Становление американского романа. Творчество Натаниэла Готорна («Алая буква»). Роль и критическая оценка романа Гарриет Бичер-Стоу «Хижина Дяди Тома».
Особенности развития страны в первой половине XIX века. Формирование американских ценностей. Творчество Ральфа У. Эмерсона и идеи движения «трансцендентализма». Творческий путь Генри Д. Торо.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882), American essayist and poet, a leader of the philosophical movement of transcendentalism. Influenced by such schools of thought as English romanticism, Neoplatonism, and Hindu philosophy, Emerson is noted for his skill in presenting his ideas eloquently and in poetic language.
Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Seven of his ancestors were ministers, and his father, William Emerson, was minister of the First Church (Unitarian) of Boston. Emerson graduated from Harvard University at the age of 18 and for the next three years taught school in Boston. In 1825 he entered Harvard Divinity School, and the next year he was sanctioned to preach by the Middlesex Association of Ministers. Despite ill health, Emerson delivered occasional sermons in churches in the Boston area. In 1829 he became minister of the Second Church (Unitarian) of Boston. That same year he married Ellen Tucker, who died 17 months later. In 1832 Emerson resigned from his pastoral appointment because of personal doubts about administering the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. On Christmas Day, 1832, he left the United States for a tour of Europe. He stayed for some time in England, where he made the acquaintance of such British literary notables as Walter Savage Landor, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Carlyle, and William Wordsworth. His meeting with Carlyle marked the beginning of a lifelong friendship.
After nearly a year in Europe, Emerson returned to the United States. In 1834 he moved to Concord, Massachusetts, and became active as a lecturer in Boston. His addresses—including “The Philosophy of History,” ”Human Culture,” ”Human Life,” and “The Present Age”—were based on material in his Journals (published posthumously, 1909-1914), a collection of observations and notes that he had begun while a student at Harvard. His most detailed statement of belief was reserved for his first published book, Nature (1836), which appeared anonymously but was soon correctly attributed to him. The volume received little notice, but it has come to be regarded as Emerson's most original and significant work, offering the essence of his philosophy of transcendentalism. This idealist doctrine opposed the popular materialist and Calvinist views of life and at the same time voiced a plea for freedom of the individual from artificial restraints.
Emerson applied these ideas to cultural and intellectual problems in his 1837 lecture The American Scholar, which he delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard. In it he called for American intellectual independence. A second address, commonly referred to as the “Address at Divinity College,” delivered in 1838 to the graduating class of Cambridge Divinity College, aroused considerable controversy because it attacked formal religion and argued for self-reliance and intuitive spiritual experience.
The first volume of Emerson's Essays (1841) includes some of his most popular works. It contains “History,” ”Self-Reliance,” ”Compensation,” ”Spiritual Laws,” ”Love,” ”Friendship,” ”Prudence,” ”Heroism,” ”The Oversoul,” ”Circles,” ”Intellect,” and “Art.” The second series of Essays (1844) includes “The Poet,” ”Manners,” and “Character.” In it Emerson tempered the optimism of the first volume of essays, placing less emphasis on the self and acknowledging the limitations of real life. In the interval between the publication of these two volumes, Emerson wrote for The Dial, the journal of New England transcendentalism, which was founded in 1840 with American critic Margaret Fuller as editor. Emerson succeeded her as editor in 1842 and remained in that capacity until the journal ceased publication in 1844.
Emerson again went abroad from 1847 to 1848 and lectured in England, where he was welcomed by Carlyle. Several of Emerson's lectures were later collected in the volume Representative Men (1850), which contains essays on such figures as Greek philosopher Plato, Swedish philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg, and French writer Michel Eyquem de Montaigne. While visiting abroad, Emerson also gathered impressions that were later published in English Traits (1856), a study of English society. His Journals give evidence of his growing interest in national issues, and on his return to America he became active in the abolitionist cause, delivering many antislavery speeches. The Conduct of Life (1860) was the first of his books to enjoy immediate popularity. After 1867 Emerson did little writing and his mental powers declined, although his reputation as a writer spread.
Thoreau, Henry David (1817-1862), American writer, philosopher, and naturalist, whose work demonstrates how the abstract ideals of libertarianism and individualism can be effectively instilled in a person's life. Born in Concord, Massachusetts, Thoreau was educated at Harvard University. In the late 1830s and early 1840s he taught school and tutored in Concord and on Staten Island, New York. From 1841 to 1843 Thoreau lived in the home of American essayist and transcendental philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1845 Thoreau moved to a crude hut on the shores of Walden Pond, a small body of water on the outskirts of Concord. He lived there until 1847, resided again with Emerson from 1847 to 1848, and spent the years from 1849 with his parents and sister in Concord. During his residence at Walden Pond and elsewhere in Concord, Thoreau supported himself by doing odd jobs, such as gardening, carpentry, and land surveying. The major portion of his time was devoted to the study of nature, to meditating on philosophical problems, to reading Greek, Latin, French, and English literature, and to long conversations with his neighbors.
Of the numerous volumes that make up the collected works of Thoreau, only two were published during his lifetime: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) and Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854). The material for most of the other volumes was edited posthumously by the author's friends from his journals, manuscripts, and letters. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers is the narrative of a boating trip that Thoreau took with his brother in August 1839; it is a combination of nature study and metaphysical speculation and bears the distinctive impress of the author's engaging personality. In Walden, his most enduring and popular work, Thoreau explains his motives for living apart from society and devoting himself to a simple lifestyle and to the observation of nature. His writing style seems at first plain and direct, but witty similes, etymological puns, and allusions and plays on conventional proverbs dislocate conventional meanings and force the reader into a mode of reconsideration and reevaluation.
