Chapter 15 Quiz - Utopias/Transcendentalism

What was transcendentalism?

A golden age in American literature dawned in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, when an amazing outburst shook New England. One of the mainsprings of this literary flowering was transcendentalism, especially around Boston, which preened itself as "the Athens of America."

What was romanticism?

After 1820 a confident cohort of young American authors finally began to answer the call for an authentic national literature. Their rise corresponded with the wave of nationalism following the War of 1812 and the arrival of romanticism on American shores. Conceived as a reaction against the hyper-rational Enlightenment, romanticism originated in the revolutionary salons of continental Europe and England.

What was the Hudson River school?

After the War of 1812, American painters turned increasingly from human portraits and history paintings to pastoral mirrorings of local landscapes. In America's vast wilderness the new nation's painters finally found their distinctive muse. The Hudson River school of the 1820s and 1830s excelled in this type of romantic art. Its leading lights, Thomas Cole and Asher Durand, celebrated the raw sublimity and grand divinity of nature.

What were the Shakers?

Among the longest-lived sects were the Shakers, founded in England in 1747 and brought to America in 1774 by Mother Ann Lee. She moved her tiny band of followers to upstate New York—the first of a score or so of American Shaker communities. The Shakers attained a membership of about six thousand in 1840, but since their monastic customs prohibited both marriage and sexual relations, they were virtually extinct by 1940.

What was the Federal Style?

Architecturally, America chose to imitate Old World styles rather than create indigenous ones. Early national builders articulated a plain Federal Style of architecture that borrowed from classical Greek and Roman examples and emphasized symmetry, balance, and restraint. Public buildings incorporated a neoclassical vocabulary of columns, domes, and pediments to suggest venerable ancient models for America's novel republican experiment.

What was "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience"?

It was an essay written by Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau's Walden and his essay "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" exercised a strong influence in furthering idealistic thought, both in America and abroad. His writings later encouraged Mahatma Gandhi to resist British rule in India and, still later, inspired the development of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.'s thinking about nonviolence.

What did romanticism emphasize?

imagination over reason, nature over civilization, intuition over calculation, and the self over society. They celebrated human potential and prized the heroic genius of the individual artist. Infused with romantic energy, American literature flowered in the mid-nineteenth century as never before.

Who was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow?

was one of the most popular poets ever produced in America. Writing for the elegant classes, he was adopted by the less cultured masses. His wide knowledge of European literature supplied him with many themes. He was not actively associated with the transcendentalist movement, though not completely immune to its influences.

What was the Oneida Community?

A more radical experiment was the Oneida Community, founded in New York in 1848. It practiced free love, birth control, and the eugenic selection of parents to produce superior offspring. This curious enterprise flourished for more than thirty years.

What was Brook Farm?

Brook Farm in Massachusetts, comprising two hundred acres of grudging soil, was started in 1841 with the brotherly and sisterly cooperation of about twenty intellectuals committed to the philosophy of transcendentalism. They prospered reasonably well until 1846, when they lost by fire a large new communal building shortly before its completion.

What was the Greek Revival?

Popularized in pattern books for carpenters, plain Greek Revival houses proliferated across America, especially in New York's Burned-Over District and the Old Northwest. About midcentury, strong interest developed in a revival of medieval Gothic forms, with their emphasis on pointed arches, sloped roofs, and large, stained-glass windows.

Who was Henry David Thoreau?

He was Emerson's close associate and he was also a poet, a mystic, and a transcendentalist.

What was "Waldon: Or Life in the Woods"?

Henry David Thoreau wrote it. The book is a record of Thoreau's two years of simple existence in a hut that he built on the edge of Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts. Walden epitomized the romantic quest for isolation from society's corruptions. A stiff-necked individualist, Thoreau believed that he should reduce his bodily wants so as to gain time to pursue truth through study and meditation.

What was Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass"?

Highly emotional and unconventional, Whitman dispensed with titles, stanzas, rhymes, and at times even regular meter. He located divinity in commonplace natural objects as well as the human body.

Why did early American painting struggle to find a distinctive national style?

Imitative portraiture and distinctive national style. history painting predominated in the late eighteenth century, as American artists attempted to cover their provincial culture with a civilizing veneer. Painting suffered from the dollar-grabbing of a raw civilization; from the hustle, bustle, and absence of leisure; from the lack of a wealthy class to sit for portraits - and then pay for them.

What concrete beliefs did the doctrines of transcendentalism underlay?

Individualism in matters religious as well as social. Closely associated was a commitment to self-reliance, self-culture, and self-discipline. These traits naturally bred hostility to authority and to formal institutions of any kind, as well as to all conventional wisdom. Finally came a romantic exaltation of the dignity of the individual, whether black or white - the mainspring of a whole array of humanitarian reforms.

Who was Jon J. Audubon?

Lovers of American bird lore owed much to the French-descended naturalist John J. Audubon, who painted wildfowl in their natural habitat. His magnificently illustrated Birds of America attained considerable popularity. The Audubon Society for the protection of birds was named after him, although as a young man he shot much feathered game for sport.

Who was one of the best known transcendentalists?

Ralph Waldo Emerson. He delivered his speech "The American Scholar" at Harvard College in 1837. This brilliant appeal was an intellectual declaration of independence, for it urged American writers to throw off European traditions and delve into the riches of their own backyards. Hailed as both a poet and a philosopher, Emer-son was not of the highest rank as either. He was more influential as a practical philosopher and public intellectual. He stressed self-reliance, self-improvement, self-confidence, optimism, and freedom. By the 1850s he was an outspoken critic of slavery, and he ardently supported the Union cause in the Civil War.

What were minstrel shows?

Rhythmic and nostalgic "darky" tunes, popularized by whites, were becoming immense hits by midcentury. Special favorites were the uniquely American minstrel shows, featuring white actors with blackened faces playing stock plantation characters.

What was New Harmony?

Seeking human betterment, a wealthy and idealistic Scottish textile manufacturer, Robert Owen, founded in 1825 a communal society of about a thousand people at New Harmony, Indiana. Little harmony prevailed in the colony, which, in addition to hard-working visionaries, attracted a sprinkling of radicals, work-shy theorists, and outright scoundrels.

What was the Knickerbocker Group?

The Knickerbocker Group was a somewhat indistinct group of 19th-century American writers. Its most prominent members included Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper and William Cullen Bryant. Each were pioneers in general literature - novels, poetry and journalism.

What caused the transcendentalist movement?

The transcendentalist movement of the 1830s resulted in part from a liberalizing of the straight-jacket Puritan theology. It also owed much to foreign influences, including the German romantic philosophers and the religions of Asia.

What did transcendentalists believe?

The transcendentalist movement of the 1830s resulted in part from a liberalizing of the straight-jacket Puritan theology. It also owed much to foreign influences, including the German romantic philosophers and the religions of Asia. This movement focused on personal introspection and spiritual renewal. They wanted to become one with the spiritual world.

Overall, what did transcendentalists oppose?

They opposed materialism and they rejected industrialism.

Bolstered by the Utopian spirit of the age, what did various reformers do?

They set up more than forty communities of a cooperative, communistic, or "communitarian" nature.