Americans have long seen their soul, their failures and their triumphs through
their writers. No other country has produced such a noble body of literature
as the United States. Hello, I'm Jane Casmeric and welcome to great American
authors since 1650. We shall see in the first episode that even before the
country became an independent nation, its writers were discovering a unique and
new voice distinctive from its old world roots. And we shall see in less than 100
years after its founding in 1776, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Edgar Allan Poe has
succeeded in perfecting that uniquely American voice.
Fifty years after the founding of the first colony at Jamestown in 1607, the
country's first poet turned out to be an educated woman from England. She was
Anne Bradstreet.
As more and more men and women arrived in the colonies, a mysterious change was
taking place. A change that affected not only the people but the colonies
themselves. It was a change that would make it possible for the fledgling
colonies to survive. This change was the emergence of a unique American character,
an independent woman character. And the first person to give expression to this
new American woman identity was Anne Bradstreet. Anne Bradstreet was born in
England and was part of a group of Puritan separatists who fled persecution
in England so that they could establish a new independent settlement in the new
world and worship free from the restrictions of the Church of England.
Well read and educated, she arrived at Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 as an
18-year-old newlywed. At first Bradstreet disliked America. She loved to read and
there were no libraries in the colonies. The early homesteads were stark with few
amenities and there was little time for intellectual pursuits. However Anne soon
discovered life in New England was simple and rewarding. The Puritan faith
sustained her and became a source of comfort. She raised eight children in her
new home, all the while composing poetry between her daily chores.
Her poetry, like Anne herself, reflected the change in colonial women as they
began to embrace what would become the independent American woman.
By night when other soundly slept and had at once both ease and rest, my waking
eyes were open kept and so to lie I found it best. I sought him whom my soul
did love. With tears I sought him earnestly. He bowed his ear down from above.
In vain I did not seek or cry. My hungry soul he filled with good. He and his
bottle put my tears. My smarting wounds washed in his blood and banished
thence my doubts and fears. "What to my saviour shall I give? Who really have
done this for me? I'll serve him here whilst I shall live and love him to eternity."
When her first volume of poetry, the 10th Muse lately sprung up in America by a
dental woman of those parts was published in London in 1650. Brad
Street gained the title of America's first poet. Brad Street's poetry depicted
the personal lives of the pioneer women, women well known for their tenacity and
hard work. Women who were breaking new ground, learning they were smart enough
and strong enough to do a man's work. This change was expressed in Brad Street's
poem on Queen Elizabeth. "Now say, have women worth or have they none? Or had they
some but with our Queen is it gone? No, masculine, who have taxed us long. But she
though dead will vindicate our wrong. Let's such as say our *** is void of
reason, no. Tis a slander now, but once was treason." Anne Brad Street died in 1672
in Andover, Massachusetts. Frontiers woman, poet, mother of eight children, Anne Brad
Street expressed the transformation from English housewife and servant to
independent American woman. Anne Brad Street was a member of that rebellious
group of religious separatists who settled Massachusetts Bay Colony. Cotton
Mather published a history of the first 50 years of that colony in the
ecclesiastical history of New England.
With the dawn of the 18th century, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was in
transition from a simple society whose survival was based in large part on
strict religious doctrines to a new kind of civilization, one of tolerance and
freedom. The new land that would eventually become the United States of
America was transforming the inhabitants as they broke from the ways and views
of old England. Cotton Mather was a pivotal figure in that transition. In 1702
Cotton Mather published his magnum opus Magnalia Christi Americana, the great
achievement of Christ in America. The book was a history of the first 50 years
in New England and marked the midpoint of the country's first major ideological
transition. Its author Cotton Mather was like the country, a man in transition and
the first American to be recognized as a Renaissance man. Mather was born in
1663. Preceded by his father and grandfather in the ministry, he too
became a clergyman. In the early years he was a strict religious leader and even
helped initiate the Salem witch trials. Later he would condemn the killing of
prezined witches. He embraced the principles of John Locke and Sir Isaac
Newton and saw scientific inquiry as a way of understanding ***'s creation. He
helped form America's own version of Christianity. Like most Massachusetts
colonists, he was a Puritan, but he drew upon the experience of living in the new
world to shape an American version of Christianity that differed greatly from
his Calvinist forebears and the Church of England. Mather's Puritan society
advocated the simplicity of doing good and an ecclesiastical experience of ***.
Like the Renaissance men who would follow him such as Jefferson and Franklin, Mather
was interested in natural science and was an early advocate of the smallpox
vaccination, which placed the pox virus under the skin. He wrote 450 books on a
wide range of subjects. When Cotton Mather said that the Puritan tradition in
England offers a nice illustration of how a man's mind begins to make its way.
One pole of thought to another. He could just as well have been making a
statement about himself. He was the first of the transitional figures that
would shape the American mind and experience in the 18th century.
Phyllis Wheatley, a slave, continued the shaping of the unique American woman's
voice. She was America's first black poet.
