American Romanticism and the Role of Nature and the Land in the American Sublime

Cole's, "The Oxbow," (1836) does a good job of capturing the Romantic connection between Nature and the Sublime.  We tend to think of the Frontier as Romantic, but imagine it from the perspective of someone in the early Republic.  Every inch of the land had to be pushed back, crossed and made productive, and Americans were at once fascinated by the wilderness and overwhelmed by the power of Nature and enormity of the task. To "tame" the "wild" was to thought of as bringing "civilization" to what seemed a "wild" land which seem to stretch forever west.

Look at "The Oxbow," above, Cole--its creator--painted in the 1820s and '30s.  Now, look at the following image from 1872, just after the era we are studying in Early American Literature ends.  The painting below is called, "American Progress," and it shows the movement of "America," an "civilized" America imagined as  pushing back the darkness of the wilderness, opening the land for trains, wagon trains, and settlement.  By the 1870s, there was a sense that the land would and could be conquered.  It no longer seemed as overwhelming to those who attempted to imagination it, and there was a sense that "progress" would win out.  The earlier Romantics were less sure, and it shows in their art:

From the 1820s-1850s, the Sublime found in Nature and the Wilderness was, in part, invoked by an unresolved reaction and awe at the size of American landscape, how much of it remained unknown and unsettled, and at the power of Nature over humankind; however, this intimidation was balanced by a sense of sublime awe in American "progress" and what was being done to tame the wilderness and bring "light" and "civilization" to the land.  These images of the land were in a dynamic, unresolved tension throughout the American Romantic era, and they remain a part of the American relationship with the land and the notion of frontiers today.

Where did Thoreau's vision in "Walking" and in Walden fit into these different ways of viewing the land?

Extra-Credit for those who visit the VMFA, examine paintings from the Civil War and American Romantic Period and discuss how they represent the sublime and the American landscape.