The Rise of a National Literature

In the early years of the new republic, there was disagreement about how American literature should grow. There were three different points of view. One group was worried about that American literature still lacked national feeling. They wanted books which expressed the special character of the nation, not books which were based on European culture. Another group felt that American literature was too young to declare its independence from the British literary tradition. They believed the US should see itself as a new branch of English culture. The third group also felt that the call for a national literature was a mistake. To them, good literature was universal, always rising above the time and place where it was written. The argument continued for almost a hundred years without any clear decision.

Novels were the first popular literature of the newly independent US. This was astonishing because almost no American novels were written before the Revolution. Like drama, the novel had been considered a “dangerous” form of literature by the American Puritans. Novels put “immoral” ideas into heads of young people.

In the early days of independence, American novels served a useful purpose. Unlike poetry, the language of these novels spoke directly to ordinary Americans. They used realistic details to describe the reality of American life. They helped Americans see themselves as a single nation. At the same time, the earliest American novelists had to be very careful. Many Americans still disapproved of the novel. The first American novel, William Hill Brown ’s “Power of Sympathy” (1789), was suppressed (stopped) as morally dangerous soon after it was published. As a result, novelists tried hard to make their books acceptable. They filled them with moralistic advice and religious sentiments.

“Modern Chivalry” (1792-1815) by Hugh Henry Brackenridge was the first important novel. In the novel the author wanted to achieve “a reform in morals and manners of the people”. The book is a series of adventures in which the author laughs at America`s “backwoods” (land far from towns) culture. The hero travels around the country with his low-class servant. He experiences problems every step of the way. Although it has been called one of the great forgotten books of American literature, the awkward structure and dialogue of ”Modern Chivalry” make it rather hard to read today.

Another novelist who described the nation`s western frontier country was Gilbert Imlay. His “Emigrants” is an early example of a long line of American novels which showed American culture to be more natural and simple than the old culture of Europe. Far more interesting and important is the work of Charles Brockden Brown. His interest in the psychology of horror greatly influenced such writers as Hawthorne and Poe many years later. Like these two writers, Brown had the ability to describe complicated and very often cruel minds. “Wieland”, Brown`s best known work, was a psychological “gothic novel”- 18^th century story of mystery and horror set in lonely places. The hero lives in the world of horror: murders are committed, people speak with the voices of others or suddenly explode into flames. All of his stories are filled with emotional power. Seduction (leading people into evil) is the central theme of his “Ormond” (1799), in which the evil seducer is finally killed by the heroine. The theme of “Arthur Mervyn” (1799) is the introduction of a young man to the world`s evil. The hero meets many people, including a criminal genius, but they all betray him. Towards the end, the novel becomes moralistic when the hero decides to do good. Royall Tyler also wrote one of the best realistic novels of the period. The hero of his “Algerine Captive” (1797) works on a ship carrying black slaves to America. Then the ship sinks and he himself is made a slave by pirates. The theme of the novel is an attack on the American government for its support of slavery.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16