junio 05, 2025

The American Renaissance

THE WAKE UP OF

AMERICAN LITERARY MOVEMENTS

The term American Renaissance, as applied to literature, was popularly established by the Harvard scholar F. O. Matthiessen in his 1941 book American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman.

The American Renaissance was a period in American Literature that lasted from 1830's until the end of the American Civil War (1861-1865), and emerges as a response to a discovered indentity and the beginning of a renewed country. The term American Renaissance was coined by the literary critic F.O. Matthiessen n his 1941 book 'American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman'.

The American Renaissance explored themes such as love, politics, and the exploration of human nature. It was also characterized by its use of classical forms and structures, such as the sonnet and the epic poem. Writers of this period often employed elaborate language and intricate rhyme schemes.

The works and authors most frequently associated with American Renaissance movement are:

1850: Emerson’s Representative Men, Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Susan Warner’s The Wide, Wide World

1851: Melville’s Moby-Dick, Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables

1852: Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Melville’s Pierre, Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance

1854: Thoreau’s Walden

1855: Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Douglass’ My Bondage and My Freedom.

Critical Thinking

As we can see, the American Renaissance period brought with it incredible works that protrayed the realities of the social and political context of that time.

This literature movement changed the way Americans viewed the world, resulting in a more nationalisti vision and that focused on reality as it exists.

Renaissance and its connection with the present.

"The only hope is that our civilization will collapse at a certain point, as always happens in history. Then, out of barbarity, a renaissance."

The American Renaissance had a great impact on the way we view art and literature today, thanks to works like The Scarlet Letter that focus on a society that judges and shames and how it currently resonates with online cancel culture trends. Now, thanks to the American Renaissance, we can explore themes such as morality and social norms, questioning how although the idea of freedom of expression is promoted, if we differ from an opinion or do not follow a standard imposed by society, it will be the same society that judges us for it.