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A. Age of Evolution B. Age of Reason C. Age of Romanticism D. Age of Regionalism IV.

Questions and Answers.

1. What are the characteristics of Benjamin Franklin‘s literary work?

The main quality in all Benjamin Franklin‘s writing is its genuine humanness. His literary work was typical of himself. Honest, plain, democratic, clear-headed, shrewd, worldly-wise, he was interested in the practical side of life. The absence of ideality is obvious in all his compositions. He never reached the high levels of imaginative art. But on this lower plane of material interest and every-day life he was, the works possess a universal charm

2. Give a brief account of American literature of this period.

Much work during the Revolutionary period was public writing. By the time of the War for Independence, nearly fifty newspapers had been established in the coastal cities. At the time of Washington‘s inauguration, there were nearly forty magazines. Almanacs were popular from Massachusetts to Georgia. The mind of the nation was on politics. Journalists and printers provided a forum for the expression of ideas. The writing of permanent importance is mostly political writing. The best-known writing of the period outside the field of politics was done by Benjamin Franklin. 3. Write an analysis of The Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration of Independence, adopted on July 4, 1776, not only announced the birth of a new nation, it also set forth a philosophy of human freedom which served as an important force in the western world. Its ideas inspired mass fervor for the American cause, for it instilled among the common people a sense of their own importance, and inspired struggle for personal freedom, self-government, and a dignified place in society.

Romantic Period of American Literature

I.

Literary Terms.

1. Romanticism: The literature term was first applied to the writers of the 18th century in

Europe who broke away from the formal rules of classical writing. When it was used in American literature it referred to the writers of the middle of the 19th century who stimulated the sentimental emotions of their readers. They wrote the mysteries of life, love, birth and death. The romantic writers expressed themselves freely and without restraint. They wrote all kinds of materials: poetry, essays, plays, fiction, history, works of travel, and biography.

2. Fireside poets: William Gullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russel

Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and John Greenleaf Whittier constituted a group called the Fireside Poets. They earned this nickname because they frequently used the hearth as

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an image of comfort and unity, a place where families gathered to learn and tell stories. They were widely read around the hearthsides of 19th-century American families. 3. Transcendentalism: In New England, an intellectual movement known as

transcendentalism developed as an American version of Romanticism. The movement began among an influential set of authors based in Concord, Massachusetts and was led by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Like Romanticism, transcendentalism rejected both 18th century rationalism and established religion, which for the transcendentalists meant the Puritan tradition in particular. The transcendentalists celebrated the power of the human imagination to commune with the universe and transcend the limitations of the material world. They found their chief source of inspiration in nature. Emerson‘s essay nature was the major document of the transcendental school and stated the ideas that were to remain central to it.

4. Symbolism: It is a movement in literature and the visual arts that originated in France in

the poetry of Charles Baudelaire in the late 19th century. In literature, symbolism was an aesthetic movement that encouraged writers to express their ideas, feelings, and values by means of symbols or suggestions rather than by direct statements. Hawthorne and Melville are masters of symbolism in America in the 19th century.

5. Free verse: free verse is the rhymed or unrhymed poetry composed without attention to

conventional rules of meter. Free verse was first written and labeled by a group of French poets of the late 19th century. Their purpose was to deliver poetry from the restrictions of formal metrical patterns and to recreate the free rhythms of natural speech. Walt Whitman was the precursor who wrote lines of varying length and cadence, usually not rhymed. The emotional content or meaning of the work was expressed through its rhythm. Free verse has been characteristic of the work of many modern American poets, including Ezra Pound and Carl Sandburg.

6. Puritanism: The word is originally used to refer to the theory advocated by a party

within the Church of England. It is also used to refer to attitudes and values considered characteristics of the Puritans. It denotes a rigid moral, or the condemnation of innocent pleasure, or religious narrowness adhered by the early New England Puritans. It exerted great influence over American Romanticism. The preoccupation with the Calvinist view of original sin and the mystery of evil marked the works by such famous writers as Hawthorne and Melville.

II.

Fill in the blanks

1. In the early 19th century Rip Van Winkle established Washington Irving‘s reputation at

home and abroad, and designed the beginning of American Romanticism.

2. Ralph Waldo Emerson‘s first book in 1836 Nature brought American Romanticism into a

new phase, the phase of New England Transcendentalism.

3. In the early 19th century, Washington Irving wrote The Sketch Book which became the

first work by an American writer to win financial success on both sides of the Atlantic. 4. Allan Poe‘s poems have the musical quality and romantic beauty. The Raven is his

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best-known poem.

