American Romanticism

1
American Romanticism

• 1800-1870

2
Characteristics of American Romanticism 1800-1825

• 1.     Reaction against logic and reason
• 2.     Faith in something inherently good and
  transcendent in the human spirit
• 3.     Faith in the spirituality and the symbolic
  importance of nature.

3
Characteristics Continued

• 4.  Celebration of common and rural life
• 5.   The "Fireside Poets" (especially Bryant,
  Whittier, Longfellow) became enormously popular
  in American households, they promulgated a
  celebration of simple living, intuitive wisdom,
  innocent love, and community folklore.
• 6.     In the arts, romanticism promoted a
  popular taste for wild landscapes, ominous skies,
  ancient ruins, picturesque rusticity, and other
  settings for intuitive inspiration.

4
Elements of Romanticism

• Frontier vast expanse, freedom, no geographic
  limitations.
• Optimism
• Mingling of races immigrants in large numbers
  arrive to the US.
• Growth of industrialization polarization of
  north and south north becomes industrialized,
  south remains agricultural.

5
Romantic Subject Matter

• The quest for beauty
• Escapism - from American problems.
• Interest in external nature - for itself, for
  beauty
• Nature as source for the knowledge of the
  primitive. b. Nature as refuge.
• Nature as revelation of God to the individual.

6
Romantic Attitudes

• Appeals to imagination use of the "willing
  suspension of disbelief."
• Stress on emotion rather than reason

7
Romantic Techniques

• Remoteness of settings in time and space.
• Improbable plots.
• Inadequate or unlikely characterization.

8
Romantic Hero

• Youth
• Innocence
• A love of Nature and a distrust of town life or
  civilization
• Distrustful of women who represent civilization
• A desire to engage in a quest foe a higher truth
  in the natural world