Main currents in American thought

II. Brockden Brown and French liberalisms—influence of Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. Explanation of their appeal. Alcuin; A Dialogue. Arthur Mervyn, a study in Godwinianism. Wieland and the “blood-pudding” school. Influence on later fiction in America

I. Washington Irving: His detachment. A flâneur. His years abroad. Reaction to the Reform Bill. An incipient liberal. Rediscovery of America. The mission to Madrid. Contrast with Cooper. Political principles—drift towards the middle class. A Tour of the Prairies, Astoria, Life of Washington. His early and late work contrasted

II. James Kirke Paulding: His origins—a son of the people, distrustful of the middle class. Defense of America against the English critics. His idealism. The Backwoodsman; The Puritan and his Daughter. His rejection of English “blood-pudding” romantic. A Jeffersonian: Letters from the South an echo of John Taylor’s agrarianism; opposed Clay’s American Plan; satirized Clay in Koningsmarke. Westward Ho!; The Dutchman’s Fireside. An amateur in letters

The problem of Cooper. A barometer of his generation. Troubled by the transition from an aristocratic to a capitalistic order—lingered between worlds. His Tory origins—Judge William Cooper. Abandoned Federalism yet ill content with Democracy. Effect of his European travels. Likeness to John Adams—hated all cant. Two phases of his criticism: the older Federalist theories; the fallacies of capitalism. The Monikins—an attack on the stake-in-society theory. The Redskins—an attack on capitalistic exploitation. A romanticized eighteenth century his refuge against the vulgarities of Jacksonianism and capitalism. Home as Found and The Redskins as studies in social criticism. His love of the wilderness and hatred of the frontier. The anti-rent trilogy. Picture of the squatter. His growing realism—Wyandotté. His later political philosophy—an ethical interpretation of sovereignty. Failure of the critics to understand Cooper

I. William Cullen Bryant—Puritan Liberal: Injustice done him by neglect of his journalistic work. An original mind. Transition from Federalist to Democrat. Influence of the English economists—an English liberal. Never a Jeffersonian, but anti-Whig. Influence of William Leggett and Parke Godwin. Attitude towards the labor movement. Defense of free speech. A critic of the rising capitalism

II. Horace Greeley—Yankee Radical: A practical man seeking a way out of the confusions of the times. His early life; defense of protectionism. His working back to Jeffersonianism. Interest in Fourierism. Champion of the farmer and the wage-earner. His “Vote Yourself a Farm” policy. Interest in the proletariat—interpretation of slavery. Coöperation. An idealist

III. Herman Melville—Pessimist: The source of his pessimism in life itself—effect of frustrations. His ancestry: the Gansevoort strain; the Melville strain. Contrast between mother and son; effect of his marriage. Stages toward pessimism marked by Typee, Mardi, Moby Dick, Pierre. Transcendentalism and reality. His democracy. A critic of America. Spiritual dissatisfactions—Clarel

The New England renaissance the last expression in America of eighteenth-century revolutionary thought. Given a native ethical bias. Twin tendencies of earlier New England. Static conditions of life—the renaissance a movement of liberalism, shaped by the Puritan strain