The idea that our American literary culture has been influenced from its inception by that of Britain is not new; after all, the two countries are a bit like two branches of the same tree. Even if the mentalities are of clearly different beliefs, they still share centuries of history that is not easy to overwrite. At the same time, however, America is pushing to create its own breed of authors distinct from their overseas contemporaries. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The first real push to create an “American flavor” of literature began after the Revolutionary War. The call for something that showcased the nation's independence reached a fervor, and James Fenimore Cooper answered the call. Promoting the cause was the poet William Cullet Bryant, who romanticized the American wilderness just as Wordsworth and Coleridge had done with their own countryside. With the addition of Hawthorne's international success with The Scarlet Letter and Herman Melville's popularity for his nautical tales, America could finally claim to have some sort of presence in the literary marketplace, no matter how weak the quantitative representation. But it would still be an uphill battle for quite some time. Thanks to the lack of international copyright laws, US publishers found it much cheaper and more profitable to pirate editions of British works by the likes of Byron, Scott and Carlyle than to take a risk on untested properties from Cooper, Hawthorne and others. Pleases. This proliferation of foreign material succeeded in creating a singular force of influence on American readers. Part of this trend was also due to the general interest in Britain itself, with several thousand Americans going abroad each year. After all, if the only thing you need to read is about the history and customs of another country, then what else is there to think about other than traveling and discovering the truth firsthand? This is not to say that England had a monopoly on American libraries; they may have published more (and therefore pirated) books, but the fledgling nation still had an enduring desire for something that would show world markets as worthwhile. For a while, though, the only thing emerging in the United States was a series of American imitations of British literature. Several poems from Nathaniel Evans's Poems on Small Occasions were a direct copy of Milton's work, and nearly every entry in Boston Prize Poems was heavily influenced by Pope. Byronic heroes were a recurring element in the early works of Richard Dana and Edgar Allen Poe. It was only in 1835 that Poe himself took it upon himself to denounce this blatant plagiarism, calling attention to Robert Bird, Mattson, Disraeli and Longfellow (Peach). Whether this “epidemic” was the result of a national lack of imagination or fear of being unprofitable is irrelevant; in any case, it was more than a step backwards for the nation's literary development. At the same time, it would be remiss to view this episode entirely as a loss. As Stephen King once wrote, “Imitation preceded creation.” Over time, American authors began to take the ideas presented to them by their contemporaries and mold them into something distinctly American. They no longer strictly followed British ideals of "modelling" great historians. There was still an undeniable foreign influence, to be sure, but it was now seen through glasses of a different American tint. A good example of this development comes from Wordsworth's many admirers. WilliamCullen Bryant struggled for many years to achieve the kind of union with nature that the great romantic had. He first read a copy of Lyrical Ballads at the age of 16 and declared its influence on his works on several occasions. Despite his studious efforts to imitate Wordsworth's stylistic offerings, however, he never managed to find himself truly intimate with the natural world. Instead, Bryant's writings settled for a decidedly more panoramic view of his subjects. For example, Bryant's "Lines on Revisiting the Country" - which is clearly inspired by Wordsworth's "Lines: Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye on a Tour, July 13, 1798" - opens with the following stanza: I stand again on my native hills, wide, round and green, which in the summer sky with garnishes of waving grass and corn, orchards and beech forests, bask, while deep sunless valleys are carved between , where invisible streams flow over shallow beds. Wordsworth's, by comparison, begins: Five years have passed; five summers, lasting five long winters! and I still hear these waters, which descend from their mountain sources with a sweet internal murmur. —Once again I see these steep and lofty cliffs, which in a wild and secluded scene impress thoughts of deeper isolation; and connect the landscape with the stillness of the sky. (Norton)The similarities between these two pieces are immediately evident; While Bryant lacks the specificity that comes from 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 place than the Lake District of New York. England. Indeed, it is this distinction that perhaps justifies its generality in describing