Civil War Essay
Sofia Gravina Pd. 6 The American civil war had a huge impact on the literature of its time. Because of the preceding literature, it caused people to become unhappy with their surroundings. They wanted to cause a Renaissance-like movement. Many works were written very hostile to convince people of the horrors of the war. Some works also brought out the romance of the war and glorified it. The civil war transformed American literature. Literature works before the war were extremely sterile. Most of the popular works came from foreign countries, like England. There was almost no originality in writing at the time. Every American author wrote like an English author. Because of this, Americans were viewed as inferior. Even Americans themselves felt inferior. They were basically devoid of a literary culture. A feeling of inadequacy caused people to have a need to create something entirely their own. Americans felt like they had a completely different situation which called for a completely different idea of American literature. Iambic pentameter and rhyme schemes in poems were effectively forgotten and intentionally not used. American poets especially wanted to do something different with their writing. They felt very rebellious toward the English way of writing. One theme as American writing became one of a kind was a want for a moral revolution in a reader. The writer wanted the reader to look at something and think about how they could incorporate this into their lives. The reader was supposed to behave differently than before they read. They wanted to change their readers, so they wrote aggressively and hostile. Authors wrote this way because of the destructive nature of the war and the pressing issue of slavery. As the civil war was going on, people had an extreme thirst for their ideas to be upheld. Some authors told themselves