In the 21st century, America is celebrated for the quality and diversity of its
literature. Yet, who would have thought that the American poetic voice embodied
in authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, and Gwendolyn Brooks, found
its origins in a person who was bought and sold. A black woman, living as a slave
in Boston, Massachusetts. That woman, made free by the power of her poetry, was
Phyllis Wheatley. In 1619, a Dutch ship brought the first black slaves to
England's colonies. Over the next 150 years, slavery became embedded in the
American culture. During this time, every colony enacted slave codes, making black
men and women property. Even those blacks who were not slaves did not have the
same rights as whites. They could not vote and were excluded from public
schools. Even worse, black women's slaves frequently had their children taken from
them and were raped by their white masters. These were the conditions that
existed in Phyllis Wheatley's America. Phyllis Wheatley's journey to fame as a
foremother in American literature began here in the bowels of a ship designed
for the importation of black slaves. Kidnapped from her native Senegal in West
Africa at the age of seven, she endured the infamous middle passage route to
Bermuda and eventually ended up in Boston. There, ragged, ignorant, and exhausted,
she was sold at a slave auction to the family of a tailor, John Wheatley. But
the Wheatley's were not typical slave owners. Inspired by the teachings of
evangelist George Whitfield, who preached equality among the races, the
Wheatley's raised Phyllis not only as a servant but as part of the family. Their
faith was not misplaced. Phyllis, who possessed a profound intellect, took
advantage of this opportunity. Four years after she arrived in Boston, she had
already mastered English and was reading the classics in Greek and Latin. At 13,
inspired by the British poet Alexander Pope, she wrote her first poems. In her
poem on being brought from Africa to America, she wrote of her personal
experience of enslavement and her religious beliefs that freed her.
Twas mercy that brought me from my pagan land and taught my benighted soul to
understand that there is a *** and a savior to one side redemption never
sought nor knew. Some view our saber race with scornful eye. Their color a
diabolic die. But remember Christians that Nick Rose, black as Cain, may be
refined and joined the angelic train on being brought from Africa to America by
Phyllis Wheatley. Through her slim volume of poems, titled poems on various
subjects, religious and moral, Phyllis Wheatley founded three distinct
intellectual movements, the American poetic tradition, the black literary
tradition, and the women's literary tradition, all in her second language
English. Because of her intellectual achievements, Wheatley was granted her
freedom in 1774. She married another free black, John Peters, and continued to
write until her untimely death at age 31 in 1784.
With the War of Independence and the War of 1812 over, American authors no
longer looked to Europe for inspiration. They had an abundance of themes at their
own doorstep. Two authors who wrote about that American experience with great
passion were Washington Irving and James Fennimore Cooper.
As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a distance hallowing,
"Rip that winkle, rip that winkle." He looked around but could see nothing but a
pro winging its solitary flight across the mountain. He thought his fancy must
have deceived him and turned again to descend when he heard the same cry
through the still evening air, "Rip that winkle, rip that winkle."
The sketchbook, Washington Irving.
Just as Rip Van Winkle had awakened from a long sleep, so was American literature
awakening to the possibility of its own unique artistic expressions.
This awakening occurred with the publication in 1819
of Washington Irving's sketchbooks, a collection of short stories including
Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
Washington Irving was one of an early group of people who could say that they
were the first to be born American. His interests were primarily literary
but there was little opportunity of achieving riches as an author.
Also, there was a negative connotation attached to writing.
It was not serious work for young man anxious to get ahead in the world.
His father and brothers were so insistent that he make his way in the legal
profession that he was 36 before he finally tried to make his living as a
writer. He would eventually go on to become the
dean of American fictional literature. Ironically, his most enduring tale, Rip
Van Winkle, was written as non-fiction prose.
Before Irving's publications, Europeans believed that American themes were
non-existent and American writers did nothing to dispel this evaluation.
Americans and Europeans alike saw no beauty in the squalid little towns
along the eastern seaboard or in the unconquered frontier.
The new nation had no grandiose castles, palaces and gardens to stir the
imagination. However, Irving saw beauty in nature as
a substitute for European man-made glories and found symbolism in America's
fast-paced social and ideological evolution.
Americans now had something important and unique to write about,
subjects that transcended international boundaries.
Irving was the first American to write for pleasure at a time when writing was
practical and for useful purposes.
He was the first American literary humorist. He wrote the first modern short stories
and was the first to write history and biography as
entertainment. His use of Gothic imagery foreshadowed
Edgar Allan Poe. Indeed, all other great American writers would
stand on Washington Irving's shoulders.
Few men exhibit greater diversity or if we may so express it,
greater antithesis of character than the native warrior of North America.
The quote was from the most popular book of the day,
read widely in both the US and in Europe. The book would paint an enduring
portrait of Native Americans and create a uniquely American hero, the rugged
individualist, who well represented the ideal of
Jacksonian democracy. The book was James Fenimore Cooper's
The Last of the Mohicans, published in 1826.
The tale is set during the French and Indian wars fought between 1754 and 1763.
In the book, the reader meets two warring Native American tribes,
the Hurons, who Cooper demonized, and the Mohicans, who he portrayed with the
finest of traits in the characters of Ching-gachuk and Angkis.
