Jazzmin Te
American Military University
LITR 220
Constance Bracewell
February 9, 2013
American Literature before the civil war Introduction In reference to Burt (p.11), the romantic idealism about American writing gave way to a realistic perspective on what America had become under the pressure of war and expansion as well as the acceleration of technological, economic and social change. In reference to Selcer (p.26), American Literature Library has thousands of short stories and classic novels for everyone to enjoy. In reference to Selcer (p.65), organizations devoted to the study of American authors include a directory of member- societies, and membership and event information. The library of America offers American Literature, including poems, novels, essays drama and other American works from America’s best writers. According to Hewitt (p.4), during its initial history, the US was a British colony especially on the east-coast of the present US. In reference to Hewitt (p.6), therefore, its literary traditions borrow heavily from the British. Nevertheless, its distinct features and the depth of its production make it to be viewed as its own entity. In reference to Hewitt (p.60), who American was and what America had become was the dominant theme of literature as the first outlines of modern American life took shape.
Earliest forms of American Literature In reference to Selcer (p.52), many American authors turned to letter writing as an idealized genre through which to consider through the challenges of American democracy. According to Selcer (p.51), by examining the literature of slavery and race before the civil war many authors demonstrate how the slavery crisis became a crisis of philosophy that exposed the breakdown of national consensus. According to Hewitt (p.45), in contemporary early American literature, poetry novel, essays, collections of stories and activism made a lot of contribution. This was in the form of women studies, gay and lesbian studies. In reference to Hewitt (p.14), artists were not merely seismometers of their societies, sensitively registering the tremors of change. They were simply that change, that molten force on the brink of bursting forth. According to Burt (p.123), throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, artists, authored, scientists, and theologians were obsessed with volcanic activity, many of them making regular visits to the geological curiosities. Burt (p.145), the volcano was a central and defining metaphor for these men, appearing so prevalently and pervasively in their paintings, sermons and magazine articles that one quickly began to suspect there was more at stake than geology. In reference to Hewitt (p.41), the fascination of various authors with volcanoes was by no means personal. To Europeans of the late eighteenth century, the volcano reflected the turbulent energies of revolution. Some conservative authors loudly condemned the volcanic revolution across the channel and warned that hasty political transformations had the capacity to produce violent eruptions. According to Hewitt (p.52), on the other hand, romantic authors rejected soon rejected this version of the volcano and discovered in it an image of them: creative, protean and proactive. To make the world new through poetry or art required the destruction of a fallen, corrupt world. It required the volatile re-creation of the world through molten imagination. According to Hewitt (p.10), in the United States, the fascination with volcanoes took on an indigenous character that of the sublimity of nature combining with a sense of national purpose to form what literary scholars termed as renaissance of artistic creativity. According to Burt (p.21), the American author who identified herself mostly with the volcano was Emily Dickinson. She confessed that she had never seen volcanoes but went ahead to add her convincing description of their capacity for pain and destruction. Butt (p.9) continues to point out that, Dickinson compared her work of poetry to a still volcano which is quiet in the interior but burning outside and that may erupt any time. Dickinson was particularly attracted to the volcano’s unfettered force, its power to remake the world through time shattering self-liberation. According to Selcer (p.45), not all of the era’s references to the volcano were so personal or so poetic. The bitter fact of slavery that had, which had distracted political and social life since the nation’s inception was also figured as a volcano. In reference to Selcer (p.65), the fallacy of enslaving human beings on the basis of skin color prompted him to ask several questions. She went on to claim that the slave holders were sleeping on slumbering volcanoes if at all they did but they knew it. On the other hand, Burt (p.32) argues that, there was the talk of a great volcano of the civil war that erupted in the middle of the American nineteenth century. It is also about the way a remarkable group of writers experienced that civil war, the bloodiest conflict in American history. According to Hewitt (p.74), many writers tried to resurrect their literary career that had been destroyed a decade earlier and who believed that the horrors of modern warfare might enable him to so. Together, the writers had helped to create a literary culture that would play a significant role in the escalation of hostilities. In reference to Burt (p.16), sectional and political animosities had been inflamed by a new national literature. By referring to Burt (p.30), among the complex and closely interwoven causes of the US civil war which was slavery, political strife, sectional distrust and even religious revivalism was an indigenous and influential literature that demanded more transformation from society. Hewitt (p.34) argues that, the writing of various contemporaries helped to propel the country into war. The extraordinary group of writers fanned the flames of national division. In reference to Hewitt (p.47), they had longed for the destruction of a corrupt society and the molten renewal of human potential. They were haunted by doubt and guilt when that devastation last arrived. According to Burt (p.16), the writers came to realize that, as would their culture, that upholding their beliefs had come at an enormously high price and that their faith in liberty and human rights had resulted in unprecedented death and misery. In reference to Fuller (p.33), it is a story, ultimately, about how the war tested their deepest commitments. According to Fuller (p.2), most writers remained convinced of the moral justice of the war, and he consoled himself as best he could in the face of the carnage and loss of life that threatened to destroy the nation. Fuller (p.10) continued to argue that, other writers portrayed the outbreak of hostilities between the North and the South in language that drew upon the storm scene. According to Selcer (p.28), the war was a crashing fury that threatened to whelm the fragile nation.
Conclusion
According to Hewitt (p.16), early American writers turned to writing as a generic form by which to engage topics of philosophical and political correspondence. In regard to Hewett (p.14), this was very alarmist about the American politics and this was the possibility of the tyranny majority. United States, more than any other country, censored the liberty of thought. By referring to Fuller (p.156), the tyranny of democracy was casting dissenters out of social relations-out of the correspondence that regulates national identity. In regard to Hewitt (p.36), the articulation of what constitutes the imperative of American democracy is shaped and contested in a consideration of generic for that both describes and literalizes social relations. According to Fuller (p.66), letters constitute a crucial way by which democracy theory passes on into social practice. Selcer (p.4) argues that, an insistent rhetoric is discovered which depicts American-letter writing as the means by which both national and familiar consensus are to be established. Many people had a historical justification for independence with an appeal to natural rights.

Works cited
Burt Daniel, The Chronology of American Literature: America’s Literary Achievements from the Colonial Era to modern times. Chicago: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004.
Fuller Randall, From Battlefields Rising: How the Civil War Transformed American Literature. London: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Hewitt Elizabeth, Correspondence and American Literature 1770-1865. London: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Selcer Richard, Civil War America, 1850-1875. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2006.