American Renaissance
Mid-1800s literary awakening
American Renaissance refers to a flowering of literature and thought in the United States during the mid-19th century, roughly 1830–1865.
The period produced Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Melville, Hawthorne, and Dickinson—writers who established a distinctly American literary voice.
The term draws a parallel to the European Renaissance, suggesting a comparable cultural awakening.
Before a war's start
- abolitionismMovement to end oppression
- manifest destinyObvious, inescapable fate
- transcendentalismIntuition-based idealist philosophy
- Seneca FallsHistoric New York reform gathering
Underground Railroad · Emancipation Proclamation · Gettysburg Address · Reconstruction · Gold Rush · Oregon Trail · Compromise of 1850 · Fugitive Slave Act
- EmersonAnglo surname, various namesakes
- Thoreau19th-century American naturalist-essayist
- HawthorneSurname from spiny shrubs
- DickinsonProlific reclusive American poet
Melville · Poe · Moby-Dick · Scarlet Letter · Leaves of Grass · Walden · self-reliance · civil disobedience
American Romantic landscape tradition
- neoclassicismMovement emulating antiquity's forms
- landscape paintingArt depicting natural vistas
- portraitureArt of depicting people
- wildernessUncultivated, uninhabited natural region
antebellum
Before a war's start
- abolitionismMovement to end oppression
- manifest destinyObvious, inescapable fate
- transcendentalismIntuition-based idealist philosophy
Seneca Falls · Underground Railroad · Emancipation Proclamation · Gettysburg Address · Reconstruction · Gold Rush · Oregon Trail · Compromise of 1850 · Fugitive Slave Act · Dred Scott
Whitman
- EmersonAnglo surname, various namesakes
- Thoreau19th-century American naturalist-essayist
- HawthorneSurname from spiny shrubs
Melville · Dickinson · Poe · Moby-Dick · Scarlet Letter · Leaves of Grass · Walden · self-reliance · civil disobedience · transcendentalism
Hudson River School
American Romantic landscape tradition
- neoclassicismMovement emulating antiquity's forms
- landscape paintingArt depicting natural vistas
- portraitureArt of depicting people
wilderness · sublime · westward expansion · nationalism · nature
- literaturebooks, book, fiction, poetry, stories
- American ArtHudson River School, Ashcan School, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, regionalism
- American ClassicsMoby-Dick, Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, Walden, Leaves of Grass
- American LiteratureThe Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick, Moby Dick
- American thoughttranscendentalism, Emerson, Thoreau, self-reliance, individualism
- literary movementsRomanticism, Realism, Modernism, Surrealism, Symbolism
American RenaissanceHarlem Renaissance
Black arts explosion, 1920s
Beat Generation · Lost Generation · Postmodernism · Victorian literature · Modernism
America, American, Americans, Renaissance, Amerindian, Native American, South American, North American, un-American