United States Literature – The Beginnings of Romanticism

The poetry of wild places

Early Romanticism is still very much affected by the rationalism and Enlightenment of the 18th century. and finds its models in the English literature of that century. Between science and a lively sense of nature is the botanist W. Bartram who traveled to territories still little known at that time. To the minute botanical descriptions he alternates descriptions of landscapes and natural scenes of undoubted literary value which influenced, to the point of being imitated, the English lake poets and provided the setting for R. de Chateaubriand’s Atala. In American literature, Bartram’s work introduced a new theme: the poetry of wild places.

The beginnings of fiction

Even fiction sometimes took as its scene the frontier territories, that is, the regions that were just beginning to be colonized, but fell back on European imitations or had a satirical intent towards the new democracy. Full of humor is the novel Modern Chivalry, published between 1792 and 1812 by HH Brackenridge, in which the characters, who live in the frontier regions, prosaically engage in the horse trade and smuggling of whiskey. ● Partial imitator of the English Gothic novel is CB Brown, a personality who, however, precisely in the years between the two centuries, contributes to marking a clear watershed between the era of cultural subordination and that of an increasingly marked autonomy towards former motherland. It is no coincidence that it is now common to identify the origin of the American novel in the novels (Wieland, 1798; Ormond, 1799; Edgar Huntly, 1799; Arthur Mervyn, 1799-1800) through which this author of Quaker origin, a native of Philadelphia, operates that ‘naturalization’ of the Gothic that sees the American reality replacing the usual scenario of the old world, and in particular Italian, on which the genre was based. But that of Brown is not only an innovation that acts on the cultural geographical background, since the characteristic and original trait of his work is above all the insistence on the most disturbing aspects of the psychology of the characters, on the darkest areas of personal interiority: an aspect which will then become central to the great American narrative tradition of the nineteenth century (EA Poe, 1798; Ormond, 1799; Edgar Huntly, 1799; Arthur Mervyn, 1799-1800) through which this author of Quaker origin, a native of Philadelphia, works that ‘naturalization’ of the Gothic that sees the American reality replacing the usual scenario of the old world, and in particular Italian, on which founded the genre. But that of Brown is not only an innovation that acts on the cultural geographical background, since the characteristic and original trait of his work is above all the insistence on the most disturbing aspects of the psychology of the characters, on the darkest areas of personal interiority: an aspect which will then become central to the great American narrative tradition of the nineteenth century (EA Poe, 1798; Ormond, 1799; Edgar Huntly, 1799; Arthur Mervyn, 1799-1800) through which this author of Quaker origin, a native of Philadelphia, works that ‘naturalization’ of the Gothic that sees the American reality replacing the usual scenario of the old world, and in particular Italian, on which founded the genre. But that of Brown is not only an innovation that acts on the cultural geographical background, since the characteristic and original trait of his work is above all the insistence on the most disturbing aspects of the psychology of the characters, on the darkest areas of personal interiority: an aspect which will then become central to the great American narrative tradition of the nineteenth century (EA Poe, that ‘naturalization’ of the gothic works which sees the American reality replacing the usual scenario of the old world, and in particular the Italian one, on which the genre was based. But that of Brown is not only an innovation that acts on the cultural geographical background, since the characteristic and original trait of his work is above all the insistence on the most disturbing aspects of the psychology of the characters, on the darkest areas of personal interiority: an aspect which will then become central to the great American narrative tradition of the nineteenth century (EA Poe, that ‘naturalization’ of the gothic works which sees the American reality replacing the usual scenario of the old world, and in particular the Italian one, on which the genre was based. But that of Brown is not only an innovation that acts on the cultural geographical background, since the characteristic and original trait of his work is above all the insistence on the most disturbing aspects of the psychology of the characters, on the darkest areas of personal interiority: an aspect which will then become central to the great American narrative tradition of the nineteenth century (EA Poe, N. Hawthorne, H. Melville). Thanks to speculation on the possible motivations of seemingly inexplicable human actions, Brown for the first time romantically affirms the domination of that antirealistic thrust and that tendency to symbolic thickening of writing, which constitute essential traits of American romance. ● It is precisely to this genre, which alongside and superimposes a predilection for the fantastic escape and the search for a truth that is never identified with the reality as it appears to the historical-geographical reference, gives a fundamental contribution conscious and cosmopolitan writer such as W. Irving. The satirical debut on the periodical Salmagundi, with essays written in collaboration with his brother William and with JK Paulding, is followed by A history of New York (1809), his first important work, marked by a burlesque tone under which the conflict between the presumed authenticity of the historical material and the apparent unreliability of the narrative reworking, a real problematic node of his more mature works. Among these, the best known is The sketch; book of Geoffry Crayon, gentleman (1819-20), originally published in England thanks also to the interest of Sir W. Scott, a collection of stories, travel sketches, remakes of ancient European legends and sagas, originally transplanted into the imaginary, yet recognizable, background of America during the period of the revolution. To the tale of costume, revisited with considerable success also in Bracebridge hall (1822) and in Tales of a trav; eller (1824), Irving alternates works with a historical background, such as The conquest of Granada (1829), and The Aalambra (1832), both written during his commitment as a diplomat in Spain and England, A tour of the prairies (1835) and Astoria (1836), which consolidated, even abroad, his image as the first successful American writer.

JF Cooper

American nature and history, on the other hand, form an almost constant background to the narrative of JF Cooper, an extremely prolific author, capable of making a decisive contribution to different forms, such as the war novel (The spy, 1821), the marine tale (The pilot, 1823) and the one built around the Frontier motif, to which the great popularity of his adventures will remain linked for a longer time. The advance of the colonizers in the unknown territories of the West, the meeting with the groups of the natives, the conflicts of interest between different groups of adventurers constitute the privileged subject of the so-called Leatherstocking tales, saga of which five novels are part (The pioneers, 1823; The last of the Mohicans, 1826; The prairie, 1827; The pathfinder, 1840; The deerslayer, 1841), all built around the figure of Natty Bumppo, a mythical white hunter with great moral stature. Returning to his homeland in 1833 after a long stay in Europe, Cooper tightened his tone towards a nation that in his eyes seemed to have betrayed the original ideal of agrarian democracy, in favor of an industrialization that involved net social and political barbarism. This polemical vein, which emerges in works such as The Monikins (1835), Home as found (1838) and The crater (1847), is perhaps the least known aspect of an author often seen as a champion of an exoticism not devoid of paternalistic implications. and that instead, as in the trilogy The Littlepage manuscripts (1844-46), he also knows how to deal with controversial aspects of contemporary society.

EA Poe

But the most prominent personality of the first half of the nineteenth century certainly remains that of EA Poe, a multifaceted figure of narrator and poet, critic and journalist, who between the adopted Virginia and New York animated the American cultural scene in the 1830s and 1840s. Particularly important is the originality with which, after his debut in poetry (Tamerlane and other poems, 1827; Al Aaraaf, 1829), he affects the structures of the novel (The narrative of A. GordonPym, 1838) and especially the genre of tale (Tales of the grotesque and arabes; que, 1840, and Tales by EA Poe, 1845), bringing it to levels of technical and formal perfection hitherto unknown. Inventor of the detective genre (his Monsieur A. Dupin will remain as the prototype of the modern detective), in his work Poe proposes a fusion of romantic motifs, directly borrowed from Coleridge, and exquisitely rational impulses. In his writing, that tendency to fantastic encroachment already noted in the works of other Americans is consolidated, while critical rigor, polemical impulse and speculative energy find a way to manifest themselves in far-reaching essays, such as The philosophy of com; position (1846), The rationale of verse and Eureka (both 1848).