American%20Romanticism

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AmericanRomanticism

• 1800 -1860

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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