American Romanticism

1
AmericanRomanticism

• 1800 -1860

2
American Romanticism

• For Rationalists the city was a place of
  civilization and opportunity
• For Romantics the city was a place of
  immorality and death.
• For these reasons, the Romantic Journey often
  leads into the countryside.
• A place of independence, morality, and healthful
  living

3
American Romanticism

• Sometimes, the journey might be into the mind.
• The works of Edgar Allen Poe show journeys into
  the imagination.
• The Romantic journey is both a flight from
  something and a flight to something.

4
The Romantic Sensibility Celebrating Imagination

• Romantics valued feeling over reason.
• Romanticism originally a European movement
  began in late 1700s
• Spread throughout Europe into the 1800s.
• Came to America slightly later and took somewhat
  different forms

5
Romanticism

• First grew in response to rationalism.
• Rationalism had focused on reason and science.
• Sparked the Industrial Revolution
• With Industrial Revolution came filthy cities and
  terrible working conditions.
• Romantics distrusted pure reason and instead
  turned to the imagination.
• Claimed that the imagination could see and
  understand truths that the rational mind could
  not.

6
Romanticism

• Romantics valued imagination, feeling, and nature
  over reason, logic, and civilization.
• Romantics valued poetry above all other works of
  the imagination.
• They contrasted poetry with science, which they
  viewed as a destroyer of truth.
• Edgar Allen Poe once called science a vulture
  with wings of dull realities that preyed upon
  the hearts of poets.

7
Romantic Escapism From Dull Realties to Higher
Truths

• Romantics explored exotic settings
• In the more natural past or in locations far from
  civilization and industry.
• Romantics explored supernatural worlds
• Explored legends and folktales

8
Romantics

• Tried to reflect on the natural world in order to
  see truth and beauty.
• This approach is found in many lyric poems
• In these poems, the speaker discovers in ordinary
  scenes or objects (flower by a stream, bird
  flying overhead) some important deeply felt
  understanding about life.
• Like the Puritans, Romantics found truth in
  nature
• But rather than finding moral lessons, Romantics
  found a more general feeling of mental and
  emotional health.

9
Characteristics of American Romanticism

• Values feeling over reason
• Places faith in the imagination
• Shuns civilization and seeks nature
• Prefers innocence to sophistication
• Fights for individuals freedom and worth
• Trusts past wisdom, not progress
• Reflects on nature to gain spiritual wisdom
• Finds beauty and truth in supernatural or
  imaginative realms.
• Sees poetry at the highest work of the
  imagination
• Is inspired by myth, legend, and folklore.

10
The American Novel and the Wilderness Experience

• Some American writers imitated English and
  European models of writing.
• Others believed that America should develop a
  literary style of its own.
• The great American frontier provided a sense of
  unlimited possibilities that was not available in
  Europe.
• The first truly American novels looked westward.

11
James Fenimore Cooper (1789 -1851)

• Wrote about unique American settings and
  characters.
• Frontier communities
• American Indians
• Backwoodsmen
• Created the first American hero Natty Bumppo
• This characters simple morality, love of nature,
  and almost superhuman inventiveness make him a
  true Romantic hero.

12
A New Kind of Hero

• The typical Romantic hero is youthful and
  innocent.
• He relies on common sense rather than book
  learning and is close to nature.
• Because women represented marriage and
  civilization (to many writers), Romantic heroes
  are often uncomfortable around them.

13
Romantic Heroes

• In contrast to Romantic heroes, Ben Franklin
  represents the rationalist hero.
• He looks to the city to better himself.
• Today Americans still create Romantic heroes in
  the form of Superman, Luke Skywalker, and Indiana
  Jones, along with dozens of other western,
  detective, and fantasy heroes.

14
Characteristics of the American Romantic Hero

• Is youthful and innocent
• Has a strong sense of honor
• Has knowledge that comes from experience
• Loves nature and avoids town life
• Seeks truth in the natural world.

