American Romanticism

1
American Romanticism

• 1820-1865

2
National Optimism

• Rapid expansion of US acreage and population
• Louisiana Purchase and Gold Rush
• Agricultural advancement
• Industrial advancement
• Frontier
• Technological advancements

3
Problems Facing the Nation

• SECTIONALISM
• North vs. South
• Economic security/superiority
• Slavery expansion
• Political leadership

4
Beginnings of American Literature

• Was American lit. to be strikingly American?
• Narrower view
• Resulted in hokey work that tried to encompass
  American in its entirety, praising its past and
  supposed future greatness

5
Or

• Was American writing to be universal and
  comparable to the great works of Europe?
• Broader view that wound up prevailing
• Aided by the achievement of Romantic writers

6
Puritanism
1620-1700

• Purpose for Literature
• provide spiritual insight and instruction
• Mostly sermons, theological studies, and hymns

Puritan Style Simple, Sparce, Straightforward.
7
The Founding Fathers Neoclassicists
1750-1800 Rationalism
Emphasized reason, harmony, and
restraint Also some embraced Deism
8
American Romanticism

• Roots in Europe
• In the U.S., it ran from 1820-1865
• Of all the literary and philosophical movements,
  this one has probably most affected the
  perception of peoples relationships to others
  and to God.

9

• Romance Less formal version of epic
• Noble character on a series of adventures
• Pastoral (wilderness) setting
• Love interest and the idealization of women

10
Characteristics of American Literary Romanticism

• 1. INDIVIDUALISM
• Popularized by the frontier tradition
• Jacksonian democracy
• Abolitionism

11

• Rejection of the Puritan belief in total
  depravity
• People were naturally benevolent
• Mind was a tabula rosa at birth
• individuals are born without built-in mental
  content
• and that their knowledge comes from
  experience
• and perception ("blank slate)
• Corrupted by institutions that
• sought to dehumanize individuals
• People worth highlighting are those
• closest to Nature
• Noble savage
• Truth can best be found in Nature
• unadulterated, uncorrupted by man
• the purest form of man was the
• most Native.

12

• 2. IMAGINATION
• Reaction against the earlier ages emphasis on
  Reason

13

• 3. EMOTION
• Feeling is now considered superior to rationality
  or intellect, as the mode of perceiving and
  experiencing reality
• Intuition leads one to truth
• Truth/reality are now highly subjective

14

• 4. NATURE
• The means of knowing Truth
• God reveals himself solely through Nature
• Nature becomes a moral teacher
• Eden-like and untouched by Adams fall
• A retreat for men
• U.S. literature full of lavish descriptions of
  Nature
• U.S. literature different in the sense of wild
  Nature vs. Europes cultivated Nature

15

• 5. DISTANT SETTINGS
• Both in terms of time and place
• Used to comment on attitudes of the time period

16
Transcendentalists
1840-1855
Part of the American Romantic Movement
Believed that
Truth could not be perceived with the five
senses Human soul is part of the Oversoul or
universal spirit, which it returns to at a
persons death Held nature in as an object of
worship
17
Anti-Transcendentalism

• Hawthorne and Melville

• Evil Abounds
• Not Optimistic

18
GOTHIC ROMANTICISM
EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849) In his short stories
and poetry applied universal standards of
literary criticism. Developed the American short
story brevity concept.
19
American Authors
20
THE KNICKERBOCKERS

• 1.WASHINGTON IRVING
• (1783-1859)
• Not so much fiction as sketches
• Distinctly American settings and characters
• The History of New York
• Narrator Diedrich Knickerbocker
• Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

21

• 2. JAMES FENIMORE COOPER (1789-1851)
• First successful American author
• Grew up in Cooperstown, NY
• Wrote 32 novels, including The Last of the
  Mohicans and The Leatherstocking Tales

22

• NEW ENGLAND SCHOOL
• (Fireside Poets)
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• Oliver Wendell Holmes
• John Greenleaf Whittier
• James Russell Lowell
• 5. William Cullen Bryant

23
The Fireside Poets

• Americas First Literary Stars

24
We watched the first red blaze appear,Heard the
sharp crackle, caught the gleamOn whitewashed
wall and sagging beam,Until the old,
rude-furnished roomBurst, flower-like, into rosy
bloomWhile radiant with a mimic flameOutside
the sparkling drift became,And through the
bare-boughed lilac-treeOur own warm hearth
seemed blazing free. from Snow-bound, John
Greenleaf Whittier
25
What are the Fireside Poets?

• First group of American poets to rival British
  poets in popularity in either country.
• Notable for their scholarship and the resilience
  of their lines and themes.
• Preferred conventional forms over
  experimentation. Attention to rhyme and strict
  metrical cadences made their work popular for
  memorization and recitation.
• Often used American legends and scenes of
  American life as their subject matter.

26
Who were the Fireside Poets?

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• William Cullen Bryant
• James Russell Lowell
• Oliver Wendell Holmes
• John Greenleaf Whittier

27
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

• 1807-1882
• Composed Song of Hiawatha
• Paul Reveres Ride
• (ballad narrative poem)
• Psalm of Life
• The Day Is Done
• The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls
• The Cross of Snow
• (sonnet 14 line poem Italian sonnet
  octave sestet)
• Translated Dantes Inferno from Italian into
  English

28
William Cullen Bryant

• 1794-1878
• Composed
• To a Waterfowl and Thanatopsis
• One of the founders of the Republican party and
  supporter of Lincoln

29
James Russell Lowell

• 1819-1891
• Composed The First Snowfall
• and The Present Crisis and Under the Old
  Elm
• Active in anti-slavery causes
• Satirist and critic
• Lyric poet, best remembered for his nature poems

30
Oliver Wendell Holmes

• 1809-1894
• Son of a Calvinist minister
• Medical doctor invented the term anesthesia.
• one of the founding editors of the journal
  Atlantic Monthly in 1857
• Composed Old Ironsides, which saved the U.S.S.
  Constitution from the scrap yard
• Father of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell
  Holmes, Jr.

http//www.online-literature.com/oliver-holmes/
31
John Greenleaf Whittier

• 1807-1892
• Son of Quakers
• Little formal schooling
• Composed Snow-bound ,
• Maude Muller and
• Barefoot Boy
• Devoted to social causes
• Active in anti-slavery movement
• helped to found Atlantic Monthly in
  1857
• The Civil War inspired the famous poem "Barbara
  Frietchie"

http//www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/720
32
Lasting Impact of Fireside Poets

• Longfellow remained the most popular American
  poet for decades. When Poe criticized him, he
  was all but ostracized. Longfellow remains the
  only American poet to be immortalized by a bust
  in Westminster Abbeys Poets Corner
• They took on causes in their poetry, such as the
  abolition of slavery, which brought the issues to
  the forefront in a palatable way.
• Through their scholarship and editorial efforts,
  they paved the way for later Romantic writers
  like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau,
  and Walt Whitman.

33

• TRANSCENDENTAL OPTIMISTS
• RALPH WALDO EMERSON
• Famous for poetry, Nature, and
  
• Self-Reliance
• Spokesman for transcendentalism
• very optimistic about humans benevolent nature
• Spent much of his life in Concord, Mass
• Lectured and made the rounds as a
• proponent of transcendentalism
• (lyceum)

34
TRANSCENDENTAL OPTIMISTS
HENRY DAVID THOREAU Probably best known for
Civil Disobedience and Walden Practiced his own
preaching Influenced future leaders
35

• Walden
• 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. I did not wish to live what
  was not life, living is so dear, nor did I wish
  to practice resignation, unless it was quite
  necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all
  the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and
  Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not
  life . . ."