Cultural Trends of the 1800s

Fine Arts: • Increase in an educated population• Improved financial ability allowed the citizens of the USA to purchase & participate in this

Excerpt from Civil Disobedience“That government is best which governs not at all…Witness the present Mexican War, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure.”

—Henry David Thoreau

Questions to answer on the back of yesterday’s notes (#64):

1. Paraphrase this quote using words from today.2. Do you agree with this quote or not? Explain why or

why not? 3. What is civil disobedience?

http://all-free-download.com/free-vector/vector-clip-art/book_01_clip_art_19678.html

American storytellers Washington Irving: author

of Rip Van Winkle & Legend of Sleepy Hollow, 1st American writer to enjoy fame in Europe as well as in the U.S.

James Fenimore Cooper: wrote The Last of the Mohicans & The Deerslayer

Edgar Allen Poe: mystery author, “The Raven”

Washington Irving

J. F. Cooper

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/James_Fenimore_Cooper_by_Jarvis.jpg/495px-James_Fenimore_Cooper_by_Jarvis.jpg

http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/20800/20838/washtnirving_20838_lg.gif

American Storytellers continued Herman Melville: wrote

Moby Dick in 1851 William Wells Brown:

published Clotel & The Escape, or A Leap for Freedom (play), nation’s 1st published black novelist & playwright

Nathaniel Hawthorne: author of The Scarlet Letter

Mark Twain: wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Nathaniel Hawthorne

http://www.wpclipart.com/American_History/Historic_figures/historic_figures_3/Nathaniel_Hawthorne.png

http://shs.umsystem.edu/outreach/mohip/images/leap_poster_lg.jpg

Poetic voices Henry Wadsworth

Longfellow: favorite poet of Americans in mid-1800s, wrote “Paul Revere’s Ride”

Walt Whitman: published Leaves of Grass

Emily Dickinson: published 7 poems while alive, wrote 1,700 “discovered” after her death

Whitman

http://www.uiowa.edu/~c008055/images/emily_dickinson.jpg

Emily Dickinson

http://www.uky.edu/Libraries/images/SCDPbooks/whitman.jpg

Transcendentalism American literary,

political and philosophical movement in the early 19th century

Examples: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau

Critics of their contemporary society for its unthinking conformity

Urged each individual to find their independent relation to the universe, particularly using solitude in nature

Art: American landscapes

George Catlin: traveled to the Far West, recorded the daily life of Indians through paintings

http://americanart.si.edu/images/1985/1985.66.409_1b.jpg

http://americanart.si.edu/images/1985/1985.66.149_1b.jpg

American landscapes cont.

Hudson River School

1. Painted landscapes

2. Paintings reflect 3 themes of America in the 19th century: discovery, exploration & settlement

3. Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand

Kindred Spirits by Durand

The Oxbow by ColeBoth: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ihas/icon/hudson.html

American landscapes cont. Albert Bierstadt –

River Landscape

John James Audubon• Subjects: American wildlife, particularly birds

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/john-james-audubon/drawn-from-nature/106/

Music Slave spirituals & gospel

music “Battle Hymn of the Republic”

1. Written at the beginning of the Civil War

2. Used music from abolitionists song “John Brown’s Body”

3. Became popular Civil War song of the Union Army

4. Written by Julia Ward Howe “Dixie” – Lyrics by Daniel

Decateur Emmett

http://www.mcgath.com/freesongs.html --Lyrics

http://www.juliawardhowe.org/

http://www.usafband.af.mil/ensembles/BandEnsSongs.asp?ensemble=63 –Sound Recoding from the US Air Force Band