+

Age of Reform & American Literature and Art

+The Age of Reform

IntroductionThe reform movements were strongest in

New England and in areas of the Midwest settled by New Englanders

Penitentiaries and Asylums

Dorothea Dix fought for the establishment of insane asylums to treat the mentally ill

These programs were tied to the belief that deviancy could be erased by settling the deviants in the right environment

+Utopian Communities

A few reformers founded “ideal” or “utopian” communities

Demonstrate ways of life that they thought were superior to those prevailing in antebellum American

New Harmony, IN

Hopedale, MA

Brook Farm, MA

Most utopian communities were short lived

+New Harmony, IN

The Rise of Mormonism

Joseph Smith Started Mormonism in

1820’s In the Burned-Over District

Moved to Nauvoo, IL to start a model city Began practice of

polygamy Prosecuted by authorities

and attacked by mobs (murdered Smith in 1844)

The Rise of Mormonism (cont.)

The hostility that the Mormons encountered from others convinced Mormon leaders that they must separate themselves from American society

Brigham Young moved Mormons to the Great Salt Lake region in 1846

+The Shakers

Started by Mother Ann Lee in the U.S.A. in 1774

Founded separate religious communities

The Shakers rejected economic individualism and tried to withdraw from American society

They separated men and women

Banned marriage

Relied on converts and adoption to keep their numbers up

They pooled their land and tools and labor in the process of creating remarkably prosperous villages

Newspapers

James Gordon Bennett

Publisher of New York Herald

Used new techniques in paper making and printing

Used the telegraph

Build a mass circulation

+Newspapers (cont.)

The penny papers filled their columns with human-interest stories of crime and sex

Bennett’s New York Herald and Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune also pioneered in modern financial and political reporting

+The Theater

Antebellum theaters were filled with large, rowdy audiences from all social classes

People liked romantic melodramas best

William Shakespeare’s plays were performed the most of any other dramatist

+Introduction

“American Renaissance”After 1820“a flowering of literature”James FenimoreRalph Waldo EmersonWalt Whitman

Some sought to develop a new, unique American literature

Introduction (cont.)

The painters of the Hudson River School and Frederick Law Olmsted in his landscape design also offered distinctively American visions

+American Landscape Painting (cont.)

Hudson River School

Cole, Asher Durand, and Frederic ChurchSubordinated realism to emotional

effectReflected the romanticism of the period

PBS Hudson River School

+American Landscape Painting

American artists sought to depict their native land

Especially in its primitive grandeur before pioneers deforested and plowed it

+American Landscape Painting (cont.)

New York’s Central Park Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and

Clavert Vaux Shared a romantic view of nature They aimed to refresh the souls of harried

urbanites by creating an idealized pastoral landscape in the midst of the city

Central Park History

Central Park map

+Roots of the American Renaissance

1820’s and 1830’s

2 things transformed the writing of fiction in the U.S.A.

The transportation revolution Opened a nationwide market for books

Spread of the romantic movement Romanticism stressed feelings rather than

learning Suited fiction well

Roots of the American Renaissance (cont.)

Women still were not admitted to most colleges

Women could publish best-selling romantic novels Harriet Beecher

Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin

+Conclusion

Between 1840 and 1860, new technology changed the lives of Americans

Advances in transportation and manufacturing helped the following: improved the American diet made a greater variety of necessities and

luxuries available at lower prices transformed leisure pursuits encouraged efforts to diffuse and popularize

culture

+Conclusion

Negative effects of technology:Increased the gap between the lifestyles of the reasonably affluent and the poor

Increased the gap between middle-class men and women

Led to assaults on America’s beautiful natural environment

+Conclusion

The despoliation troubled writers such as Thoreau and artists such as the painters of the Hudson River school

Hawthorne’s and Melville’s fiction showed that material progress and political democracy did not liberate man from the dark places in his own soul