Introduction

• The theme of journey as a declaration of independence

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• Bryant, Homes, Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier and Wordsworth are Romantic poets

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• Poe is the inventor of the American Short Story

Introduction

• Emerson is the Father of American Transcendentalism
• Thoreau is a famous practical transcendentalist
• Melville and Hawthorne are Anti-Romantics
• Dickinson and Whitman are bridge poets between American Romanticism and the 20^th century

Introduction

• The rationalistic view of urban life was replaced by the Romantic view
• Rationalists saw cities as a place to find success and self-realization, but Romantics saw the city as a place of moral corruption, poverty, and death

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Introduction

• The Romantic journey is to the countryside
• The Romantics associated the country with independence, moral clarity, and purity
• The Gothic Romantic, E.A. Poe, saw the country as a place of phantasm
• Irving (Legend of Sleepy Hollow) saw the country as idyllic and as an escape

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The Romantic Sensibility

• Romanticism: values feeling and intuition over reason
• Romanticism: views life as we would like it to be, rather than how it really is
• Romanticism began in Germany and influenced literature, music, and art
• Romanticism is a reaction against Rationalism

The Romantic Sensibility

• The development of slums and poverty due to the Industrial Revolution turned people from Rationalism
• Romantics believed that imagination, emotion, spontaneity, feelings, and nature were more important than rational thought

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Characteristics of Romanticism

• values feelings over intuition
• values the power of the imagination
• seeks the beauty of unspoiled nature
• values youthful innocence
• values individual freedom
• values the lessons of the past
• finds beauty in exotic locales, the supernatural, and in the imagination
• values poetry as the highest expression of the imagination
• values myth, legend, and folk culture

Romantic Escapism

• Romantic writing looked for comforting or exotic settings from the past
• This was found in the supernatural, in nature, and/or in folk legends
• Romantics believed in contemplating, or becoming one with the natural world
• The Gothic novel emerged from Romanticism

Romantic Escapism

• The Gothic novel had wild, haunted landscapes
• It had supernatural events in the plot
• It was often mysterious
• The Gothic concept had roots in France, Germany, and England
• Edgar Allan Poe was Romanticism’s great American writer

Romantic Escapism

• Romanticism also used lyrical poetry as a means to contemplate the beauty of nature
• It focused on simple natural beauties
• Its intent was to seek truth through a calm contemplation of a simple natural beauty
• Romantics saw God in this contemplation

The American Novel

• Most American Romantic writers imitated the European writing style
• American Romantic novelists broke away from the European tradition and discovered uniquely American topics and settings
• American novelists explored the vast unknown lands – something the Europeans could not do

The New American Hero

• American Romantic literature created this unique person
• he was youthful
• he was innocent
• he was intuitive
• he was one with nature
• he was a loner – uneasy around women
• he was handsome
• he was brave
• he was moral and honorable

American Romantic Poetry

• Most Romantic poets worked within conventional European literary structures
• They proved that American poetry could reflect American subject matter, yet still hold to conventional poetic style
• Most American Romantic poets wrote about the past

American Romantic Poetry

• The Fireside Poets, a Boston group of Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, and Lowell, were widely read and loved in America
• They were the TV of the American Romantic period and families gathered around the fireside to be entertained by their poetry
• Their subject matter was comfortable and instructional