The idea that our American literary culture has been influenced since its inception by that of Great Britain is not new; after all, the two countries are more like two branches of the same tree. Even if the mentalities are based on very different beliefs, they still share centuries of history that are not easy to overwrite. However, at the same time, America is striving to create its own breed of authors, distinct from its contemporaries overseas. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay The first real effort to create an “American flavor” of literature began after the Revolutionary War. The demand for something to show the nation's independence reached a fervor, and James Fenimore Cooper answered the call. Furthering this cause was the poet William Cullet Bryant, who romanticized the American wilderness much as Wordsworth and Coleridge had done for their own campaign. With Hawthorne's international success with The Scarlet Letter and Herman Melville's popularity for his nautical stories, America could finally claim some sort of presence in the literary market, however small the quantitative representation. But it would still be an uphill battle for a while. Due to the lack of international copyright laws, American publishers found it much cheaper and more profitable to pirate editions of British works such as Byron, Scott and Carlyle than to take a risk on properties untested from Cooper, Hawthorne and the United States. as. This proliferation of foreign material was highly successful in establishing a singular force of influence over American readers. Part of this trend was also due to a general interest in Britain itself, with several thousand Americans going abroad each year. After all, if the only thing to read is about the history and customs of another country, then what else to think about but traveling and experiencing the truth first-hand? This is not to say that England had a monopoly on American libraries; they may have published more books (and thus pirated them), but the newborn nation still harbored an enduring desire for something worth having in world markets. For a time, however, the only thing emerging in the United States was a series of American imitations of British literature. Several poems in Nathaniel Evans's Poems on Small Occasions were direct ripoffs of Milton's work, and almost all of the entries in the Boston Prize Poems were heavily influenced by Pope. Byronic heroes were a recurring element in the early works of Richard Dana and Edgar Allen Poe. It was not until 1835 that Poe himself took it upon himself to denounce this blatant plagiarism, drawing attention to Robert Bird, Mattson, Disraeli and Longfellow (Peach). Whether this “epidemic” is the result of a national failure of imagination or the fear of not being profitable is irrelevant; Regardless, it represented more than a step backwards for the nation's literary development. At the same time, it would be remiss to consider this episode a loss. As Stephen King wrote: “Imitation preceded creation.” Over time, American authors began to take the ideas presented by their contemporaries and transform them into something distinctly American. They no longer strictly followed the British ideals of “taking inspiration” from historical greats. There was always aundeniable influence abroad, of course, but it was now seen through glasses of a different American tint. A good example of this development comes from Wordsworth's many admirers. William Cullen Bryant strove for many years to achieve the kind of unity with nature that the great romantic had. He first read a copy of the Lyrical Ballads at the age of 16 and has professed its influence on his works on several occasions. Despite his studious efforts to imitate Wordsworth's stylistic offerings, however, he was never able to find himself truly intimate with the natural world. Instead, Bryant's writings settled for a significantly more panoramic view of his subjects. For example, Bryant's "Lines on Revisiting the Country" - which clearly draws inspiration from "Lines: composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, on visiting the banks of the Wye on a tour, July 13, 1798” by Wordsworth – opens with the following: stanza: I stand again on my native hills, broad, round and green, which in the summer sky With a garnish of herbs and of undulating grain, orchards and beech forests, bask, while the deep sunless glens are hollowed between them, where the scuffle on the shallow beds, the streams are invisible. Wordsworth, in comparison, begins: Five years have passed; five summers, with the duration Of five long winters! and once again I hear these waters rolling from their mountain sources with a soft inner murmur. —Once more I see those steep and lofty cliffs, which, upon a wild and isolated scene, impress thoughts of deeper isolation; and connect the landscape to the calm of the sky. (Norton) The similarities between these two pieces are immediately obvious; although Bryant lacks the specificity that accompanies Wordsworth's intimacy with nature, he still takes the same general emotion and places it in the context of the American wilderness which is, by far, a