The Flowering of American Romanticism

1
The Flowering of American Romanticism

• 1820
• 1865

2
American Romanticism

• English Romantics poets Coleridge, Wordsworth,
  and German Romantic Philosophy
• Jonathan Edwardss A Divine and Supernatural
  Light and Images and Shadows of Divine Things
  http//birdbath.hfu.edu.tw/share/American.Litera
  ture/5sermons.edwards.htm

3
Five Principle Romantic themes in American
Literature

• Intuition (the truth of the heart) is more
  trustworthy than reason
• To express deeply felt experience is more
  valuable than to elaborate universal principles
• the individual is at the center of life and God
  is at the center of the individual
• Nature is an array of physical symbols from which
  knowledge of the supernatural can be intuited
• we should aspire to the Ideal, to changing what
  is to what ought to be
• Emerson is the most comprehensive and influential
  spokesman for the five principles

4
Romantic Authors

• Emerson
• Whitman
• Melville
• Hawthorne
• Bryant