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Famous American Authors: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nathanial Hawthorne

Decent Essays

The period of the late eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth was cosidered the Romantic era in Europe and in America. This movement was a large scale rebellion against the Englightment period ideas where science and logic ruled the literary arts. Authors took several approaches on how to convey to the readers social and metaphysical opinions through the tone in a series of novels published. Tone is apparent in much of the American Romantic era writing including that of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe. Ralph Waldo Emerson was a self proclaimed Transcendentalist believe that every man was infinitely good and pure goodness was possible. Emerson was also an Idealist, someone who trusted that man’s …show more content…

This Transcendental idea as well as that it is essential for man to recognize the Spirit in natue were an underlying message Emerson was trying to convey in his radical essays. The radicialness of Emerson’s work prompted a movement, known as the Antitranscendentalism or Gothic movement. Nathanial Hawthorne was a promanent member of the American Antitranscendentalist movement and this was easily detectable in this works. Hawthorne’s use of allegory and symbolism in his literature was a common way of introducing metaphysical tone to a simple story, such as in The Scarlet Letter. Anti-Transcendentalism was characterized by the belief that nature is fully capable of horrible violence and man has the ability to be evil, which offers a lot of negative evidence towards Transcendentalism. Hawthorne’s use of literary techniques to transport ideals of Antitranscendentalism to his readers, and it also proved that every man could be corrupted and altered by society like in Young Goodman Brown. His works interrputed meanings showed the important of tolerance and understanding by society over differences in religious and intellectual planes. Another Antitranscendentalist of the Romantic era was Edgar Allan Poe, considered the first American Gothic writer. Poe was severly unhappy with American society and the injustices it caused, thus his strong dislike for the Transcendental ideals of Utopian ideals. Poe belonged to the section of authors who ackowledged the

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