Transcript Three “Types” of Romanticism

Three “Types” of Romanticism
• Romanticism
Dark (or Gothic) Romanticism
What’s the difference?
• The three “Dark
Romantics” were Poe,
Hawthorne, and
Herman Melville
• Both value intuition
over reason, see
symbols in events,
and believe that
spirituality is located
primarily in nature.
DARK Romantics:
•
Believed nature was
NOT necessarily good or
harmless, and that it
could sometimes actually
be evil.
• Were fascinated by the
psychological effects of
sin, guilt, and even
madness.
• Thought that “duality,” or
the good and evil sides,
coexist in each of us.
Think of it this way:
• For the Romantics,
the “supernatural
occurrence” might be
a fantastic dream
• Wrote “supernatural”
tales like “Paul
Bunyon” or even
fantasy
But…
• For the DARK or
GOTHIC Romantics,
the dream is instead a
NIGHTMARE!
• Wrote GHOST
STORIES and
MONSTER tales
Transcendentalism
• living close to nature, dignity in manual
labor.
• Thought that within human nature, there
was something intuitive that transcended
(existed above and beyond the limits of)
the human experience.
Facts About Transcendentalism
• Originated from German idealism and
philosophy
• Based also upon writings of Thomas
Carlyle
• Centered in New England
• Famous Transcendentalists: Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Bronson
Alcott
Theological Ideas of
Transcendentalism
• Idea that God
“transcends being”
• Emerson’s oversoul
Transcendentalism
• Ralph Waldo
Emerson 5/25/18034/27/1882
• Father died when he
was young
• Scholarship to
Harvard
• Became a
schoolmaster
Emerson cont.
• Returned to Harvard for divinity degree; became
Unitarian minister
• Resigned over philosophical quandary about
administering communion
• Supported self giving lectures; when he couldn’t
make it, Frederick Douglass filled in
• Friends with Hawthorne, Thoreau
• Married twice, but also attracted to men
• Later in life Walt Whitman?
Emerson - 3
• Founded Transcendentalism with the
anonymous publication of “Nature” in 1846
• Owned the pond that Thoreau lived on
(Walden)
• Thoreau left Walden to stay at Emerson’s
house while he was off on lecture circuit
• dementia in later life
Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Self-Reliance
• “To be great is to be
misunderstood”
• Emerson’s
Transparent Eyeball
Henry David Thoreau
•
•
•
•
July 1817 – May 1862
Harvard educated
Died of bronchitis
Emerson, though they
had argued, gave his
eulogy
• Emerson = ideas,
Thoreau = action
Thoreau
• “Civil Disobedience” inspired Ghandi, ML
King
• “Passive Resistance”
• Spent night in jail because he refused to
pay his poll taxes
• Walden: “I went into the woods because I
wished to live deliberately”