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Albert Bierstadt, The Rocky Mountains: Lander‘s Peak (1863)

Beneath the American Renaissance Literature, Painting, and Sensational Culture in the Age of Emerson and Hawthorne. HS 32 151 (Blockseminar) PD Dr. Stefan Brandt John F. Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien WS 2006/07. Albert Bierstadt, The Rocky Mountains: Lander‘s Peak (1863).

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Albert Bierstadt, The Rocky Mountains: Lander‘s Peak (1863)

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  1. Beneath the American Renaissance Literature, Painting, and Sensational Culture in the Age of Emerson and Hawthorne HS 32 151 (Blockseminar) PD Dr. Stefan Brandt John F. Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien WS 2006/07 Albert Bierstadt, The Rocky Mountains: Lander‘s Peak (1863)

  2. Brief introduction to the topic What will we do today? • Credit requirements and formal matters • Go through our syllabus • Look for experts for each session

  3. Stefan Brandt • Graduation from Kennedy-Institute in 1996 • Dissertation on Turn-of-the-Century American literature and culture (1890-1914) • Habilitationsschrift (2003): The Culture of Corporeality – Aesthetic Experience and the Embodiment of America, 1945-1960

  4. Credit requirements • Regular attendance & thoughtful participation in class 40% • Expert session 20% • Final paper (17-20 pages long) 40%

  5. Course reader Available at: Copy-shop «Kopierservice» at Königin-Luise-Str. 39; opening hours: Mon-Fri, 8-20, Sat 9-14, Tel 832-6606

  6. Additional texts: Library of the John F. Kennedy-Institute, Handapparat 24

  7. Shake hands!

  8. What Is the «American Renaissance»? F.O.Matthiessen, American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (1941) • Period of intense flourishing of American literature roughly between 1830 and 1865 Why «Renaissance»? a. « Rebirth » of American writing – accentuation of themes and idioms that were considered «specifically American» b. Borrowings of American writers of that era from the Elizabethans, particularly Shakespeare - American landscape - the nature of democracy - a fresh awareness of America‘s place in the world - the «frontier» - e.g., Melville‘s Moby-Dick (1851) (scenes, characters) - the legacy of American history (New World vs. Old World)

  9. Genealogy of a concept The starting point for this book was my realization of how great a number of our past masterpieceswere produced in one extraordinarily concentrated moment of expression. It may not seem precisely accurate to refer to our mid-nineteenth century as a re-birth; but that was how the writers themselves judged it. Not as a re-birth of values that had existed previously in America, but as America’s way of producing a renaissance, by coming to its first maturity and affirming its rightful heritage in the whole expanse of art and culture.F.O. Matthiessen, American Renaissance (1941)

  10. America’s coming-of-age There is a moment in the history of every nation, when, proceeding out of this brute youth, the perceptive powers reach their ripeness […]; so that man […] extends across the entire scale, and, with his feet still planted on the immense forces of night, converses by his eyes and brain with solar and stellar creation. That is the moment of adult health, the culmination of power. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men (1850)

  11. America -- Center of equal daughters, equal sons  All, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old,  Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,  Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love.  Walt Whitman (1855) The last two lines, not in the recording: A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,  Chair'd in the adamant of Time. 

  12. What Who Is the «American Renaissance»? - rejection of rationalism and materialism Literary genre? Romanticism - primacy of the imagination - importance of individuality and personal freedom - value of spontaneity and self-expression Transcendentalism / «helle Romantik» Negative Romanticism / «dunkle Romantik» Ralph Waldo Emerson Henry David Thoreau Walt Whitman Herman Melville Nathaniel Hawthorne

  13. Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great. God help the poor fellow who squares his life according to this. Ralph Waldo Emerson Nathaniel Hawthorne

  14. What Is the «American Renaissance»? Ralph Waldo Emerson Henry David Thoreau Walt Whitman Herman Melville Nathaniel Hawthorne

  15. What Is «Beneath the American Renaissance»? David S. Reynolds Ralph Waldo Emerson Henry David Thoreau Walt Whitman Herman Melville Nathaniel Hawthorne

  16. What Is «Beneath the American Renaissance»? David S. Reynolds Ralph Waldo Emerson Henry David Thoreau Walt Whitman Herman Melville Nathaniel Hawthorne

  17. What Lies «Beneath the American Renaissance»? David S. Reynolds To delve beneath the American Renaissance involves two methodological approaches: 1. discovery of «forgotten» texts and writings by authors not enumerated by Matthiessen 2. analysis of the connection between high culture and popular culture The truly indigenous American literary texts were produced mainly by those who had opened sensitive ears to a large variety of popular cultural voices. D.S. Reynolds, Beneath the American Renaissance, p.5

  18. Frederick Douglass Susan Warner Edgar Allen Poe Emily Dickinson 1. discovery of «forgotten» texts, particularly by authors not enumerated by Matthiessen 2. analysis of the connection between high culture and popular culture

  19. Frederick Douglass Susan Warner Edgar Allen Poe Emily Dickinson 1. discovery of «forgotten» texts, particularly by authors not enumerated by Matthiessen 2. analysis of the connection between high culture and popular culture sensationalism -> landscape painting

  20. The Hudson River School (ca. 1825-1875) Thomas Cole, The Present (1838)

  21. Thomas Cole, Schroon Lake (1838-1840)

  22. Thomas Cole, View on the Catskill Early (1837)

  23. Asher B. Durand, Kindred Spirits (1849) (showing painter Thomas Cole and poet William Cullen Bryant in a Catskills landscape)

  24. Frederic Edwin Church, Twilight in the Wilderness (1860)

  25. John Frederick Kensett, Mount Madison (1873)

  26. John Frederick Kensett, Mount Washington (1851)

  27. Tenets of the Hudson River School - a romantic image of America in the 19th century (the nation as landscape) - pastoral settings (human beings and nature coexist in harmony, nature appears innocent) - the origins of the USA are inscribed into the landscape (Washington, Madison) - use of a highly realistic style (no visible brushstrokes), effects of light in landscape (-> luminism)

  28. Syllabus

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