Difference Enlightenment/Romanticism by comparing Crevecoeur and Thoreau
Essay : Enlightenment/Romanticism 04.05.2014
By comparing an excerpt by J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s Letter III What is an American? from Enlightenment and Henry David Thoreaus’s excerpt “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” from Walden from Romanticism it becomes clear, that the difference between those two periods is the simplification of the lifestyle.
In his letter, Crèvecoeur writes about the habitations and his contentment of his environment. He even goes this far that he says that they are “the most perfect society now existing in the world” (p.45). In his eyes, everything what is built is good: “fair cities, substantial villages, extensive fields ...” (p.44). Crèvecoeur tries to thrill and convince the reader with his thoughts. He is very thankful for the first settled people that they have done so much with this “ungrateful of soil” (p.45) in a short time. He mentions one reasoning respect, when he says that there are no “lords who possess everything and of a herd or people who have nothing” (p.44). “The rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other” (p.44). What Crèvecouer wants to say is that all people in America work together and this is why this aspect is so important and makes it a better life as in Europe. He denotes this community as a “great chain which links us all” (p.45) and is proud of what the first Englishmans when they arrived in America have done until now. “A hundred years ago all was wild, woody and uncultivated!” (p.44). So if we compare the aspect of nature and the habitations which are replaced by it, we really see that he prefers the civilization.
But this notion changed over the years. Thoreau has got another opinion about the aspect of nature and civilization. His main thought in the excerpt from Walden is that everything has to be simplified. In this excerpt
1 he compares the civilization with the nature, cause he identifies the nation as a small part of the nature: “… we live like ants; […]
By comparing an excerpt by J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s Letter III What is an American? from Enlightenment and Henry David Thoreaus’s excerpt “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” from Walden from Romanticism it becomes clear, that the difference between those two periods is the simplification of the lifestyle.
In his letter, Crèvecoeur writes about the habitations and his contentment of his environment. He even goes this far that he says that they are “the most perfect society now existing in the world” (p.45). In his eyes, everything what is built is good: “fair cities, substantial villages, extensive fields ...” (p.44). Crèvecoeur tries to thrill and convince the reader with his thoughts. He is very thankful for the first settled people that they have done so much with this “ungrateful of soil” (p.45) in a short time. He mentions one reasoning respect, when he says that there are no “lords who possess everything and of a herd or people who have nothing” (p.44). “The rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other” (p.44). What Crèvecouer wants to say is that all people in America work together and this is why this aspect is so important and makes it a better life as in Europe. He denotes this community as a “great chain which links us all” (p.45) and is proud of what the first Englishmans when they arrived in America have done until now. “A hundred years ago all was wild, woody and uncultivated!” (p.44). So if we compare the aspect of nature and the habitations which are replaced by it, we really see that he prefers the civilization.
But this notion changed over the years. Thoreau has got another opinion about the aspect of nature and civilization. His main thought in the excerpt from Walden is that everything has to be simplified. In this excerpt
1 he compares the civilization with the nature, cause he identifies the nation as a small part of the nature: “… we live like ants; […]