the natural world. In England, such openness would be a rare and delightful surprise compared to the industrialized cities that enveloped people like a swirling fog. America, on the other hand, was almost entirely characterized by vast open plains and beautiful vistas due to its brief existence as a "settled" land and its enormous size. It may have been difficult for anyone to choose one particular landscape and see it as more "special" than any of the infinite others. This may also explain why many of his poems dealt with the darker sides of nature – of death, as in "The Murdered Traveler" and of sexuality, as in "The West Wind" – topics that Wordsworth avoided (Peach). However, it can be seen as a clear failure that Bryant failed to fully adapt Wordsworth's style and beliefs to his climate, thus dooming himself to be labeled a cheap imitation. Wordsworth also served as an influence for 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 all five of his heroes and discovered that all except Carlyle were older and less exuberant than he had imagined them to be. He saw Wordsworth as a man who could only be a genius in his element; once removed, he was just another domesticated conformist. Despite his dashed expectations, he still admired this man's work, but unlike Bryant, he never attempted to model himself on Wordsworth, nor did he attempt an intimacy with nature that had eluded the reach of his contemporary. Yet he found in Wordsworth an inspiring expansion of man's sense of nature; led him towards a basic idea of ​​what the poet should be, "one who understands and articulates the relationship between man and the cosmos; a relationship of which all menhave at least a vague appreciation" (Peach). So, instead of trying to follow directly in the master's footsteps, Emerson chose to borrow some ideas from him and rediscover them as his own. Like Wordsworth, he deplored man's disconnection from the world natural. . man puts off or remembers; he cannot live in the present. Like Bryant, however, his perceptions were influenced by the vast size of America, and through this he developed an advanced sense of transcendental mysticism that further distanced himself from nature because he saw that mere physical contact could not satiate his spiritual hunger to be all 'one with the natural world. In the end, despite their great efforts, neither Bryant nor Emerson could rightly be considered the American equivalent of Wordsworth. It would be more accurate to suggest that the sensibilities of the British Romantics pushed them to chart a new path that would help give rise to the American literary revolution. Another major contributor to the scene was Sir Walter Scott, who was for a time the most popular British author in America. Thus, it should come as no surprise that he was a major source of inspiration for the development of the state's sense of literary brilliance. In particular, Nathaniel Hawthorne appreciated Scott's offerings. Fanshawe, his first novel (of four completed), continually confessed the Waverley novels as his inspirations, although its obvious imitative nature should have denigrated the need for any admission. Scott's immense popularity in America has seen many authors attempt to duplicate his success with historical novels. These efforts were by definition doomed to failure; what America wanted was something to call its own, not another European entry into the Old World. The sad fact is that America simply did not have a history comparable to that of its overseas brethren. (Peach) Hawthorne, as previously stated, had great affection for Scott. He had read everything except The Abbot by the age of 16, and his infatuation would continue until much later in life. Hawthorne even considered him something of a soulmate due to the many similarities the two shared, especially in their Puritan ancestors who were all engaged in witch hunts. The severity of their morality disgusted Hawthorne. He latched onto Scott's similar distaste for this inflexibility, and it is this bond that would encourage him to decry those "outdated" ways that stemmed from a belief in man's innate depravity (as seen in the Salem "guilty until proven innocent" trials "). ). 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 tries to resume a normal life by keeping the identity of her lover secret from unsympathetic authorities. This novel was particularly inspired by Scott's The Heart of Mid-Lothian which, apart from a few minor differences, was essentially used as a carbon copy blueprint for The Scarlet Letter. Both novels use the exploits of an adulterous woman as a means of reminding us that, as Scott's character Middlesburgh dictates: "We ourselves are all sinners; and the errors of our offspring, for they should not surprise us, being the part they derive from a common part of corruption inherited from us, therefore they do not give us the right to reject them because they have lost themselves." However, Hawthorne had created something that the American literary world could carry on its shoulders as a true example of American ingenuity. (Peach) As with Emerson, it would be a.. 18