This dissertation intends to address early nineteenth-century American literature, wherein we see writers such as Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman trying to provide a new voice, a democratic voice, to celebrate the new nation and the new experiences. This dissertation is divided into the following chapters including an Introduction and Conclusion, together with six intermediate chapters. The Introduction sets up the background of American democracy, the uniqueness of America as rooted in its innovative society. The democratic system that the white settlers eventually established stands in contrast with the aristocratic formulae of European society.
Chapter One discusses the history of the relationship between America and Europe and the ideas of colonialism and post-colonialism. Of course, this history has something to do with the formation of the United States, a former colony of Great Britain. It seems to me that the newly independent country needs a different discourse to differentiate herself from her former mother country. Her literary achievements lie not only in the fact that their works have changed and expanded American literary democracy, but also in the way they address significant issues that concern the theoretical assumptions of the colonial and post-colonial era.
Chapter Two elaborates on the spirit of the new land and how it inspires the New World. There will be a comparison between Old World values and New world ones. An elaboration on the nature of the New World, the newly formed voice, is actually a renunciation of the old. America needs a new song, argues Emerson. Later Whitman provides the new song. He wants to form a new voice, a new song to sing Democracy, Equality and Liberty in the spirit of the land and how it inspires the New World. The old World has kept a standing army to execute its monarchs’ will. That is not equivalent to liberty in the New World. A free republic will never keep a standing army to execute its laws. It must depend on the support of its citizens. So we can realize that in a free republic people trust their government because the government is empowered by the people.
Chapter Three addresses the importance of the Sovereignty of the Individual to the value system of American democracy. The individual must be free to choose his government and therefore the laws under which he lives. Do not allow yourself to be subjugated by the government you empower, argue Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman. That is the key to democracy. Once you blindly follow the authority of the government, you are a slave to it. For Whitman in his democratic vision, the government must work for the people. To become enslaved by a despotic government is to lose your liberty forever.
Chapter Four focuses on the American poet, who must be the voice for equality amongst individuals who are great and give the substance to the nation. The poet must be democratic in his thinking. All men are equal and great and as such nothing can be excluded from a man but by his own choice; man cannot be ranked into a hierarchy. These ideas are incomparable to those of the Old World. Here we see that there is a break from the old and the traditional. It also marks a break between the colonized and the colonizers.
Chapter Five reveals that, at the beginning of the Republic, the climate of opinion and the intelligentsia hold that America should have the potential and be destined to become a new power, adopt a new voice and engage in a new tradition on the basis of democracy and the individual. Whitman aims to forge a new course, a new literary destiny that is free from antiquated and external convention and authority. Whitman contemplates intense individualism and a celebration of America and the common man. He focuses on his role in the establishment of a new American voice in many of his works.
Chapter Six concentrates on the beliefs of the three writers: Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman. Their voices are certainly those of the new continent and the new experiences. Through their works, they eulogize the new, the independent and the hope for the future. They see Europe as a faraway place. They will not have anything to do with the evil Old World except as a stepping stone to a better world.
The conclusion summarizes each writer’s literary perceptions of American Democracy in the early nineteenth-century which has been already discussed in this dissertation. In one way or another, when we look at these early American geniuses, it is not hard to discern their profound preoccupation with the lack of an American voice in the artistic tradition of America. They are appalled at the extensive reliance on foreign tools to express the New World experience. They see the greatness to be experienced in the New World, and they see absolutely no benefit in using the methods and values of aristocratic traditions in their extrapolation of truth from that experience. To sum up, in the early nineteenth-century American literary perceptions of democracy are sung（as in France）liberty, equality, and fraternity.