The Dark Romantics or: The AntiTranscendentalists

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The Dark Romanticsor The Anti-Transcendentalis
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Transcendentalism Quick Review

• Step One Notion of Unified Soul
• Step Two Idealism
• Step Three Transcendence.
• Step Four American History

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Dark Romanticism Similarities

• Everything, including humans, is a reflection of
  the Divine Soul
• Physical facts of natural world are doorway to
  spiritual world
• People can use intuition to behold the Divine
  Soul
• Feelings and intuition gt intellectualism and
  rationality.

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Dark Romanticism Differences

• We can find spiritual facts directly in nature,
  but those facts arent necessarily good- in fact,
  generally evil
• Felt that Emerson ignored Puritan concepts of
  original sin and predestination
• Not all evil comes from man- there is evil in the
  Divine Soul
• Thus, self-reflection is as likely to reveal evil
  as well as good.
• D.R.s fascinated with evil, madness, murder, and
  death

Did someone say, evil?
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Edgar Allen Poe

• 1809-1849
• Effectively orphaned at 3, unpleasant childhood
• Dropout of West Point
• At 25, moved in with aunt and married her 13
  year old daughter
• Supported them as editor of lit magazines- during
  this period did much of his writing
• Tortured soul- drank heavily and used lots of
  drugs
• Wife died of TB in 1847, sending Poe into a
  deathly spiral of heavy drinking and drug use-
  died of complications in 1849

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The Tell-Tale Heart and The Raven

• About either crazy people or people going crazy
• Not interested in creating realistic people- nor
  just to shock and frighten
• Goal to peel back our reality and explore dark,
  irrational depths of human mind

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Nathaniel Hawthorne(1804-1864)

• Hottie, happily married, nice life
• Yet still dark and disturbed
• Perhaps because his Puritan ancestors (Salem
  Witch Trials)
• Dismal Chamber- learned fiction though
  imprisoning himself
• Briefly lived in utopian Transcendentalist
  community Brook Farm unimpressed
• Became somewhat famous from Scarlet Letter in
  1850s
• Moved to Europe and declined- when he returned he
  felt out of touch, and died.

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The Ministers Black Veil

• Set in Puritan New England
• About preacher who wears a black veil one day and
  wont take it off
• But really about how fake appearances are, and
  what shame, sin, and darkness lie beneath.

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Herman Melville(1819-1891)

• Spent much of his life at sea as a whaler
• Wrote Typee, a fairly successful book, as a young
  man- got , and met famous writers
• Buddies with Hawthorne, who encouraged him
• Later books did worse and worse, especially Moby
  Dick, which was panned, and Billy Budd, which
  never got published.
• Sons died (one by suicide)
• Ironically, Moby Dick later considered one of
  best American novels ever.

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Moby Dick

• On surface, about the whaling ship Pequod,
  captained by Capt. Ahab
• Ahab obsessed with a white whale (Moby Dick) who
  bit his leg off years ago
• Told by young sailor Ishmael
• Major themes are obsession, revenge, monomania,
  and man v. nature.