much more open and vast as the Lake District of England. In fact, it is this distinction that perhaps justifies its generality in the description of the natural world. In England, such openness would be a rare and delightful pleasure compared to the industrialized cities that enveloped people like a swirling fog. America, on the other hand, was almost entirely composed of vast, open plains and magnificent vistas due to its short existence as a "settled" land and its massive size. It may have been difficult for anyone to choose a particular landscape and consider it more “special” than any of the countless others. This may also explain why many of his poems dealt with the darker sides of nature – death, as in “The Murdered Traveler”, and sexuality, as in “The West Wind” – subjects that Wordsworth avoided (Peach). Nevertheless, it can be seen as a definite failure that Bryant failed to fully adapt Wordsworth's style and beliefs to his own climate, thus condemning himself to being labeled a cheap knockoff. Wordsworth also influenced a promising artist named Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had long dreamed of meeting him as well as Coleridge, Landor, Carlyle and De Quincey. Emerson got his chance in 1833, when he met his five heroes and discovered that all but Carlyle were older and less rambunctious than he had imagined. He considered Wordsworth a man who could only be a genius in his own element; once expelled, he was just another tame conformist. Despite his disappointed expectations, he still admired the man's work, but unlike Bryant, he never attempted toto model himself on Wordsworth, nor to attempt an intimacy with nature which had escaped the influence of his contemporary. He found, however, in Wordsworth an inspiring expansion of the human sense of nature; this led him to a fundamental idea of ​​what the poet should be, “someone who understands and articulates the relationship between man and the cosmos; a relationship of which all men have at least a vague appreciation” (Peach). So, instead of trying to directly follow in the master's footsteps, Emerson chose to borrow certain ideas from him and rediscover them as his own. Like Wordsworth, he lamented man's disconnection from the natural world, he wrote in “Self-Reliance.” . . man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present. . . He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature, in the present, above time. » Like Bryant, however, his perceptions were colored by America's vast size, and through this he developed an advanced sense of transcendental mysticism that made him even stronger. distanced himself from nature because he saw that mere physical contact could not satisfy his spiritual thirst to be one with the natural world. Ultimately, despite their considerable efforts, neither Bryant nor Emerson can legitimately be considered the American equivalent of Wordsworth. It would be more accurate to suggest that the sensibilities of the British Romantics sent them off on their own little tangents to chart a new path that would help give rise to the American Literary Revolution. Another major contributor to this scene was Sir Walter Scott, who was for a time the most popular British author in America. It is therefore not surprising that he was a major source of inspiration among the developing literary talents in the state. In particular, Nathaniel Hawthorne was attracted by Scott's offers. Fanshawe, his first novel (of four completed), continually confessed that the Waverley novels were his inspirations, although its obvious imitative nature should have exposed the need for any admission. Scott's immense popularity in America led many authors to attempt to replicate his success with historical novels. These efforts were by definition doomed to failure; what America wanted was something of its own, not another European entry into the Old World. The sad reality is that America simply has not had a history comparable to that of its brethren overseas. (Peach) Hawthorne, as previously stated, had great affection for Scott. He had read everything except L'Abbé by the age of 16, and his enthusiasm would continue well into his life. Hawthorne even considered him a kindred spirit due to the many similarities they shared, especially in their Puritan ancestors who had all engaged in witch hunts. The severity of their morality disgusted Hawthorne. He latched onto Scott's similar distaste for this inflexibility, and it was this connection that would encourage him to denounce these "outdated" methods that stemmed from a belief in man's innate depravity (as seen in the Salem trials “guilty until proven innocent”. The struggle for redemption against this set of laws forms the central theme of Hawthorne's most important novel, The Scarlet Letter, in which an adulterous woman attempts to return to a normal life while keeping her lover's identity secret from the authorities. unsympathetic. This novel was particularly inspired by Scott's The Heart of Mid-Lothian which, apart from some minor differences, was essentially used as a carbon copy blueprint for The Scarlet Letter. Both novels use the exploits of an adulterous woman as.. 18