At a little distance in advance, stood Angkis.
His whole person thrown powerfully into view.
The travelers anxiously regarded the upright, flexible figure of the young
Mohican, graceful, and unrestrained in the attitudes and
movements of nature. Neither characterizations are
particularly accurate. Still, they have made a lasting impression
on the minds of millions of readers over the last 175 years.
The Last of the Mohicans is one of the series of books called The Leather Stocking Tales,
which presented frontier life in the new United States.
In the series, the hero evolved in name from Nadi Bumpol to Hawkeye to Dear Slayer.
He is the quintessential hero of a distinctively American theme,
the back woodsman whose knowledge of Indian lore marksmanship with a rifle,
and home wisdom mark him as a true American invention.
The Dear Slayer, Hawkeye, the Plainsman, trapper, guide,
mountain man, is a classic American breed who is encountered throughout the
history of the United States.
Cooper was America's first highly successful author who used truly American
themes in his writing.
Jacksonian democracy introduced the idea anyone can succeed
into the American psychology. In American literature, this new ideal
found its voice in the American transcendental movement.
Its founder was Ralph Waldo Emerson.
In 1836, his short book Nature,
signaled the introduction of a new spiritual movement for Americans.
A movement steeped in a mystical appreciation of nature and America's
unblemished wilderness. A movement that would be reborn as the
environmental movement 150 years later in the last decades of the 20th century.
The movement was American transcendentalism, and its leader
was celebrated American essayist in poet Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Within these plantations of ***, a decorum and sanctity rain,
a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them
in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith.
There, I am part or particle of ***.
Emerson was born in 1803 in Boston, Massachusetts.
Educated at Harvard Divinity School, his intellect and thirst for knowledge
soon outdistanced the traditional teachings of the Church.
So much so that he would openly break with the Church
and found American transcendentalism, and with it,
a literary style that was uniquely American.
Transcendentalism began as a backlash against the doctrine of established
religions in the 1830s. Joining Emerson were Henry David Thoreau,
Margaret Fuller and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
American transcendentalists believed in an ideal state
that transcended the physical and experiential,
a state that could be reached only through a person's intuition.
Through transcendentalism, Emerson viewed America as a raw,
unsullied land. Because it was unfettered and natural,
Emerson came to see nature itself as a powerful,
all-encompassing divinity flowing through everyone and everything.
He would go on to espouse nature's virtues and its spirituality in his essay nature.
Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a morning piece.
In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue,
crossing a bare common in snow puddles at twilight, under a clouded sky,
without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune.
I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration.
I am glad to the brink of fear.
In his essay The American Scholar, Emerson wrote eloquently about man's connection to the divine.
We will walk on our own feet. We will work with our own hands.
We will speak our own minds. A nation of men will, for the first time,
exist because each believes himself inspired by the divine soul,
which also inspires all men.
Emerson closed with an inspiring call to a new generation of Americans.
It was a call that would lead the way to American greatness.
Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you can form your life to the pure idea in your mind,
that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things
will attend the influx of the spirit. Many would heed Emerson's call, 19th century writers such as
Paul, Dickinson, and Whitman would establish a purely American form of literature, free from
European influences. But it would be 100 years after Emerson's death in 1882, that is called to
glorify and sanctify nature would be revitalized in America's environmental movement.
Edgar Allan Poe was an American original, the first in a long line of universally acknowledged,
gifted, and brilliant authors, a writer for all the ages.
Edgar Allan Poe was America's first truly great writer, a man in the mold of Homer,
Shakespeare and Bosecke, a man who produced writing for all ages. He published his most famous
point of the Raven in 1845. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, while I nodded, nearly napping,
suddenly there came a tapping as if someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
Edgar Allan Poe wrote in a style that could only be described as individualistic. His works were
so different that they had no nationality on which to be based. He was an American original.
Best known for his poems in short fiction, Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, 1809,
and died in Baltimore in 1849. Open here, I flung the shutter,
when with many a flirt and flutter in their step to stately raven of the saintly days of your.
Poe virtually created the detective story and perfected the psychological thriller.
He also produced some of the most influential literary criticism of his time.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, by the grave and stern decorum
of the countenance at war. Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou, I said,
I sure know, Craven, ghastly, grim, and ancient raven, wandering from the nightly shore.
Poe's life and writings were filled with paradox. He was basically insecure and highly emotional.
But his writings were structured. His poetry and prose contain an apocalyptic sense of doom,
but he combined this with a romantic innocence of childhood.
But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only that one word,
as if his soul in that one word he did out poor. Nothing farther than he uttered,
not a feather than he fluttered, till I scarcely more than muttered. Other friends have flown before.
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before. Then the bird said, "Nevermore."
The last paradox was that in the end Poe died famous. His poems and short stories widely
acclaimed, yet he had been unable to make a living from his right.
Thanks for watching this first episode of the Great American Authors series.
In the next episode, we shall see how a mere 10 years produced the first outpouring of American
classics by such noted authors as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman.
I'm Jane Kesmeric.
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