5. The Civil War of 1861-1865 ended in the defeat of the Southerners and the abolition of

slavery.

6. Leaves of Grass, either in content or form, is an epoch-making work in American

literature; its democratic content marked the shift from Romanticism to Realism, and its free verse form broke from old poetic conventions to open a new road for American poetry.

7. Washington Irving was regarded as the first great prose stylist of American

Romanticism.

8. In 1823 James Fenimore Cooper wrote The Pioneers, the first of the five novels that make

up The Leatherstocking Tales. The remaining four books: The Last of the Mohicans, the Prairie, the Pathfinder and the Deerslayer, contimue the story of Natty Bumppo, one of the most famous characters in American fiction.

9. The short story ―The Legend of Sleepy Hollow‖ is taken from Washington Irving‘s work

named The Sketch Book.

10. Washington Irving was the first American to achieve an international literary reputation

after the Revolutionary War.

11. Melville is famous for writing about the sea and the islands of the Southern Pacific. In his

master piece Moby Dick, he tells a story of whaling voyage which sets a symbolic account of the conflict between man and his fate.

12. The first important American novelist was James Fennimore Cooper.

13. The central figure in the Leatherstocking Tales is Natty Bumppo, who goes by the

various names of Leatherstocking, Deerlayer, Pathfinder and Hawkeye.

14. ―To a Waterfowl‖ is perhaps the peak of William Cullen Bryant‘s work. It has been

called by an eminent English critic ―the most perfect brief poem in the language‖. 15. Among William Cullen Bryant‘s most important later works are his translations of the

Iliad and the Odyssey into English blank verse.

16. Edgar Allan Poe‘s poem ―The Raven‖ is perhaps the best example of onomatopoeia in the

English language.

17. Most of Allan Poe‘s stories can be roughly divided into two kinds: tales of Gothic horror

or grotesque like The Black Cat, an incisive enquiry into the capacity of the human mind to originate its destruction and The Fall of the House of Usher.

18. A superb book Walden came out of Thoreau‘s two-year experience at Walden Pond. 19. From Thoreau‘s Concord jail experience, came his famous essay ―Civil Disobedience”. 20. In 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne brought out his masterpiece The Scarlet Letter, the story

of a triangle love affair in colonial America.

21. Herman Melville‘s novel Moby Dick is a tremendous chronicle of a whaling voyage in

pursuit of a seemingly supernatural white whale.

22. In ―I Hear America Singing‖, Walt Whitman depicts the beauty of labor and laborers. 23. For the whole 19th century Emily Dickinson was the only woman poet who enjoys high

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academic esteem today. She has been acclaimed as a poet of philosophical and tragic dimensions, a poet who was responsive to the challenging questions of man, nature and human consciousness.

24. The American Romantic period stretches from the end of the 18th century through the

outburst of the Civil War.

25. In The Pioneers, Natty Bumppo represents the ideal American, living a virtuous and free

life in God‘s world.

26. The way in which Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter suggests that American

Romanticism adapted itself to American Puritan morality. III.

Multiple Choice.

1. In 1837, the first college-level institution for women, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary,

opened in ___ to serve the ―Muslin sex‖. A. New England B. Virginia C. Massachusetts D. New York

2. As a philosophical and literary movement, ___ flourished in New England from the 1830s

to the Civil War.

A. modernism B. rationalism C. sentimentalism D. transcendentalism

3. The appearance of the Scarlet Letter marked the maturity of Hawthorne as a novelist.

Soon he composed the other three important novel including___, The Blithedale Romance and The Marble Faun.

A. The House of the Seven Gables B. The Prairie C. The Fall of the House of Usher D. Walden

4. Transcendentalism recognized ___ as the ―highest power of the soul‖.

A. intuition B. logic C. data of the senses D. thinking

5. A new ___ had appeared in England in the last years of the 18th century. It spread to

continental Europe and then came to America early in the 19th century. A. Realism B. Critical realism C. Romanticism D. Naturalism

6. The desire for an escape from society and a return to nature became a permanent

convention of American literature, evident in___. A. James Fenimore Cooper‘s Leatherstocking Tales. B. Henry David Thoreau‘s Walden C. Mark Twain‘s Huckleberry Finn D. All of the above

7. Herman Melville‘s ___ is not only an adventure story, but also a significant philosophical

work on spiritual exploration.

A. Moby Dick B. The Egg C. Nature D. The Over-Soul

8. In James Fenimore Cooper‘s novels, close after Natty Bumppo in romantic appeals, come