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American Romanticism 1800-1860

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Title: American Romanticism 1800-1860 Author: bln16624 Last modified by: bln16624 Created Date: 10/23/2003 1:09:26 PM Document presentation format – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: American Romanticism 1800-1860


1
American Romanticism1800-1860
2
A Romantic American Journey
  • What do you think of when you hear the word
    Romanticism? List your answers in your notes.
  • You probably listed things like Valentines Day,
    roses, weddings, romance, love or the like.
  • WRONG!! Romanticism has not a thing to do with
    romance or love!

3
If it has nothing to do with romance and love,
what is it?
  • American Romanticism can best 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
    imagination.
  • Remember, each unit in this course builds upon
    the one before it. From this definition, what
    changes can you see from the beliefs of the
    Rationalists? Write you answers in your notes.

4
Romantic Sensibility Celebrating the Imagination
  • Romanticism is the name given to those schools of
    thought that value feeling and intuition over
    reason.
  • Influences
  • 1. Began in Germany in the late 1600s and had a
    strong influence on literature, music, and
    painting in Europe and England in the 1700s.
  • 2. Arrived in America late, the 1800s, and
    took different forms.

5
Contd
  • Romanticism developed as a reaction against
    Rationalism
  • 1. In the wake of the Industrial Revolution,
    cities became dirty, bustling, impersonal places
    where working, and often living, conditions were
    deplorable. People had come to see the limits of
    reason.
  • 2. As a result, Romantics came to believe that
    the imagination was able to contain truths that
    the rational mind could not reach. These truths
    were usually accompanied by powerful emotion and
    were associated with natural, unspoiled beauty.
    It was a form of escape.

6
Characteristics of American Romanticism
  • Values feeling and intuition over reason (Note
    This borrows back from the Puritans!)
  • 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
  • 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

7
American Romanticism, the Wilderness and a New
Kind of Hero
  • American writers had a limitless frontier to
    write about that the European writers didnt.
    Thus, the early development of American style
    corresponded with western expansion, the growth
    of a nationalist spirit, and the rapid spread of
    cities westward.
  • As a result of this, America developed its own,
    new version of a hero.

8
Characteristics of the American Romantic Hero
  • Is young, or possesses youthful qualities
  • Is innocent and pure of purpose (naïve)
  • Has a sense of honor based not on societys rules
    but on some higher principle
  • Has a knowledge of people and of life based on a
    deep, intuitive understanding, not on formal
    learning
  • Loves nature and avoids town life
  • Quests for some higher truth in the natural world
  • List some modern day Romantic heroes in movies in
    your notes.

9
What is a Fireside Poet?
  • The fireside poets were a group of Boston poets
    who were the most popular poets of their time and
    for quite some time after. They were the most
    widely popular poets America produced at this
    point in history.
  • Their names were Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
    John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes,
    and James Russell Lowell.
  • They were called fireside poets because their
    poems were so often read aloud at the fireside as
    family entertainment.

10
Essential Question
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