1. Morning, Looking East Over the Hudson Valley from the Catskill Mountains Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900) Oil on canvas, 1848 AIHA Collection: Gift of Catherine Gansevoort Lansing

2. Broadway and City Hall 1818 Baron Axel Klinköwstrom (1775-1847) Watercolor, 15x22

3. Beginnings of a National Literature

4.  In the early years of the 19 th century, Europe and America were industrializing.  This industrialization created crowded, polluted cities.  The 18 th century view of using reason alone to solve the worlds problems no longer seemed to work.  Americans looked toward the vast western frontier and were filled with optimism.

5.  Americans had also just broken from Europe.  A nationalist spirit began to develop in America.  The Americans’ experience began to diverge from that of the Europeans.  American authors were beginning to develop a uniquely American literature.

6.  Values feeling and intuition over reason  Places faith in inner experience and the power of the imagination  Shuns the artificiality of civilization and seeks unspoiled nature  Prefers youthful innocence to educated sophistication  Champions individual freedom and the worth of the individual

7.  Reflects on nature’s beauty as a path to spiritual and moral development  Looks backward to the wisdom of the past and distrusts progress  Finds beauty and truth in exotic locales, the supernatural realm, and the inner world of the imagination  Sees poetry as the highest expression of the imagination  Finds inspiration in myth, legend, and folklore

8.  James Fenimore Cooper and the other Romantic writers that followed him created an American hero  The hero:  Is young or possesses youthful qualities  Is innocent and pure of purpose  Has a sense of honor based not on society’s rules but on some higher principle  Has a knowledge of people and life based on deep, intuitive understanding, not on formal learning  Loves nature and avoids town life  Quests for some higher truth in the natural world

9.  Poe, Hawthorne, Melville  Saw the dark side of life  Heirs of the Puritans  Saw signs and symbols in all events  Explored  conflict between good and evil  psychological effects of guilt and sin  madness