American Romanticism

1. American Romanticism 1800-1860

2. Political and Social Milestones • The Lousiana Purchase, 1803 • Biggest land deal in history, doubled • the country’s area.

3. Political and Social Milestones • The Gold Rush, 1849 • Tens of thousands of Americans sought their fortunes. • Towns and cities built all across the country • Transcontinental railroad

4. Political and Social Milestones • Education and Reform, 1826 • Public education • Worker’s rights • Temperance • Women’s rights

5. Essential Questions • What were the values of the Romantics, and how did these values affect the American imagination? • Who were the Transcendentalists, and how do their beliefs still influence American life? • What darker side of human life was recognized by some major American Romantics?

6. Motif • “Journey” • Rationalists: Reaching out for independence, prosperity, and commerce. • Romantics: Shifting morals, corruption, and death • Countryside: independence, moral clarity, and healthful living • It is a flight both from something and to something

7. The rationalists believed the city to be a place to find success and self-realization The romantics associated the countryside with independence, moral clarity, and healthful living. Rationalism vs. Romanticism

8. Romantic Sensibility • Value feelings and intuition over reason • “Reason” gave us the Industrial Revolution • Caused pollution, crime, corruption, overpopulation • Less emphasis on the individual • So the Romantics gave value to imagination, individual feelings • Poetry is the opposite of science; it is the highest embodiment of imagination

9. Romantic Escapism • Romanticism gave people a way to escape the realities of living in the city. • Prefer the “natural” past or escape through the supernatural • Reflect on the natural world to escape, through lyric poetry. • There is insight in nature • Spiritual and intellectual enlightenment

10. Values feeling and intuition over reason Places faith in inner experience and the power of the imagination Shuns the artificiality of civilization and seeks unspoiled nature Prefers youthful innocence to educated sophistication Champions individual freedom and the worth of the individual Contemplates nature’s beauty as a path to spiritual and moral development Characteristics of American Romanticism

11. Characteristics (continued) • Looks backward to the wisdom of the past and distrusts progress • Finds beauty and truth in exotic locals, the supernatural realm, and the inner world of the imagination • Sees poetry as the highest expression of the imagination • Finds inspiration in myth, legend, and fold culture

12. The American Novel • Would American writers continue to imitate Europeans? • Romantics poets did • But American novelists discovered a sense of limitless frontiers = westward expansion = growth of nationalist spirit = rapid spread of cities • The wilderness is the new setting of the ideal novel

13. A New Kind of Hero • Young, innocent, sense of honor not based on society’s rules • Has knowledge of people and life through intuitive understanding, not formal education • Loves nature, avoids town life • Quests for some higher truth in the natural world • Rational hero: intellectual, surviving the urban jungle • Romantic hero: intuitive, survive the natural jungle

14. American Romantic Poetry • Very much attached to European roots and styles • Fireside and Schoolroom Poets • Fireside poets were named thus because their type of poetry was popular for sitting around the fire and reading. Fireside poets are usually referred to as the following five people: • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • William Cullen Bryant • John Greenleaf Whittier • James Russell Lowell • Oliver Wendell Holmes • Ralph Waldo Emerson praised a new poet, Walt Whitman

15. Fireside Poets Longfellow Holmes Bryant Whittier Lowell

16. The Transcendentalists • In determining the ultimate reality of God, the universe, the self, one must transcend (or go beyond) human experience in the physical world • Believed in human perfectibility, and worked to achieve this goal

17. Emerson: American Roots • Ralph Waldo Emerson: lectures and books • European, Asian, and Puritan ideas…and some American-grown ones too • Puritans believed that God existed in the physical world • Transcendentalists believed that everything was a reflection of the Divine Soul, the source of good • “Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.”

18. Optimist Outlook • “I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back.” • Through intuition, people know that God is good, and God works through nature. Therefore, even the most tragic natural disasters can be experienced on a spiritual level. • “Bad” results from a disconnect with God and nature

19. The Dark Romantics • Not all writers and thinkers agree with Emerson’s idealism • Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allan Poe are the anti-Transcendentalists • They opposed the optimistic view of the world • Valued intuition over logic, too • But they believed that “bad” exists to balance the “good” • With these ideas, these writers shaped American Literature.