Pastoral,Machine And American Ideals: The Cities In American Romantic Literature

The American romanticism developed at the time when the Industrial Revolution started,it was a time when the USA was having reformations on ideals and life as well as having technical revolution.And there was also a heated debate between the “garden” and the “machine” throughout the time.When the New England newly got independent,the countryside was regarded as the foundation of the country,which helped to form a unique rough and free American pastoral ideal.However,after the industrialization in the 19 th century,the rapid development of machines promoted the birth of many cities of larger scales,which caused the changes of space structure.The agricultural society gradually turned into a society with the city as its center.At the same time,it caused a series of problems,which finally led to the break of the Civil War.During this period of time,the American romantic writers noticed keenly the compact that industry brought to the traditional natural life,and wrote about American cities in their works.Large numbers of literary works that set cities and rural areas as background emerged,which reflected the conflicts between the pastoral life and the cities,and explored the changes of mood and culture in the social transformation period.The dissertation starts with the American classic romantic writers,and aims at discovering the changes of their altitude towards the pastoral and the city life by analyzing the writing about them by seven classic writers.With the advances of the Industrial Revolution,the machine swallowed up the villages,and cities replaced the countryside.The contradictions and struggle inspired the writers,and changed their opinions about the cities.And finally,the cities changed from a hopeful place to the target to be criticized.At the same time,the pastoral life turned to be a spiritual ideal instead of a real life.Originated from the classic times and developed for two thousand years in Europe,the pastoral ideals were brought from England to America,and combined with the Bible ideals in the North America,in the industrial time,it finally became a moral system as well as a spiritual symbol,which stood as the opposite to the city.The explorations of the writers helped to form the unique American romanticism.What is more,it also helped with the independence of the American spirit and the formation of American literature.Gradually,the traditional pastoral ideals declined and gradually turned to be a popular and sentimental one,while the city and the common people rose rapidly and made the American romanticism seemed to be plebificable,practical and useful,which finally contributed to the further development of the American literature.