Definition
A term for a period of American literature that saw a remarkable outburst of creativity in American letters. The American critic F. O. Matthiessen first employed the term to describe the major works of Emerson (Essays, 1841, Poems, 1847); Thoreau (Walden, 1854); Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter, 1850); Melville (Moby Dick, 1851), and Whitman (Leaves of Grass, 1855). Now the term is used to describe the entire American literary output in the 30 years preceding the Civil War. Critical to the development of literature and thought in the period was the movement known as transcendentalism, a rich mixture of Romantic ideas and American individualism.
In addition to the outstanding figures listed above, the period also boasted four poets, venerated in their own time and even today looked upon as important figures in the development of American poetry: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (The Song of Hiawatha, 1855), Oliver Wendell Holmes ("The Wonderful One Hoss Shay," 1858), John Greenleaf Whittier (Voices of Freedom, 1846), and James Russell Lowell (The Biglow Papers, 1848). Unlike these poets, Edgar Allan Poe was almost completely neglected in his time, yet he made the greater impact on literary history. Poe's poetry and criticism proved to be an important influence on the French symbolist poets, and his fiction helped to create two unique genres, the detective story and horror fiction.Other important developments in the period were the publication of slave narratives and of Harriet Beecher Stowe's fictional indictment of slavery Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852).
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