16. Two generations of American romanticism, f.Cooper, e.A.Poe, w.Irving, n.Hawthorne, h.Melville

ROMANTICISM IN AMERICAN LITERATURE (1820 -1860)

In America Romanticism emerged 30 years later than it did in England or France due to the peculiarities of American history, The aesthetics of American Romanticism had much in common with that of European. The economic & social development in America disappointed many people because many began to be seized by chase for money. Slavery & extermination of the Indians added to this disillusionment. That's why the works of the new generation of writers stressed the gap between the ideal & reality,

Like European Romanticists the American ones sought the ideal elsewhere in the past or some other countries, some of them turned for inspiration to the folklore. The American leading romanticists were:

— Washinglon 1rving (1789 1859);

—James Fenimoro Cooper) (1789 - 1851);

—Edgar Allan Poe(1809 - 1849);

—Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 - 1864);

—Herman Melville (1819 - 1891).

Washington 1rving introduced the genre of a short story. Most of his stories have humorous character. He was a son of a Scottish merchant, who emigrated to America. He started as a merchant but then gave it up for diplomacy & literature. He spent about 20 years in Europe (England, Spain) as a diplomat & did a lot of strengthen the relations between the countries. His first literary works were based on European reality, yet he was the first American writer to make use of American actualities as well as American folklore of the peoples, inhabiting America, as the basis for his works.

He was also a publicist & edited a humorous almanac "Sulmagundi" (1807-1808) (this word means a salad made of many different ingredients), the name reflected the many – sided character of (the almanac: stories, anecdotes, jokes, etc. In the form of letters written by an Arab a fictitious personage) it described his impressions of the life in America.

In his book "A History of New York" (1809) the author depicted the extermination of the Indians in a satirical way. He also published several collections of short stories: “Tales of a Traveller” (1824), “The Scatch Book of Geoffery Cranyon, Gent” (1819-1820) (Geoffrerey Crayon was Irving’s pseudonym). But his most famous stories (anthology stories) are:

—"Rip Van Wink1e" (a story from ''The Sketch Book") a story, in which the main character sleeps for 20 years & having woken finds everything clhanged (the colonies are independent, etc ).

— “The Legend of the the Sleepy Hollow" a story about two rivals who loved one school teacher;

— "'The Devil and Tom Walker" a story about a married couple. The wife was very domineering. Her husband was a poor man. He met a strange creature & became a successful money lender. In general the theme of the deal with the Devil was very common of'romantic literature.

Actually Irving was the father of the American Romanticism & the first American writer who was recognized by Europe as the first representative of America's national literature.

James Fenimore Cooper was a son of a prosperous landholder in the state of New York. He studied at Elle University but did not graduate from it. His father sent him to sea & this sea experience turned out to be very useful when he started writing novels. His private life was not very successful: he fell in love with a girl in his youth but she tragically died; later he fell in love with Mary Shelley (the author of "Frankenstein") but she rejected his proposal.

He was a very prolific writer. All in all he wrote 32 novels, about 10 volumes of travel-notes, several books of publicism, His first novel was "Precaution” (1820). He consciously became a novel writer as he did not want to compete with Irving (in writing short stories) while novel writing remained an open field at that time. There were no novelists of note. And his first novels brought him immediate success & when he decided to visit Europe he was seen off as an ambassador of American literature & American hopes in Europe. There he enthusiastically supported the revolutionary ideas & prided himself on American democracy. Yet when he came back to America 6 years later, he realizes that he reality was different from the ideal which he had drawn for himself. He was disgusted with the money rubbing instinct with which his countrymen were overwhelmed. He was shocked by the new facts of extermination of the Indians. He began to expose American vices in his numerous pamphlets which brought public censure on him. He was criticized & oslracized & lived in poverty, His best known novels are:

—"The Spy" (1825) a historical novel. According to Cooper's words he wrote a novel with an American setting & love to his Motherland. And indeed here is the main theme of the story about the period of the American War of Independence & the life slory of the protagonist Harvey Birch, whose life is full of adventure & mystery. Harvey Birch is a spy in the American Army but to cover up his activities he has to play a double-role in a double-game & to act as an English spy as well. The writer endows his hero with superpowers: unbelievable courage, coolness, discretion & ability to foresee the future (clairvoyance). Unlike others he struggles for the freedom of his country;

— the pentalogy "Leather-Stocking Tales":"The Pioneers" (1823); "The Last of the Mohicans" (I826); "The Prairie" (1827); The Pathfinder" (1840); "The Deerslayer” (1841). The penlalogy is named after the main hero Natty Bumppo. He has different names: Leather Stocking, Hawk Eye, etc. He is very brave, very resourceful. He is a white man, a frontiersman, Natty struggles against any injustice, against chaotic ungoverned laceration of nature, against extermination of the Indians. Protesting against all these vices, he lives far from big cities, in woods or prairies. The Indians to whom he is spiritually close are his friends & he does his best to withstand their extermination. When he is old he dies in one of their tribes. Natty Bumppo was the first positive character in American literature that embodied the first features of American people: courage, justice, readiness to help the others, etc. The pentalogy covers a long period - about 50 years of his life & people around him. Thus it has all the features of the American historical novel, too, As a result Cooper was called "the American Waller Scott", though Cooper himself resented it because it gave him a secondary place after W. Scott. Cooper was more highly estimated in Europe than in America. George Sand used to say that together with B. Franklin & G. Washington Cooper was one of the three greatest men in America.

