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Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), the leader of American Transcendentalism. “He captained a group of enthusiast and formed a transcendental club with them. He also helped to set up and edited the transcendentalist journal The Dial. ” He had written many famous essays. Among the best are Nature and The American Scholar, which has been called “America’s Declaration of Intellectual Independence”. Emerson wrote in The American Scholar (1837), a man must "learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within." The main key to this inner world is the imagination. Man's imagination leads to expression. Our expression makes each of us a unique human. Romanticism became the way of thinking for this generation of writers.

Henry David Thoreau was also one of the writers of Transcendentalism, and his famous essay was Walden, in which he revealed the hidden spiritual possibilities in everyone’s life, and to considerate the pursuit of material things.

(3) High Romantics

Due to the great effort made by those geniuses such as Emerson and Thoreau, a wild-ranged national American literature had been laid a solid foundation by the mid-19th century.

There are four important names in American literature to remember from this period: Washington Irving (1783-1859), Walt Whitman (1819-1892), James Fennimore Cooper (1789-1851), and Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49).

Irving will long be remembered for his book of essays and stories, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819), which helping this new nation started its first step confidently. Cooper and Whitman described the character of the nation, which combined the courage and cleverness of expansion, the great sense of destination, and the optimistic spirit together. Hawthorne and Melville expressed the dark side of American dream though their profound and symbolized works.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892), father of free verse, “he threw aside the traditional ornaments and prettiness of verse, and created his own form” (Wu Dingbo, 44). His Leaves of Grass (1855), which contains such well-known poems as I Hear America Singing, and Song of Myself, was regarded America’s first genuine epic poem. He rejected regular meter and rhyme in favor of flowing free verse and celebrated patriotic love, ragged individualism, democracy and equality and stressed an almost mystical identification with America.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), due to his family background, his works always concerned with sin, morality, romance, and had complex Puritanism. His masterpiece was the novel The Scarlet Letter, and his The House of Seven Gables was also well liked. In these works he presented material on the alienation between facts and fancy, by using many symbols and setting to reveal the psychology of the character.

Herman Melville was Hawthorne’s good friend, also an important novelist. Melville's greatest work, Moby Dick (1851) was based on Melville's adventures on the whaling ships. It is the deep "tragedies of human thought" that show his critical understanding of human nature. Today Melville is considered one of America's greatest writers today.

Romanism was extremely influenced in a rising America as America had always had a strong spiritual tradition and romanticism was very comfortable with American spiritual heritage and its ideals of democracy and equality. During this period, the American literature was so changeable that has never been before. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe, these four great writers had given depth and strength to American literature at that time.

4. Local Color And Realism: A New Flavor to American Literature

After the Civil War, the American society was in a turbulent situation through several economical crises. The writings about critical realism and unveiling the dark side of the society were increased. They were mainly focus on bankrupt in countries, difficult life or struggle of low-position people and so on. Thus Romanism was on the wane with passing days, while Realism rose and became more and more popular. 大学排名

 (1) Local Color Fiction and Mark Twain

Local Color Fiction first appeared in the early 19th century, and it had further developing after the Civil War. This kind of literature mainly describes the local life. Its keynote was optimistic, and the language was narrative and humorous. For example, the work of Bret Harte (1836-1902) told us the life of American western miners. Mark Twain was the main writer of this period. He wrote for nearly 50 years, and he had actually written many different types of stories. Nevertheless, Twain is remembered most for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Life on the Mississippi (1884) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). The characters he created were humorous and full of wittiness.  Mark Twain’s work was regarded the witness of America’s pure local life. According to Calkins, “Few American writers have written the same after reading Twain, for he has helped change the entire country with his humor and skillful story telling.” (Carroll C.Calkins, 124).

(2) Rise of Realism

“Realism is the theory of writing in which familiar aspects of contemporary life and everyday scenes represented in a straightforward or matter of fact manner“ (Wu Dingo, 59). Romantic writers focused on the development of plot, make the story as interesting and attractive as possible, while realism writers emphasized the characterization of characters, focused on objectivity rather than an idealistic view of human nature and human experience.

William Dean Howells (1837-1920) insisted that Realism was the truthful treatment of material moral problems of society. And in O.Henry (1862-1910)’s fictions, all his characters were common people and always had an ironical and surprised ending. 

 There was another style of writing developed by Henry James (1843-1916), who was a writer focused on the description of psychology and behavior. He wrote some complex and profound novels such as The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassador, The Golden Bowl, and created psychological realism.