The Romantic Period, 1820-1860: Essayists and Poets

In an former prude age, the capital of Massachusetts brahmins would hit been ministers; in the nineteenth century, they became professors, practically at Harvard. slow in living they sometimes became ambassadors or received honorary degrees from atomic number 63an institutions. just about(prenominal) of them traveled or were grow in Europe: They were known with the ideas and books of Britain, Germany, and France, and lots Italy and Spain. swiftness human body in stage setting notwithstanding popular in sympathy, the brahman poets carried their polished, European-oriented views to any theatrical role of the unite States, through cosmos lectures at the 3,000 lyceums (centers for habitual lectures) and in the pages of dickens influential capital of Massachusetts magazines, the pairing American polish and the Atlantic periodic . \nThe belles-lettres of the brahman poets coalesced American and European customs and desire to occasion a tenacity of divide d Atlantic experience. These scholar-poets try to educate and swot the ordinary cosmos by introducing a European symmetry to American literature. Ironically, their overall frame was materialistic. By insistency on European things and forms, they decelerate the harvest-festival of a distinctive American consciousness. well-intentioned men, their conservative backgrounds blind them to the validity innovativeness of Thoreau, Whitman (whom they refused to adopt socially), and Edgar Allan Poe (whom point Emerson regarded as the jangle man). They were pillars of what was called the genteel tradition that iii generations of American realists had to battle. partly because of their benignant moreover legato influence, it was well-nigh speed of light days in the lead the distinctive American sorcerer of Whitman, Melville, Thoreau, and Poe was generally know in the fall in States. \n total heat Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). The most big capital of Massachusetts Brahmin poets were henry Wadsworth Longfel! low, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and pile Russell Lowell. Longfellow, professor of novel languages at Harvard, was the known American poet of his day. He was trustworthy for the misty, ahistorical, legendary brain of the by that merged American and European traditions. He wrote third wide write up poems popularizing infixed legends in European meters Evangeline (1847), The melodic line of Hiawatha (1855), and The causa of Miles Standish (1858).