4.9 The Development of an American Culture

cultural nationalism

nationalism and belief that America was entering an era of unlimited prosperity

romanticism

movement towards intuition, feelings, individual acts of heroism, and the study of nature

transcendentalists

New England thinkers who expressed romanticism ideas, generally believing in intuition, artistic expression over wealth, individualism, antislavery

• Ralph Waldo Emerson - popular American lecturer and speaker

  • individualistic and nationalistic, encouraging America to create their own culture

  • emphasized self-reliance, independent thinking, spiritualism, and antislavery

• Henry David Thoreau

  • Walden (1854) - Thoreau’s book about observations of nature, essential truths of life and the universe

  • On Civil Disobedience - essay written after being jailed for not paying taxes out of protest of immoral war against Mexico

• Brook Farm (1841) - attempt at transcendentalist utopia, atmosphere of artistic creativity, innovative school, appealed to New England’s intellectual elite and children

communal experiments

numerous during antebellum years, open land and fertile ground,diversity of ideas

• Brook Farm

• Shakers - forbid sexual relations

• Amana Colonies - simple communal living

• New Harmony- nonreligious, tried to provide solution to Industrial Revolution’s inequity and alienation

• Oneida Community - shared property and marriage partners

• Fourier Phalanxes - shared work and housing to avoid competitive society

arts and literature

• paintings - fascination with ordinary people, things, natural world

• literature - nationalism and American writers

  • Washington Irving - American Settings - Rip Van Winkle, Legend of Sleepy Hollow

  • Edgar Allen Poe