In 1846 Thoreau chose to go to jail rather than to support the Mexican War (1846-1848) by paying his poll tax. He clarified his position in perhaps his most famous essay, “Civil Disobedience” (1849), now widely referred to by its original title, “Resistance to Civil Government.” In this essay Thoreau discussed passive resistance, a method of protest that later was adopted by Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi as a tactic against the British, and by civil rights activists fighting racial segregation in the United States.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804-1864), American novelist, whose works are deeply concerned with the ethical problems of sin, punishment, and atonement. Hawthorne's exploration of these themes was related to the sense of guilt he felt about the roles of his ancestors in the 17th-century persecution of Quakers and in the 1692 witchcraft trials of Salem, Massachusetts.
Born in Salem, Massachusetts, into an old Puritan family, Hawthorne graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825. He subsequently returned to his Salem home, living in semi-seclusion and writing. His work received little public recognition, however, and Hawthorne attempted to destroy all copies of his first novel, Fanshawe (1828), which he had published at his own expense. During this period he also contributed articles and short stories to periodicals. Several of the stories were published in Twice-Told Tales (1837), which, although not a financial success, established Hawthorne as a leading writer. These early works are largely historical sketches and symbolic and allegorical tales dealing with moral conflicts and the effects of Puritanism on colonial New England.
Unable to earn a living by literary work, in 1839 Hawthorne took a job in the Boston, Massachusetts, customhouse. Two years later he returned to writing and produced a series of sketches of New England history for children, Grandfather's Chair: A History for Youth (1841). In 1841 he also joined the communal society at Brook Farm near Boston, hoping to be able to live in such comfort that he could marry and still have time to devote to his writing. The demands of the farm were too great, however; Hawthorne was unable to continue his writing while doing farm chores, and after less than a year he withdrew from the community. In 1842 he married Sophia Amelia Peabody of Salem and settled in Concord, Massachusetts, in a house called the Old Manse. During the four years he lived in Concord, Hawthorne wrote a number of tales that were later published as Mosses from an Old Manse (1846).
To survive, Hawthorne returned to government service in 1846 as surveyor of the Salem customhouse. In 1849 he was dismissed because of a change in political administration. By then he had already begun writing The Scarlet Letter (1850), a novel about the adulterous Puritan Hester Prynne, who loyally refuses to reveal the name of her partner. Regarded as his masterpiece and as one of the classics of American literature, The Scarlet Letter reveals both Hawthorne's superb craftsmanship and the powerful psychological insight with which he probed guilt and anxiety in the human soul.
In 1850 Hawthorne moved to Lenox, Massachusetts, where he enjoyed the friendship of the novelist Herman Melville, an admirer of Hawthorne's work. At Lenox, Hawthorne wrote The House of the Seven Gables (1851), in which he traced the decadence of Puritanism in an old New England family, and A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys (1852) and Tanglewood Tales for Girls and Boys (1853), which retold classical legends. In 1852 Hawthorne returned to Concord, where he wrote a campaign biography of his college friend Franklin Pierce. After Pierce's election to the United States presidency, he rewarded Hawthorne with the consulship at Liverpool, England, a post Hawthorne held until 1857. In 1858 and 1859 Hawthorne lived in Italy, collecting material for his heavily symbolic novel The Marble Faun (1860).
With modern psychological insight Hawthorne probed the secret motivations in human behavior and the guilt and anxiety that he believed resulted from all sins against humanity, especially those of pride. In his preoccupation with sin he followed the tradition of his Puritan ancestors, but in his concept of the consequences of sin—as either punishment due to lack of humility and overwhelming pride, or regeneration by love and atonement—he deviated radically from the idea of predestination held by his forebears. Hawthorne characterized most of his books as romances, a category of literature not as strictly bound to realistic detail as novels. This freed him to manipulate the atmospheres of his scenes and the actions of his characters in order to represent symbolically the passions, emotions, and anxieties of his characters and to expose “the truth of the human heart” that he believed lies hidden beneath mundane daily life. Hawthorne's emphasis on allegory and symbolism often makes his characters seem shadowy and unreal, but his best characters reveal the emotional and intellectual ambivalence he felt to be inseparable from the Puritan heritage of America.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher (1811-1896), American writer and abolitionist, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), a forceful indictment of slavery and one of the most powerful novels of its kind in American literature. Born in Litchfield, Connecticut, Stowe was the daughter of the liberal clergyman Lyman Beecher. Her husband, the Reverend Calvin Ellis Stowe, was also an ardent opponent of slavery. Her first book, The Mayflower, or Sketches of Scenes and Characters Among the Descendants of the Pilgrims, appeared in 1843. While living in Brunswick, Maine, Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin.It was serialized in 1851 and 1852 in an abolitionist paper, the National Era, and issued as a book in 1852.
As a serial, the story attracted no unusual notice. The success of the book, however, was unprecedented; 500,000 copies were sold in the United States alone within five years, and it was translated into more than 20 foreign languages. It did much to crystallize militant antislavery sentiment in the North, and therefore was an important factor in precipitating the American Civil War (1861-1865). Uncle Tom's Cabin, like most of Stowe's novels, is rambling in structure, but rich in pathos and dramatic incident. It is one of the best examples of the so-called sentimental fiction that enjoyed popularity in the United States during the 1800s. Sentimental writers focused on domestic scenes, and their work evoked strong emotions. Like Stowe, many of these authors were social reformists, but they were criticized for creating overly idealized characters.
In 1853 Stowe issued A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, containing an impressive array of documentary evidence in support of her attack upon slavery. She also wrote short stories and religious poetry.