationalism

• The belief that human beings can arrive at truth by using reason

• Response to Puritanism starting around the end of the 17th century

• Influenced by European “Enlightenment” (17th and 18th centuries)

• New ideas about God: “clockmaker” who gave humans the gift of reason which allows them to discover scientific and spiritual truth

Changing Trends…

Puritans• God=actively and

mysteriously involved in the workings of the universe

• Everyone’s fate is pre-determined.

• Humans are inherently “sinners”.

• Bible contains all truth.

Rationalists• God=clockmaker of the universe• God=gave humans the gift of reason

aka the ability to think in an ordered, logical manner that allows them to discover both scientific and spiritual truth.

• Everyone has the capacity to regulate and improve his or her own life

• Deism—humanity’s goodness, God desires human happiness, basis for social welfare

• Scientific growth in order to discover “natural law”/improve lives

Franklin: Rationalist• Henry Steele Commager:

"In Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat.”

• Poor Richard’s Almanac, The Autobiography (self-made American, progress)

Famous “Tinkers,” Rationalist Writers, and Rationalist Literature:

• Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry

• Declaration of Independence and related writings (Iroquois Constitution, Declaration of Sentiments)

• Persuasive political writings/speeches: ethos, logos, pathos

• Instruct upon values for self-improvement (Poor Richard’s Almanac)

Declarations

“The American Dream”

“We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak with our own minds.”

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

In what ways does this quote epitomize the idea of the “American Dream” during this time period? What is your definition of the American Dream?

American Romanticism: 1800-1860

• Developed as a reaction to Rationalism/Industrial Revolution

• Influenced by German Romantic movements beginning in the second half of 18th century

• Romantics saw the negative sides of progress (poverty, over-crowding, child labor, disease, dangerous living conditions) and responded with a call for intuition, freedom, imagination, individuality, nature, and poetry.

The Downsides of “Progress”

Over-crowded Living Conditions Sickness/Poverty

Industrial Revolution

Rationalism Vs. Romanticism

ROMANTICISM

•Belief that through imagination, one can discover truths that the rational mind couldn’t

•Imagination, individual feelings, and wild nature were > reason and logic

•Poetry=highest embodiment of imagination. Often contrasts science with nature.

•Escaping the “dull realities” to a realm of higher truth.

Romanticism’s “Siblings”:

Transcendentalism• Everything in the physical world

is a reflection of the Divine Soul.• Valued intuition over logic, and

the ideas of self-reliance and self-improvement

• Nature is path to “transcend” the dull realities—signs and symbols in events/nature

• Optimistic/Utopian ideas about improving society (Brook Farm/Fruitlands)

Dark RomanticismValued intuition over logic and

reasonSaw signs and symbols in all eventsMade the connection between the

spiritual existing in nature’s appearance

Thought that Tran. ignored the “dark side” of Puritanism: original sin, good vs. evil, psychological effects of guilt/sin, madness.

Romantic Writers

Romantics:• “Fireside poets”—Henry

Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowe

• Ralph Waldo Emerson, H.D. Thoreau and other T’s

• James Fenimore Cooper• Washington Irving

Dark Romantics:• Edgar Allen Poe• Nathaniel Hawthorne• Herman Melville

Poe’s Quote Corner:

• Edgar Allen Poe: Sonnet “To Science”

Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.

Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,

Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?

How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise?

• “They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”

Romantic Poetry Vs. Romantic Fiction

• Borrowed European style in order to show that Americans weren’t “hicks”.

• Sonnet form • Reflected on natural

world until the “dull realities” fell away to reveal underlying beauty or truth

• Developed a new “hero” for American Literature and explored the America unknown to Europe

• Borrowed some ideas/archetypes/folklore from Europe, but created an American “voice” in exploring them

• “It has been a marvel to my European readers, that a man from the wilds of America should express himself in tolerable English. I was looked upon as something new and strange […]” Washington Irving

The Romantic Hero• Youthful or possesses youthful

qualities• Innocent and pure of purpose• Has a sense of honor based not

on society’s rules but on some higher principle

• Has knowledge of people and life based on deep, intuitive understanding not on formal learning

• Loves nature and avoids town life• Quests for some higher truth in

the natural world

• Reaction to stereotypes about Americans from European lens

• Development of American Romantic hero coincided with westward expansion

• Virtue in American innocence rather than European sophistication

• Still creating these heroes today: Luke Skywalker, Indiana Jones, Superman, etc.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “The Cross of Snow”

• Isolates nature to understand a “truth”

• Written about his wife, Fanny, who died after a tragic accident (fire)

• Written 18 years after her death, not published until after his

• Petrarchan Sonnet: Italian (iambic pentameter, octave, volta, sestet)

The Cross of Snow: Mt. Holy Cross, CO

Nathaniel Hawthorne: Dark Romantic

“That blue-eyed darling Nathaniel knew disagreeable things in his inner soul. He was careful to send them out in disguise.” D.H. Lawrence

Transcendentalism:

• Developed in the 1830s both in connection with, and in opposition to Romanticism

• Transcendentalism refers to the idea that in finding God, the universe, and the self/soul, one must transcend typical human experience in the physical world

•Marked by a “return” to nature, and trust in intuition rather than deliberate rationality and intellectualism

Transcendentalism• Believed that self-reliance

and individualism must outweigh external authority, and self-improvement leads to social improvement

• Worked to find the “permanent reality that underlies physical appearance”

• Optimism about the potential of individual lives and the universe

Transcendentalist Humor

Famous Transcendentalists• Ralph Waldo Emerson AKA

Lead Transcendentalist• Henry David Thoreau AKA

neighbor and friend to L.T.• Margret Fuller AKA one of

the first major feminist writers in the US

• Amos Bronson Alcott AKA father to Louisa May Alcott

Henry David Thoreau

• 1817-1862, born in Concord, MA.• Went to Harvard, very well-read, but many felt

he squandered his talents and connections (including Emerson)

• Influenced by Emerson• Went “into the woods” to journey inwards in a T.

fashion. Built a small cabin on Emerson’s land two miles from town. Lived there for three years, writing, thinking, and studying life

Thoreau

• Wrote “Resistance to Civil Government” while on Walden Pond after being arrested for not paying poll tax (supported Mexican-American War) because he felt it extended slavery.

• Died in 1862. Apparently asked on his deathbed if he’s made peace with God (by his aunt). His reply: “I didn’t know that we had ever quarreled.”

Walden Pond

Thoreau

“Resistance to Civil Government”

• Response to being jailed for one night for not paying poll tax

• Discusses the role of the individual in society and to his/her government

• Employs rhetoric devices of: ethos, logos, pathos

• Inspired authors and thinkers like MLK and Gandhi around passive/non-violent resistance

Ethos, Logos, Pathos

• Ethos is appeal based on the character of the speaker or moral or widely accepted values and/or standards

• Logos is appeal based on logic or reason; it uses facts, examples, and well-reasoned arguments.

• Pathos: is an appeal based on emotion and language and anecdotes that arouse strong feelings.

• http://www.rpi.edu/dept/llc/webclass/web/project1/group4/