15
American Romantic Poetry Read at Every Fireside

• Goals of American Romantic poets were different
  from those of Romantic novelists.
• Novelists looked for new subject matter
• Poets wanted to prove that Americans were not
  ignorant hicks.
• To do this, they wrote poems is a style much like
  the poems of England.

16
Fireside Poets

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), John
  Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and
  James Russell Lowell were known as the Fireside
  Poets.
• Poems often read aloud by the fireside
• In their time period and for a long time after,
  they were the most popular poets America ever
  produced.

17
Fireside Poets

• Because they preferred the old, established
  styles of poetry, the fireside poets were unable
  to recognize the American poetry of the future.
• In 1855, Whittier read the work of a young poet,
  Walt Whitman, and promptly threw it into the
  fire.
• After reading the same poetry, Ralph Waldo
  Emerson wrote the young poet a letter.
• I greet you, Emerson wrote to Whitman, at the
  beginning of a great career.

18
The Transcendentalists True Reality is Spiritual

• Emerson led a group know at the
  Transcendentalists.
• These people believed that to find the truth
  about God, the universe, and ones self, one must
  transcend, or go beyond, the everyday experiences
  of the physical world.
• Transcendentalism was not new
• It originated in the ancient Greek philosophy of
  idealism.

19
Transcendentalists

• Idealists said that true reality was found in
  ideas, not in the imperfect physical world.
• They sought the pure reality the ideal that
  was beneath physical appearances.
• American Transcendentalists were idealists in a
  more practical sense.
• They believed that humanity could be perfected,
  and they worked to make this idea a reality.

20
Emerson and Transcendentalism

• Through his books and lectures, Emerson became
  the best-known member of the Transcendentalists.
• His transcendentalism added ideas from Europe and
  Asia to a distinctly American base.
• Emerson drew much of his thought from Puritanism.
• God revealed himself through the Bible and the
  physical world.
• This mystical view of the world was passed on to
  American Romantics and to Emerson.

21
Emerson

• He wrote, Every natural fact is a symbol of some
  spiritual fact.
• His view of the world came from his intuition,
  not from logic.
• Intuition is our ability to know things through
  feeling rather reason.
• In contrast, Franklin saw nature as something to
  be examined scientifically.

22
Emersons Optimistic Outlook

• Positive thinking (optimism) guided Emerson.
• Strongly believed that God is good and works
  through nature.
• If we trust in our own power to know God
  directly, we will see that we, too, are a part of
  the Divine Soul.
• Emersons optimism appealed to many people who
  lived in a time full of worries about money,
  slavery, and future of our nation.
• Emerson gave them a comforting message. If the
  world depresses you, look within yourself.
• The God within will connect you to the peace and
  beauty of the universe.

23
A Transcendental View of the World

• Everything, including people, is a reflection of
  the divine.
• The physical world is a doorway to the spiritual
  world.
• People can use intuition to sense God in nature
  or in their own souls.
• A person is his or her own best authority.
• Feeling and intuition are superior to reason and
  intellect.

24
The Dark Romantics

• Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Edgar
  Allen Poe are known as the Dark Romantics.
• Because of their gloomy view of the world, some
  people see these writers as anti-Transcendentalist
  s.
• Dark Romantics had much in common with Emerson
  and his followers.
• Both groups valued feeling over reason.
• Both groups saw the events of the world as a
  signs or symbols that pointed beyond.

25
The Dark Romantics

• Did not agree with the optimism of the
  Transcendentalists.
• Thought that Emerson took only the bright side of
  Puritanism and ignored the belief in the
  wickedness of humanity.
• To create a greater balance, the Dark Romantics
  explored both good and evil.
• Looked at the effects of guilt and sin on the
  mind, body and soul, including madness.
• Behind the pasteboard masks of polite society,
  they saw the horror of evil.
• From this vision, the Dark Romantics shaped a
  new, truly American literature.

26
(No Transcript)