A Push Chapter 11

Front 1

American Renaissance

Back 1

A flowering of literature in the United States that began in the 1820s. Not only were Americans writing more books; increasingly, they sought to depict the features of their nation in literature and art.

Front 2

American System of manufacturing

Back 2

System of manufacturing that used interchangeable parts.

Front 3

Edgar Allan Poe

Back 3

Famous American writer who short stories such as “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) and “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846). Although he was a major contributor to the American Renaissance, Poe paid little heed to Emerson’s call for a literature that would comprehend the everyday experiences of ordinary Americans.

Front 4

Epidemics

Back 4

Diseases in a human population during a certain period of time.

Front 5

Frederick Law Olmstead

Back 5

Chief architect of New York City’s Central Park.

Front 6

George Catlin

Back 6

American painter whose main goal was to paint as many Native Americans as possible in their pure and “savage” state.

Front 7

Henry David Thoreau

Back 7

American writer who shared Emerson’s intellectual pursuit. However, Thoreau was more of a doer than Emerson was. At one point he went to jail rather than pay his poll tax. This revenue, he knew, would support the war with Mexico, which he viewed as part of a southern conspiracy to extend slavery. The experience led Thoreau to write “Civil Disobedience” (1849), in which he defended a citizen’s right to disobey unjust laws. He also wrote Walden where he argued that he (and by implication, others) could satisfy material wants with only a few weeks’ work each year and thereby leave more time for reexamining life’s purpose. The problem with Americans, he said, was that they turned themselves into “mere machines” to acquire wealth without asking why.

Front 8

Herman Melville

Back 8

Famous author of Moby Dick. Although he was a major contributor to the American Renaissance, Melville paid little heed to Emerson’s call for a literature that would comprehend the everyday experiences of ordinary Americans.

Front 9

Hudson River school

Back 9

American art movement in the mid–1800s. The artists primarily painted scenes of the region around the Hudson River, a waterway that Americans compared in majesty to the Rhine.

Front 10

James Fenimore Copper

Back 10

The first important figure of the American Renaissance. His most significant innovation was to introduce a distinctively American fictional character, the frontiersman Natty Bumppo (“Leatherstocking”).

Front 11

Margaret Fuller

Back 11

One of the most remarkable figures during the Transcendentalist movement, she contended that no woman could achieve the kind of personal fulfillment lauded by Emerson unless she developed her intellectual abilities and overcame her fear of being called masculine.

Front 12

McCormick Reaper

Back 12

Mechanical reaper invented by Cyrus McCormick in 1847.

Front 13

Minstrel shows

Back 13

Live shows when white men in blackface took to the stage to present an evening of songs, dances, and humorous sketches. Minstrelsy borrowed some authentic elements of African– American culture, especially dances characterized by the sliding, shuffling step of southern blacks, but most of the songs had origins in white culture.

Front 14

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Back 14

Wellknown author of The Scarlet Letter. Although he was a major contributor to the American Renaissance, Hawthorne paid little heed to Emerson’s call for a literature that would comprehend the everyday experiences of ordinary Americans.

Front 15

New York Stock Exchange

Back 15

New York City’s center of financing where leading railroads were traded in the 1850s

Front 16

P. T. Barnum

Back 16

Small–town grocer from Connecticut who after moving to New York City in 1834, started a new career as an entrepreneur of popular entertainment. A few years later, he established the American Museum, which became the most popular museum in America at the time because it showcased collections of curiosities and fake exhibits. He eventually founded the now–famous Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus.

Front 17

Penny Press

Back 17

Inexpensive newspapers that were produced in the 1830s.

Front 18

Phrenology

Back 18

The idea that the human mind comprised thirty–seven distinct faculties, or “organs,” each located in a different part of the brain. Phrenologists thought that the degree of each organ’s development determined skull shape, so that they could analyze a person’s character by examining the bumps and depressions of the skull.

Front 19

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Back 19

The most influential spokesman for American literary nationalism. As the leading light of the movement known as transcendentalism, an American offshoot of romanticism, Emerson contended that our ideas of God and freedom are inborn; knowledge resembles sight—an instantaneous and direct perception of truth. That being so, Emerson concluded, learned people enjoy no special advantage in pursuing truth. All persons can glimpse the truth if only they trust the promptings of their hearts.

Front 20

Walt Whitman

Back 20

Well–known author of Leaves of Grass, which shattered most existing poetic conventions. Not only did Whitman write in free verse, but the poems were also lusty and blunt at a time when delicacy reigned in the literary world.