Herman Melville, and Edgar Allan Poe are the

1
American Romanticism

• 1800-1860

2
Political and Social Milestones

• The Lousiana Purchase, 1803
• Biggest land deal in history, doubled
• the countrys area.

3
Political and Social Milestones

• The Gold Rush, 1849
• Tens of thousands of Americans sought their
  fortunes.
• Towns and cities built all across the country
• Transcontinental railroad

4
Political and Social Milestones

• Education and Reform, 1826
• Public education
• Workers rights
• Temperance
• Womens rights

5
Essential Questions

• What were the values of the Romantics, and how
  did these values affect the American imagination?
• Who were the Transcendentalists, and how do their
  beliefs still influence American life?
• What darker side of human life was recognized by
  some major American Romantics?

6
Motif

• Journey
• Rationalists Reaching out for independence,
  prosperity, and commerce.
• Romantics Shifting morals, corruption, and death
• Countryside independence, moral clarity, and
  healthful living
• It is a flight both from something and to
  something

7
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.

8
Romantic Sensibility

• Value feelings and intuition over reason
• Reason gave us the Industrial Revolution
• Caused pollution, crime, corruption,
  overpopulation
• Less emphasis on the individual
• So the Romantics gave value to imagination,
  individual feelings
• Poetry is the opposite of science it is the
  highest embodiment of imagination

9
Romantic Escapism

• Romanticism gave people a way to escape the
  realities of living in the city.
• Prefer the natural past or escape through the
  supernatural
• Reflect on the natural world to escape, through
  lyric poetry.
• There is insight in nature
• Spiritual and intellectual enlightenment

10
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

12
The American Novel

• Would American writers continue to imitate
  Europeans?
• Romantics poets did
• But American novelists discovered a sense of
  limitless frontiers westward expansion growth
  of nationalist spirit rapid spread of cities
• The wilderness is the new setting of the ideal
  novel

13
A New Kind of Hero

• Young, innocent, sense of honor not based on
  societys rules
• Has knowledge of people and life through
  intuitive understanding, not formal education
• Loves nature, avoids town life
• Quests for some higher truth in the natural world
• Rational hero intellectual, surviving the urban
  jungle
• Romantic hero intuitive, survive the natural
  jungle

14
American Romantic Poetry

• Very much attached to European roots and styles
• Fireside and Schoolroom Poets
• Fireside poets were named thus because their type
  of poetry was popular for sitting around the fire
  and reading. Fireside poets are usually referred
  to as the following five people
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• William Cullen Bryant
• John Greenleaf Whittier
• James Russell Lowell
• Oliver Wendell Holmes
• Ralph Waldo Emerson praised a new poet, Walt
  Whitman

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Fireside Poets
Longfellow
Holmes
Bryant
Whittier
Lowell
16
The Transcendentalists

• In determining the ultimate reality of God, the
  universe, the self, one must transcend (or go
  beyond) human experience in the physical world
• Believed in human perfectibility, and worked to
  achieve this goal

17
Emerson American Roots

• Ralph Waldo Emerson lectures and books
• European, Asian, and Puritan ideasand some
  American-grown ones too
• Puritans believed that God existed in the
  physical world
• Transcendentalists believed that everything was a
  reflection of the Divine Soul, the source of good
• Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual
  fact.

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Optimist Outlook

• I unsettle all things. No facts are to me
  sacred none are profane I simply experiment, an
  endless seeker, with no past at my back.
• Through intuition, people know that God is good,
  and God works through nature. Therefore, even
  the most tragic natural disasters can be
  experienced on a spiritual level.
• Bad results from a disconnect with God and
  nature

19
The Dark Romantics

• Not all writers and thinkers agree with Emersons
  idealism
• Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Edgar
  Allan Poe are the anti-Transcendentalists
• They opposed the optimistic view of the world
• Valued intuition over logic, too
• But they believed that bad exists to balance
  the good
• With these ideas, these writers shaped American
  Literature.