American Romanticism 1800 - 1860

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American Romanticism1800 - 1860

• We will walk with our own feet
• we will work with our own hands
• we will speak our own minds
• -Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Adapted from www.newauburn.k12.wi.us
• and filebox.vt.edu/users/kheiser

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Political and Social Milestones

• The Louisiana Purchase - 1803
• The Gold Rush - 1849
• Education and Reform

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Rationalism vs Romanticism

• The rationalists believed the city to be a place
  to find success and self-realization

• The romantics associated the countryside with
  independence, moral clarity, and healthful living.

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Characteristics of American Romanticism

• 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

• 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 (continued)

• 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

• Sees poetry as the highest expression of the
  imagination
• Finds inspiration in myth, legend, and fold
  culture

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Rising to higher truths

• through the exploration of the past and of
  exotic, even supernatural, realms--the Gothic
  novel--old legends and folklore
• through the contemplation of the natural
  world--lyric poetry--its underlying beauty and
  truth

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Romantic Techniques

• Remoteness of setting in time and place.
• Improbable plots.
• Unlikely characterization.
• Informal writing style.
• Experiments in new forms.
• Individualized form of writing.

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The New American Novel

• James Fenimore Cooper
• Natty Bumpo - new kind of hero
• Triumph of American innocence
• Popular twenty and twenty-first century Romantic
  heroes

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New American Novelists

• Herman Melville - (ex-sailor) wrote Moby Dick
• Nathaniel Hawthorne - wrote The Scarlet Letter
• More a coming of age not a renaissance

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The Romantic Hero

• The romantic hero was one of the most important
  products of the early American novel.
• The rational hero, like Ben Franklin, was
  worldly, educated, sophisticated, and bent on
  making a place for himself in civilization.
• The typical hero in American Romantic fiction was
  youthful, innocent, intuitive, and close to
  nature.

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Characteristics of the American Romantic Hero

• Young or possesses youthful qualities.
• Innocent and pure of purpose.
• Has a sense of honor based not on societys rules
  but on some higher principle.
• Has a knowledge of people and life based on deep,
  intuitive understanding, not on formal learning.
• Loves nature and avoids town life.
• Quests for some higher truth in the natural
  world.

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The Fireside Poets

• Opposite of novelists - 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

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Transcendentalism

• 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.

• Ralph Waldo Emerson influenced by ancient Greek -
  Plato
• Also based on Puritan belief and Romantics
• Based on intuition optimistic
• Henry David Thoreau Emersons close friend

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The Realm of Darkness

• Edgar Allen Poe with Hawthorne and Melville known
  and anti-Transcendentalists
• Had much in common with Trascendentalists
• Explored conflicts between good and evil,
  psychological effects of guilt and sin, and
  madness

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Whitman and Dickinson19th centurys greatest
poets

• Spoke to the masses
• Universal brotherhood, democracy
• Aimed for overall impression, free verse based on
  cadence

• Obscure homebody
• In nature, found metaphors for the spirit
• Meticulous word choice, precise language, evoking
  feelings