Transcript American Romanticism

AMERICAN ROMANTICISM
1800 - 1860
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the
essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and
not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
- Henry David Thoreau
Political and Social Milestones
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The Louisiana Purchase - 1803
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The Gold Rush - 1849
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Education and Reform
Rationalism vs Romanticism
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The rationalists
believed the city to be
a place to find success
and self-realization
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The romantics
associated the
countryside with
independence, moral
clarity, and healthful
living.
Characteristics of American
Romanticism
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Values feeling and
intuition over reason
Places faith in inner
experience and the
power of the
imagination
Shuns the artificiality
of civilization and
seeks unspoiled nature
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Prefers youthful
innocence to educated
sophistication
Champions individual
freedom and the worth
of the individual
Contemplates nature’s
beauty as a path to
spiritual and moral
development
Characteristics (continued)
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Looks backward to the
wisdom of the past
and distrusts progress
Finds beauty and truth
in exotic locals, the
supernatural realm,
and the inner world of
the imagination
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Sees poetry as the
highest expression of
the imagination
Finds inspiration in
myth, legend, and folk
culture
The European Insult

European writers felt America was too new and
uncultured to produce good literature.
 American
poets responded by proving they could
write European-style, traditional poems.
 American prose writers (short stories, novels)
responded by embracing American culture and
establishing a distinctly American literature.
The Fireside Poets
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Worked within European literary traditions
Used English themes, meter, imagery with
American settings and subjects
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf
Whittier, Oliver Wendel Holmes, James Russell
Lowell
The New American Novel
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James Fenimore
Cooper
Natty Bumpo - new
kind of hero
Triumph of American
innocence
Popular twenty and
twenty-first century
Romantic heroes
New American Novelists
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Herman Melville - (ex-sailor) wrote Moby Dick
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Nathaniel Hawthorne - wrote The Scarlet Letter
American Renaissance
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1840-1860
Not really a “rebirth” but a “coming of age”
Transcendentalism
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The idea that in
determining the
ultimate reality of
God, the universe, the
self, and other
important matters, one
must transcend, or go
beyond, everyday
human experience in
the physical world.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
influenced by ancient
Greek - Plato
Also based on Puritan
belief and Romantics
Based on intuition;
optimistic
Henry David Thoreau
Emerson’s close friend
Dark Romantics
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Believed in a world beyond the physical world but
weren’t convinced it was necessarily good
Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman
Melville known as Dark Romantics
Explored conflicts between good and evil,
psychological effects of guilt and sin, and madness
Whitman and Dickinson
19th century’s greatest poets
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Spoke to the masses
Universal brotherhood,
democracy
Aimed for overall
impression, free verse
based on cadence
Saw understanding of
the self as the key to
the universe
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Obscure homebody
In nature, found
metaphors for the spirit
Meticulous word choice,
precise language,
evoking feelings
All but a few poems
published posthumously