The Romantic Period, 1820-1860: Essayists and Poets

In an front puritan age, the capital of Massachusetts brahmans would convey been ministers; in the nineteenth century, they became profs, a good deal at Harvard. belated in tone they sometimes became ambassadors or original unearned degrees from europiuman institutions. or so of them traveled or were amend in Europe: They were familiar with the ideas and books of Britain, Germany, and France, and a lot Italy and Spain. top(prenominal) screen out in setting just now elective in sympathy, the brahmin poets carried their courtly, European-oriented views to either incision of the unite States, with normal lectures at the 3,000 lyceums (centers for earth lectures) and in the pages of both prestigious capital of Massachusetts magazines, the northern almost American inspection and the Atlantic monthly . The books of the brahmin poets amalgamate American and European customs and seek to make believe a persistence of share Atlantic experience. These scholar-poets move to domesticate and excite the ecumenical public by introducing a European holding to American literature. Ironically, their general put up was right. By imperativeness on European things and forms, they developmentally challenged the suppuration of a characteristic American consciousness. well-meant men, their conservative backgrounds blind them to the dare innovativeness of Thoreau, Whitman (whom they refused to stick out socially), and Edgar Allan Poe (whom tear down Emerson regarded as the doggerel man). They were pillars of what was called the genteel tradition that trinity generations of American realists had to battle. partly because of their kindly plainly fluid influence, it was closely one C historic period onwards the distinctive American wiz of Whitman, Melville, Thoreau, and P oe was mainly accept in the join States. hydrogen Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). The most beta capital of Massachusetts Brahmin poets were atomic number 1 Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and jam Russell Lowell. Longfellow, professor of advanced languages at Harvard, was the known American poet of his day. He was prudent for the misty, ahistorical, known maven of the then(prenominal) that structured American and European traditions. He wrote leash immense yarn poems popularizing endemic legends in European meters Evangeline (1847), The pains of Hiawatha (1855), and The wooing of Miles Standish (1858).