NEW ENGLAND RENAISSANCE
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Transcendentalists
The darker Visions
The American Romance
Hawthorne described what he meant by Romance in the preface to The House of the Seven Gables
The literary Response
The Fireside poets
The first steps were taken by Irving, Cooper, Bryant and Poe
Huge step was done by Emerson when he wrote The American Scholar in 1837. It inspired the nation and to changed everything.
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A group of writers appeared whom we know the as the classic. Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau. Around this time Walt Whitman and Emily Dikinson showed up. This marked the first half of the nineteenth century.
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It is more an attitude than a philosophy. It is more a tendency that a doctrine.
Transcendentalism is a formidable term describing the movement in American culture that energized much of the literature this period
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to transcend means: to rise above, to pass beyond limits
It refers to a large group of men and women who were very different from one an other both as individuals and as writers.
Human nature was obstinate and life was mysterious
Not all authors shared the same optimism, there were writers who saw the universe as a more confusing and difficult place.
Nature was confusing, ambiguous , not easy to read, interpret or harmonize
It started with Hawthorne and Melville
American novels should only be judged as romances
Hawthorne says for him romance doesn't need to be totally faithful to reality, It could be improbable, eccentric and unbelievable as long as it is true to the human heart.
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They did not form an organized group, but history has linked them for what they had in common
Their poems were inspiring and easy to read. Thanks to them poetry became popular among americans
Henry Wadsworth, Oliver Wendell. James Russell Lowell. John Greenleaf and sometimes William Cullen Bryant.