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Essays on the modern relevance of Thoreau, Whitman, Dickinson, and more “suggest the ways poetry might be both agitator and balm in times of social crisis” ( Poets & Writers ). The nineteenth century is often viewed as a golden age of American literature, a historical moment when national identity was emergent and ideals such as freedom, democracy, and individual agency were promising, even if belied in reality by violence and hypocrisy. The writers of this “American Renaissance”—Thoreau, Fu