Description and Rationale for the Course

New England in the nineteenth century created a literary culture through the friendships of many individuals who stimulated each other, provided mentoring and practical advice for each other, and helped determine all subsequent American culture. A greater understanding of the separate literary works can come by seeing and realizing the close connection between the writers and the history of New England. Why did nineteenth century New England writers find the Puritan past so compelling a subject matter? Why was the natural world such an important theme in their writing? How did their daily lives intertwine with each other? How did their friendships and even family relationships help them reshape the image of literature in American culture and the image of American literature in world culture?
Students of nineteenth century American literature may have knowledge that Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Bronson Alcott were close neighbors, but seeing the houses they lived in and the contact that was possible will enhance this knowledge. Thoreau in Walden tells us that Bronson Alcott walked out every Sunday in the winter to visit his cabin. We can retrace his steps. Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne developed a friendship that caused Melville to uproot his family and move them to the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts, where he wrote Moby Dick and The Piazza Tales. The house he lived in there inspired the title by having a piazza. Place is integral to these writers as the names of their works indicate: Walden, The House of Seven Gables, “Concord Hymn,” for example. By visiting these places, we can learn how and why they made such an impact.
Just as the Transcendentalist writers developed friendships and mentoring relationships, so too did other New England writers who were reshaping American literature. James Russell Lowell through his work as an editor was able to shape the writing of many American writers. The “Fireside Poets” of Lowell, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and John Greenleaf Whittier were friends and colleagues. They influenced each other’s view of literature and inspired each other’s writings. We will be able to visit their homes and study their letters and journals which record how they worked together to advance the quality and critical reception of American literature.
As the Revolutionary generation died, New England writers saw the need to keep this history alive through literature. Oliver Wendell Holmes’s poem “Old Ironsides” is responsible for one of the first historical preservation efforts in America. We will see how the history that surrounded these writers and how it inspired the subject matter of their works. We will visit Plimouth Plantation for a look at the Puritan life that is the foundation for much of American culture and profoundly influenced the life and writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne and other writers.
But even more important than place or history is the significance of friendship and community in the writings of these New Englanders. Emerson described the type of friendship these writers could and did develop in his essay “Friendship.” Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is a story of the friendship between Ishmael and Queequeg, and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Blithedale Romance is the story of friendships from beginning to end. Henry David Thoreau includes a chapter on “Visitors” in Walden and it begins, “I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.” Louisa May Alcott’s novel Work focuses on friendships developed through work life, just as Little Women develops the friendships that can develop among family and neighbors. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow examines friendship in many of his poems, and Tales of a Wayside Inn shows how telling stories can cement friendship. James Russell Lowell entitled a section “Friendship” in his collection Heartsease and Rue, which contains poems about many of his personal friends.