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston in the family of actors. He lost his parents at a very early age & was adopted by the wife of a rich merchant Allan (this name became the second name of Edgar). That woman really loved llie boy & tried to support him all the life. But her husband could not stand him us (the future writer did not fulfill his expectations and did not become a tradesman. Allan was very talenled in maths, drawing, literature & other fields, but he was rather impetuous that prevented him from taking up any serious & constant job. In the end he was sent to the Military Academy by his foster father but the strict discipline at the Academy was alien to him & he did his best to be dismissed (expelled). As a result his foster father disinherited him.

Poe's life was full of deprivation & poverty. In 1836 he marries his cousin Virginia Clemm (she was about 14). She was one of the very few supporters of Poe's in his life. And we see the traces of his love to her in many of his works. But in 1847 she died. It was a real shock to Poe. And he never managed to overcome the depression & despair afterwards. This slate of mind, and his alcoholism & drug taking caused his early death. Poe's dramatic life experience endowed his literary work (especially poetry) with tragic tone. His romantic aesthetics was very peculiar. It lacks lrving's humour & optimism; it hardly ever draws any vast epic pictures like Cooper's works do. His works are permeated with mystery, fantasy & exotics.

Like other romanticists he put feeling & intuition above reason & rationalism. Yet on the other hand he sings prays to man's intellectual powers, observation, analysis & man's thirst for knowledge. He also manifests his deep knowledge of human psychology & great ability to depict it in his works. His literary canon (list of works) includes 64 short stories, 2 long stories (novellas), about 50 poems.

He is the pioneer of the intellectual detective story. And the protagonist of his detective stories August Dupin can be looked on as the first one in the gallery of omniscient criminologists: "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841);'The Mystery of Marie R oget”1842-1843);"The Purloined Letter" (1844), etc.

Edgar Allan Poe was also the inventor of the science fiction genre:"A Descent into the Maelstrom"(1841) Besides the detective stories & science fiction stories E. A. Poe created a number of horror (Gothic) stories:

“Ligeia” (1838); "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1 839); "The Masque of the Red Death" (1842); "The Pit and Pendulum" (1842), etc.

He worked out his own aesthetics of story writing: stories should have a dynamic & entertaining plot that would keep the reader in suspense to the very end. Yet they should be short enough to be read at one sitting. He called it "a single effect". His poems are also written according to this principle. They are also permeated with mysticism & horror which however (like in his stories) are at the end explained by some logical reasons.

Poe's best known poems are: "Annabel Lee” (1849);"The Bells" (1849); "The Raven" (1845).

They are full of mysticism, especially "The Raven", which is a symbolic poem dealing with problems of love, life & death. The meaning of the title has several connotations. The raven symbolizes omen & wisdom. Like in Poe's stories mysticism tends to logical explanation.

Poe's contemporaries failed to appreciate him but he influenced both American & European writers (Poe's combination of decadence & romantic primitivism appealed enormously to Europeans, particularly to the French poets Stephane Mallarme, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Valery, and Arthur Rimbaud.).

Nathaniel Hawthorne- was a descendant of a Puritan family. He lived in Massachusetts. One of his ancestors was a judge who took part in the notorious "witch-hunting" Trial. And one of his novels - "The House of the Seven Gables" (1851) tells of a curse which a judge's family had to carry throughout many centuries.

His greatest work is "The Scarlet Letter" (1850) which is based on real events of the 17 century. It deals with problems of crime & repentance, confession, sexual & spiritual repression. The author showed how the puritanical fanatism ruined the life of noble & decent people.

Herman Melville- was born in a rich family but when he was 12 his father went bankrupt and in the long run got mad because of the enormous psychological tension. As a result the boy had to give up school & start earning his living. In the end he went to sea & his sailing experience served as the basis for his numerous novels.

His greatest work was the novel "Moby Dick; o r, White Whale"(1851) - a sea - captain Ahab by name who was crippled by a white whale during his whaling expedition swears to find his offender & to kill him. The whole novel is a story of his dramatic, full of dangerous hardships, search for the whale, the struggle which he & his crew have to have with the whale (Moby Dick) & death of Ahab & his men. The only person who survived is Ishmael, who tells the story of Ahab This novel has very many layers. It's an adventure novel full of exotics of the sea. Secondly, it's a realistic novel, for the reader learns a lot about the whaling business in the 19^th c. It's also a philosophical novel dealing with issues of life, its objectives & other moral matters. The novel is replete with symbolic images. The whale can be treated as a symbol of Nature itself. It also can be treated as a symbol of dark forces that Man has to deal with. The ship symbolizes a state. The ship in the novel is meant with people of different nationalities, so here is the symbol of the USA. There are also many religious, historical allusions, allusions from literature in the novel (for example, the names of the characters are taken from the Bible).

Besides the novel has elements of different narrative styles. All these features make the novel an outstanding work of fiction which can be adequately appreciated only in the 20^th centure (20-30ss). By its structure, composition, abandons in illusions the book may be placed among contemporary postmodernist novels. Thus there is no wonder that the great deapt of the story was not appreciated by Melville’s contemporaries.