American Renaissance
1836-1861
First, There Was Growth in Three Areas Leading Up to the Civil War
New Technology and Inventions like
Reaper for farming
Made farming more productive and faster
10,000 miles of railroad track by 1860
Helped people/goods cover vast distances
Telegraph makes it to California by 1861
Helped connect the nation together
But there are some drawbacks to the new technology...
Skilled workers can be replaced
By unskilled workers who only need to know how
To push the button on the machine.
Education Reform Was Happening at the Same Time
The government decided that public schools should be funded by taxes.
Oh, and also that more kids should go to school.
The spread of education causes several things to happen
Rapid growth of newspapers and magazines
I don't think they were actually reading Glamour quite yet, though.
Libraries and Museums were established
Lyceums were formed
What are lyceums? Find out more here. http://tinyurl.com/c4oh6tv
From Lyceums, they moved toward Utopian Communities that wanted to be "models of social perfection"
More than 60 Utopian communities were founded between 1820 and 1860.
Next came the Transcendentalists, who established their beliefs while gathering in lyceums and utopian communities
Transcendentalists were "looking for higher truths in ordinary experiences." They had many ideas about life, including that
Knowledge transcends the senses
Knowledge goes beyond what we learn in books
Intuition is the "highest power of the soul"
This girl does a great job of breaking down the basics of transcendentalism and some of the major players
American Literature Periods - Transcendentalism
At the same time as the Transcendentalists were talking, there was also a school of thought that was Anti-Transcendentalist
While Transcendentalists believed that all people are inherently good and are always striving for good (i.e. If you believe it, you can achieve it). Anti-Transcendentalists thought there was good and evil in all of us, and at some point there is an unbridgeable gap between human desires and realities (i.e. Even if you believe it, there may not be a way to achieve it).
Major Anti-Transcendentalist Authors (also called Dark Romantics)
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter, The Minister's Black Veil
Herman Melville
Moby Dick
Edgar Allan Poe
The Raven, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Cask of Amontillado
Oh, and I forgot to mention...
We've talked about major Transcendentalists Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Margaret Fuller. However, you can't talk Transcendentalism without talking about Walt Whitman, who came along 20 or 30 years later and made friends with Thoreau and Emerson. You also can't leave out Emily Dickinson, who was heavily influenced by their writings (but she wasn't buddy-buddy like Thoreau, Emerson, and Whitman were).
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