1st Edition

The Romantic Revolution in America: 1800-1860 Main Currents in American Thought

By Vernon Louis Parrington Copyright 2012
    539 Pages
    by Routledge

    540 Pages
    by Routledge

    The development of literature between 1800 and 1860 in the United States was heavily influenced by two wars. The War of 1812 hastened the development of nineteenth-century ideals, and the Civil War uprooted certain growths of those vigorous years. The half century between these dramatic episodes was a period of extravagant vigor, the final outcome being the emergence of a new middle class.

    Parrington argues that America was becoming a new world with undreamed potential. This new era was no longer content with the ways of a founding generation. The older America of colonial days had been static, rationalistic, inclined to pessimism, and fearful of innovation. During the years between the Peace of Paris (1763) and the end of the War of 1812, older America was dying. The America that emerged, which is the focal point of this volume, was a shifting, restless world, eager to better itself, bent on finding easier roads to wealth than the plodding path of natural increase.

    The culture of this period also changed. Formal biographies written in this period often gave way to eulogy; it was believed that a writer was under obligation to speak well of the dead. Consequently, scarcely a single commentary of the times can be trusted, and the critic is reduced to patching together his account out of scanty odds and ends. A new introduction by Bruce Brown highlights the life of Vernon Louis Parrington and explains the importance of this second volume in the Pulitzer Prize-winning study.

    Book One: The Mind of the South; One: The Virginia Renaissance; I: The Old Dominion; II: The Heritage Of Jeffersonianism; III: John Marshall; IV: The Older Plantation Mind; V: Adventures in Romance; Two: The Renaissance Of Slavery; I: Southern Imperialism; II: Winds of Political Doctrine; III: The Dream of a Greek Democracy; IV: Adventures in Belles Lettres; Three: The Romance of the West; I: New Worlds; II: Two Spokesmen of the West; III: The Frontier In Letters; Book Two: The Mind of the Middle East; I: The Old Capital; II: The New Capital; III: Two Knickerbocker Romantics; IV: James Fenimore Cooper; V: Some Contributions of New England; Book Three: The Mind of New England; One: The Twilight of Federalism; I: The Passing of The Tie-Wig School; II: Winds of Political Doctrine; Two: The Rise of Liberalism; I: The Renaissance; II: Liberalism and Calvinism; III: Liberalism and the Social Conscience; IV: 4Certain Militants; Three: The Transcendental Mind; I: The Genesis Of Transcendentalism; II: Ralph Waldo Emerson; III: Henry Thoreau; IV: Theodore Parker; V: Margaret Fuller; Four: Other Aspects of the New England Mind; I: The Reign of the Genteel; II: 2Nathaniel Hawthorne; III: The Authentic Brahmin

    Biography

    Michael Young