1. Get in eight different groups! You may move chairs, but not desks.
Bell Ringer
Get in eight different groups!
You may move chairs, but not desks.

2. 20 Facts: American Renaissance Authors
Your Assignment
20 Facts: American Renaissance Authors
Table 1: Washington Irving
Table 2: Nathanial Hawthorne
Table 3: Edgar Allan Poe
Table 4: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Table 5: Henry David Thoreau
Table 6: Emily Dickinson
Table 7: Herman Melville
Table 8: Henry Wordsworth Longfellow

4. My comments about Washington Irving:
First American to achieve an international literary reputation
Used fiction to comment upon American society (Example: Rip Van Winkle’s 20-year nap ended after the Revolutionary War)
Created “Diedrich Knickerbocker.”
Dedicated the last years of his life to completing a biography of George Washington ... Considered by many to have “worked himself to death.”

6. My comments about Nathanial Hawthorne:
Descendant of Puritan immigrants, one of which was a judge at the Salem Witch Trials (changed his name to disassociate with that heritage)
Most famous for the novel The Scarlet Letter, but mostly wrote short stories
Considered to be one of the Dark Romantics (works focused upon themes of guilt and sin)

8. My comments about Edgar Allan Poe:
Lost his mother and step-mother at a young age to tuberculosis
Married his first cousin when he was 26 and she was 13 … she also died of TB
Famous but always poor due to terrible decisions
Death most likely due to being the victim of a “political kidnapping”

10. My comments about Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Considered the “Father of the Transcendental Movement” in America
Transcendentalism: an American literary, political, and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century
Mentor to Henry David Thoreau
Became an abolitionist in later years
Tragically senile the last ten years of his life

12. My comments about Henry David Thoreau:
Lived for two years next to Walden Pond, isolated from society
Famous for encouraging people to “march to the beat of their own drummer”
Jailed for refusing to pay poll tax as a protest to Mexican-American War
Wrote Resistance to Civil Government, which influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King

14. My comments about Emily Dickinson:
Lived as a recluse in her family’s home … called the “climax of all the family’s oddity”
Many theories of her isolation, but contemporary accounts claim no one really knew the cause
Strange story of “treats on a fishing line”
Desperately did not want her poems published – kept them folded up in shoeboxes/tied in bundles

16. My comments about Herman Melville:
Author of what many consider to be the greatest American novel: Moby-Dick
Not appreciated during his life as much as he was later
In addition to novels, he also wrote some short stories and an edition of poetry focused upon the Civil War
Considered a Dark Romantic

18. My comments about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
Most popular poet America has ever produced
First American to be buried in Westminster Abbey
Classmate of Nathaniel Hawthorne at Bowdoin College
Tragically lost two wives
(miscarriage; dress catching on fire)