The Birth of American Nation in Literature
1-Important Writers and their Contributions
As dissatisfaction with the colonial system and the relations with Britain grew, the literature gradually changed its shape. The writers became more politically, anti-British and revolutionary oriented. Accordingly, rationalism and enlightenment prevailed. Essays, speeches and pamphlets became more important, the Puritans’ religious poetry fell out of favor as man was not considered naturally sinful any longer.
The most important writing in 18th century America was done by the Founding fathers who led the revolution of 1775-1783. They admired the European “Age of Reason” or “Enlightenment”. They shared the Enlightenment belief that human intelligence or reason could understand both nature and man.
Unlike the puritans, who saw man as a sinful failure, the Enlightenment thinkers were sure that man could improve himself. According to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
The Enlightenment is not a historical period, but a process of social, psychological or spiritual development, unbound to time or place. Immanuel Kant defines “enlightenment” in his famous contribution to debate on the question in an essay entitled “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” (1784), as humankind’s release from its self-incurred immaturity; “immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another.” Expressing convictions shared among Enlightenment thinkers of widely divergent doctrines, Kant identifies enlightenment with the process of undertaking to think for oneself, to employ and rely on one’s own intellectual capacities in determining what to believe and how to act. Enlightenment philosophers from across the geographical and temporal spectrum tend to have a great deal of confidence in humanity’s intellectual powers, both to achieve systematic knowledge of nature and to serve as an authoritative guide in practical life. (Bristow)
The 18th-century American Enlightenment was a movement marked by an emphasis on rationality rather than tradition, scientific inquiry instead of unquestioning religious dogma, and representative government in place of monarchy. Enlightenment thinkers and writers were devoted to the ideals of justice, liberty, and equality as the natural rights of man.
-BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706–1790)
2. American Literary Genres
Poetry:
The most popular poets and poems are as follows:
· Philip Freneau:
He was a poet and political journalist who advocated American independence through strong patriotic feeling. One of his works is Pictures of Columbus (1771) that attacked British tyranny.
He was captured and imprisoned in two British ships, where he almost died before his family managed to get him released. His poem “The British Prison Ship” is a bitter condemnation of the cruelties of the British. It is written:
Hunger and thirst to work our woe combine,
And mouldy bread, and flesh of rotten swine
Freneau supported Jefferson against the Federalists
In another work, The Wild Honey Suckle (1786), Freneau sheds light on Nature and human beings. He says:
For when you die, you are the same;
The space between, is but an hour,
The frail duration of a flower
The House of Night
Hills sink to plains, and man returns to dust,
That dust supports a reptile or a flower;
Each changeful atom…
Takes some new form, to perish in an hour.
In this era, poets of the revolutionary era imitated neoclassical style in terms of ideas and style.
They wrote in couplets and blank verse to represent the spirit of the age of reason.
· The Connecticut Wits
Hartford wit, also called Connecticut Wit, any of a group of Federalist poets centred around Hartford, Conn., who collaborated to produce a considerable body of political satire just after the American Revolution. (High 21). The Hartford Wits, all of them undoubted patriots, reflected the general cultural conservatism of the educated classes. They were the first poetic circle. They opposed the ideas of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson. Most of them were Federalists in their politics and Calvinists in their religion
One of the Connecticut Wits was John Trumbull who was known for his satirical writing.
His poem was “The Progress of Dulness”. It was about the adventures of Tom Brainless who enters the university because he is too dull for vice. As a teacher, he “tries with ease and unconcern/ to teach what ne’er himself could earn”. Another famous poem was M’Fingal. It was a satirical work about the silly language used by public speakers.
· Timothy Dwight:
He was influenced by the style of Alexander Pope whose poetry represented Neoclassical style. One of his famous poems was “The Triumph of Infidelity”. It was mainly about the conflict between satan and human beings.
· Joel Barlow:
His famous works include: The Vision of Columbus which was a patriotic poem and The Hasty Pudding. The latter was a mock-heroic poem. It was written in neoclassical style to describe unimportant things like the style of Alexander Pope.
Drama:
Although some priests used theatre for religious teaching, drama developed very slowly in English colonies inasmuch as early settlers of Puritans regarded theatre as an “invention of the devil”. In the South, the first theatre was in Virginia. The first play was Thomas Godfrey’s Prince of Parthia (1759).
William Dunlap was regarded as the most outstanding dramatist in this era. His plays are The Father (1789) and André (1798) which is based on the story of a British spy.
Royal Tyler wrote the first American comedy The Contrast in 1787. It is mainly about a contrast between silly British manners and American new manners.
· Letters
The most dominant letters were written by James Hector John de Crevecoeur. He had French origins, and he was against the revolution because he was afraid that his life would be destroyed by the Revolution. His writings include Letters from an Ancient Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth Century America (High 24-25)
As a result, many American literary texts in this era were mainly about political issues. Most importantly, the dominant literary types were pamphlets, poems and plays.