Antebellum American
culture
U.S.
History to 1877
A New Literature
■
Washington Irving
■
James Fenimore Cooper
■
American Renaissance
–
William Cullen Bryant
–
John Greenleaf Whittier
–
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Young America movement
–
Edgar Allan Poe
–
Nathaniel Hawthorne
–
Herman Melville
–
Walt Whitman
Religion and culture
■
“Christian Nurture”
–
Sunday School movement
■
Transcendentalism, 1836
–
Ralph Waldo Emerson
■
Self-reliance; American scholar; nature
mysticism
–
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
■
Moralism in art & literature
–
Hudson River School
■
Thomas Cole
■
Frederic Church
–
Literature of “uplift”
Antebellum culture
■
Uplifting society
–
Education
■
Horace Mann
–
Penal reform
■
“Penitentiaries”
–
Asylum reform
■
Dorothea Dix
Antebellum culture
■
“Doctrine of the spheres”
–
Male sphere
■
Active, intellectual, outdoors
■
Money & power: Politics, business,
professions
–
Female sphere
■
Passive, emotional, home
■
Purity & culture: Church, children, art
& literature
■
“Angel of the home”
–
Equality(?)
■
Discovery of childhood innocence
Falls of the
Katerskills
Thomas Cole: The
Oxbow
Church, Falls of the
Niagara