The Romantics

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The Romantics

• 1800 - 1860

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American Romanticism can be described as a
journey away from the corruption of civilization
and the limits of rational thought and toward the
integrity of nature and the freedom of the
imagination

• Typical journey is to the countryside although,
  Gothic-influenced journeys are to the country of
  the imagination

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Escapism Is a Major Influence

• Searched for exotic settings in the more
  natural past or in a world far removed from the
  grimy and noisy industrial age.
• Also utilized the supernatural realm, or old
  legends and folklore

• Tried to contemplate (reflect upon) the natural
  world until dull reality fell away to reveal
  underlying beauty and truth

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Characteristics of American Romanticism

• Values feeling and intuition over reason
• Places faith in inner experience and power of the
  imagination
• Shuns the artificiality of civilization and seeks
  unspoiled nature
• Prefers youthful innocence to educated
  sophistication
• Champions individual freedom and the worth of the
  individual
• Contemplates natures beauty as a path to
  spiritual and moral development

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Characteristics of American Romanticism

• Looks backward to the wisdom of the past and
  distrusts progress
• Finds beauty and truth in exotic locales, the
  supernatural realm, and the inner world of the
  imagination
• Sees poetry as the highest expression of the
  imagination
• Finds inspiration in myth, legend, and folk
  culture

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Development of the novel

• What differentiated American writers from their
  European counterparts? The idealization of
  frontier life
• This idealization is reinforced by westward
  expansion, growth of nationalism, and rapid
  spread of cities
• James Fenimore Cooper changed image of American
  as unsophisticated and uncivilized

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James Fenimore Cooper

• Cooper broke free of European constraints placed
  on novels.
• He explored uniquely American settings and
  characters frontier communities, American
  Indians, backwoodsmen, and the wilderness of the
  west
• Most of all, he created the first American heroic
  figure Natty Bumppo (also known as Hawkeye,
  Deerslayer, and Leatherstocking)

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American novelists looked to westward expansion
and the development of the frontier for
inspiration, creating subject matter that broke
with European tradition. They created the
American Romantic Hero, whose qualities of
youthfulness, innocence, intuitiveness, and
closeness to the natural world set him solidly
apart from the hero of the Age of Reason.
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Natty Bumppo the American Hero

• Young, or possess youthful qualities
• Innocent and pure of purpose
• Sense of honor not based on societys rules, but
  on higher principles
• Knowledge of people and life based on deep,
  intuitive understanding, not from formal learning
• Loves nature and avoids town life
• Quests for higher truth in the natural world
• Handsome and brave

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Fireside Poets

• 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

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What and Who Were 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.
• Often used American legends and scenes of
  American life as their subject matter.
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• John Greenleaf Whittier James Russell Lowell
• William Cullen Bryant Oliver Wendell Holmes

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Lasting Influence 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.

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The Dark Romantics

• These writers include Nathaniel Hawthorne and
  Edgar Allen Poe
• They didnt disagree with the Transcendentalists
  (although they were sometimes called the
  Anti-Transcendentalists) they agreed that
  spiritual facts or ideas lie behind the
  appearance of nature
• BUT they were not optimistic by nature they
  didnt think the spiritual facts were necessarily
  good or harmless

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• They explored the conflicts between good evil
  the psychological effects of guilt sinand
  madness in the human psyche
• They saw the horror of evil that can hide behind
  the mask of social respectability