American Romanticism

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American Romanticism 1800-1860
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Historical Timeline

• 1800-U.S. Population 5.3 million
• 1803-Louisiana Purchase
• Manifest Destiny
• Lewis and Clark Expedition
• War of 1812
• 1814-The Star Spangled Banner
• 1820-Missouri Compromise
• 1830-Underground Railroad
• 1840-U.S. Pop. 17.1 million

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Diaspora

• 1860 A treaty was signed with the Nez Perces
  Indians led by Chief Joseph (Thunder Rolling in
  the Mountains). He did not recognize the treaty.

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Washington Irving 1783- 1859 Foremost New York
Satirist
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Rip Van Winkle Published in 1820
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The Journey Motif
Romantic writers thought the city was far from
the seat of civilization, but rather, a place of
moral ambiguity and, worse, of corruption and
death.
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Romanticism

• Originated in Germany
• Valued feelings, intuition, and imagination
• Reacted against rationalism
• Valued poetry above all other works
• Drew lessons from the natural world

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An American Romantic Novel By James Fenimore
Cooper 1823
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Characteristics of the American Romantic Hero

• Youthful
• Innocent
• Honorable
• Common Sense
• Loves Nature
• Avoids Cities
• Quest for higher truth
• Uneasy around opposite sex

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Fireside Poets

• William Cullen Bryant
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• John Greenleaf Whittier
• Oliver Wendell Holmes
• James Russell Lowell

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William Cullen Bryant 1794-1878 Recognized as the
Father of American Poetry
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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807-1882 Old
Chestnuts
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John Greenleaf Whittier 1807-1892
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Snow-Bound A Winter Idyll
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Oliver Wendell Holmes 1809-1894
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Old Ironsides The U.S.S. Constitution
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James Russell Lowell 1782-1861
Be NOBLE! and the nobleness that liesIn other
men, sleeping, but never dead,Will rise in
majesty to meet thine own.
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The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
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Social and Cultural Aspects of the 19th Century

• Folk Music and Ballads
• Amazing Grace
• America
• Pop Goes the Weasel
• Jingle Bells
• Oh, Susanna
• Billy Boy, Billy Boy
• Camp-town Races
• Blow the Man Down
• The Yellow Rose of Texas
• Ive Been Working on the Railroad
• Arkansas Traveler
• Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair
• Home Sweet Home
• Jack Crack Corn

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Cult of Domesticity

• Men and Women occupied separate spheres.
• Womanhood was defined as piety, purity,
  submissiveness and domesticity.
• Middle class, no longer agrarian due to
  urbanization and industrialization
• Men were breadwinners.
• Nuclear family was backbone.
• Men were deemed intellectually superior, but
  women were said to be morally or spiritually
  superior.

• Sit not with another in a place that is too
  narrow read not out of the same book let not
  your eagerness to see anything induce you to
  place your head close to another persons.
• The Young Womans Friend by Eliza Farrar

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Common Foods

• Sample bill of fare for middle-class home meals,
  Philadelphia 1853 In the days before home
  freezers and rapid transit, suggested family
  menus were grouped by season and presented for
  each day. Breakfast would have been served
  between 8-9AM. Dinner would have been the main
  meal of the day, served sometime between noon and
  three. Tea would have been a light meal (at that
  time this meal was often called supper) before
  retiring.
• "Bill of Fare. Winter. Monday.Breakfast. Corn
  bread, cold bread, stew, boiled eggs.Dinner.
  Soup, cold joint, calves' head,
  vegetables.Dessert. Puddings, c.Tea. Cold
  bread, milk toast, stewed fruit.
• Tuesday.Breakfast. Hot cakes, cold bread,
  sausages, fried potatoes.Dinner. Soup, roast
  turkey, cranberry sauce, boiled ham,
  vegetables.Dessert. Pie c.Tea. Corn bread,
  cold bread, stewed oysters.
• Wednesday.Breakfast. Hot bread, cold bread,
  chops, omelet.Dinner. Boiled mutton, stewed
  liver, vegetables.Dessert. Pudding, c.Tea. Hot
  light bread, cold bread, fish, stewed fruit.

• Thursday.Breakfast. Hot cakes, cold bread,
  sausages, fried potatoes.Dinner. Soup, poultry,
  cutlets, vegetables.Dessert. Custards and stewed
  fruit.Tea. Corn bread, cold bread, frizzled
  beef, stewed fruits, or soused calves' feet.
• Friday.Breakfast. Hot bread, cold bread, chops,
  omelet.Dinner. Soup, fish, roast mutton and
  currant jelly, vegetables.Dessert. Pudding,
  c.Tea. Hot light bread, cold bread, stewed
  fruit.
• Saturday.Breakfast., Hot bread, a nice hash,
  fried potatoes.Dinner. Soup, roast veal, steaks,
  oyster pie, vegetables.Dessert. Custards.Tea.
  Corn bread, cold bread, stewed oysters.
• Sunday.Breakfast. Cold bread, croquets,
  omelet.Dinner. Roast pig, apple sauce, steaks,
  vegetables.Dessert. Pie, jelly.Tea. Cold bread,
  stewed fruit, light cake."

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American Language
Websters purpose was to reform the abuses and
corruption which the conversation of the polite
part of Americansand especially to render the
pronunciationaccurate and uniform by demolishing
those obvious distinctions of provincial
dialects.
Noah Webster 1758-1843
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American Renaissance
The Five Great 19th Century Writers The
Flowering of America
The Boys Club
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The Early American Feminist Movement
Dorthea Dix
Margaret Fuller
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Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Philosopher
• Lecturer
• Essayist
• Transcendentalist
• Optimist
• Power of the Individual
• Transparent Eyeball

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Emersons Writings

• Self-Reliance

• Nature

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Concord, Massachusetts
Emersons Home
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Henry DavidThoreau

• Emersons Protégé
• Built his own house
• Went to live in the wood on July 4th 1845
• Wanted to simplify his life to find out what was
  essential
• Went to jail for refusing to pay taxes
• Wrote Walden and Civil Disobedience

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Walden
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Inside Thoreaus House
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Edgar Allan Poe

• Dark Romantic
• A life of tragedy
• Bitter quarrel with foster father
• Attended West Point
• Editor and Critic
• Detective story
• Famous for horror stories
• Struggled with alcohol and depression

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Poes Works
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Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Ancestor was a judge in Salem Witch Trials
• Added W to spelling of last name
• Wrote in his dismal chamber for 12 years
• Married Sophia Peabody
• Lived at Brook Farm
• Wrote Twice Told Tales and The Scarlet Letter
• Became friends with Melville
• Worked at Salem Customhouse
• Friends with President Pierce

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Herman Melville
A whale ship was my Yale College and My Harvard.