Renaissance

Question 1

American Renaissance characteristics (5)

Answer 1

• Cultural nationalism: writing the “American way”.
• Radical democrats.
• Modify standard literary genres.
• Language: unusual mixture of archaic and vernacular.
• Tendency to symbolism and allegory.

Question 2

Reinassance essays: The Transcendentalists. 12 characteristics, 3 authors.

Answer 2

CHARACTERISTICS
- Stems from Unitarianism
- Influence: reform movement interested in changing aspects of life.
- Libertarian and humanitarian
- Philosophy of life rather than abstract philosophical system.
- Interested in metaphysics
- Fascination with nature
- Eclectic philosophy: Western + Eastern influences (especially EMerson and Thoreau)
- Intellectual independence + social independence.
- Critical of contemporary society.
- Attention to everyday life, perceived through symbolism
- Practical orientation: to learn through direct observation of life (linking of thought and life)
- Elitist rejection against industrialization, popular culture, urban life, and crowd/popular press.

AUTHORS
R.W. Emerson “The American Scholar”, “Nature”
M. Fuller “Women in the Nineteenth Century”
H.D. Thoreau “Walden”, “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”

Question 3

Renaissance Poetry: common characteristics between Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman (3)

Answer 3

• Peculiar style
• Innovative poetic form
• Unconventional way of writing

Question 4

Renaissance Poetry: Emily Dickinson characteristics (8), themes (6) and style

Answer 4

CHARACTERISTICS:
- Short formats.
- Traditional stanzas and meter.
- Concise.
- Indoor life.
- Self-restrained and introverted.
- Self-scrutiny.
- Self-relation
- Self-portraiture.

THEMES:
- Awareness of death
- Natural impression
- Psychological states
- Passing of time
- Social and political confinement
- Strong sense of difference.

STYLE:
- Allegories
- Elliptical syntax
- Short meter
- “Folk meter in ballad stanzas”

• Most productive period 1855-1856
• Seldom published in her lifetime.
• Example of manuscript culture.
• Writing = personal transaction

Question 5

Renaissance Poetry: Walt Whitman characteristics (7), style and “Leaves of Grass”

Answer 5

CHARACTERISTICS:
- Lengthy formats
- Non-traditional structure and meter
- Expansive style: wordy, repetitive
- Outdoor life.
- Exuberant and extroverted.
- “Communion”
- Relation with the world.

STYLE:
- Unusual meter, no rhyme
- Declamatory style
- Elusive syntax
- Innovative thematic (sexual openness as homoerotic expression)

“Leaves of Grass” (“Calamus”, “Children of Adam”, “Drum Taps”, “Passage to India”, “Democartic Vistas”)
- ‘Residence of the poetic’ in all aspects of life
- Explicitly sexual imagery
- Free verse, by breathing
- Twisted language= writing can be ilusive

Question 6

Renaissance Narrative, the Romance: characteristics (8)

Answer 6

• Metaphysical writing.
• Distinction between “entertainments” and “deep tales”.
• Intensification of everyday reality through mythological and Biblical allusions.
• “Dark Romantics” because of pessimistic view of reality.
• Inverted Bildungsroman (toward alienation and detachment from society).
• Broad picture of society analysing present and past.
• Full of inferred symbolism.
• Contemporary language with rhythmic prose, avoiding archaism.

Question 7

Renaissance Narrative, the Romance: Nathaniel Hawthorne

Answer 7

Topics: history and tradition of New England

Style:
- Reexamination of the Puritan past
- Great stylist (extremely careful writer)
- Descriptive, analytical
- Psychological insight.
- Moralist.
- Fantastic elements.
- Importance of feminine characters.

Novels
“Fanshawe”
“The Scarlet Letter”
“The House of the Seven Gables”
“The Blithedale Romance”
“The Marble Faun”

Short Stories
“Twice Told Tales”
“Moses from Old Manses”

Question 8

Renaissance Narrative, the Romance: Herman Melville

Answer 8

• Factual themes
• Ideology and narrative focused on reality: need for multi-generic narratives.
• Rhythmic-poetic prose in dramatic monologues = assymetrical and incomplete narratives.
• Period of intermitence.
• Episodic intensification.
• Moby-Dick: philosophical tale about a tragedy of hatred and revenge.

Early work
“Typee”
“Omoo”
“Moby-Dick”

Short stories and novellas
“Bartleby, The Scrivener”
“Benito Cereno”
“Billy-Budd, Sailor”

Late work
“Pierre, or the Ambiguities”
“Clarel: A poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land”

Popular origins
“Dime novels”
“Wharton, the Whale Killer”
“Mocha Dick, The White Whale of the Pacific”