19th Century Literature

1
19th Century Literature

• AP Language and Composition

2
History
Rapid growth national pride/awareness Transport
ation, westward movement Era of the common
man Technology--frontier settlement/instant
communication Prosperitycompetition, cause and
effect--child labor, unsafe working conditions
3
Literature

• Quest of the individual to define himself--WHO AM
  I?
• Personal, bold, unique to individual

4
Romantics

• Elevated imagination over reason/intuition over
  fact
• Reveled in nature
• Exaggerated the fantastic aspects of reality (Poe)

5
Transcendentalists

• Flourished in New England
• The understanding a person gains intuitively
  because it lies beyond direct experience
• Real truths lie outside the experience of the
  senses--resides in the Over-Soul (God, but not
  really)
• Emerson and Thoreau

6
The Darker Side

• Hawthorne
• Melville
• Life in grim terms

7
Poetry

• Dickinson
• Fireside Poets popular at that time
• Walt Whitman irregular forms, frank language,
  revolutionary for this time