American Romanticism1800-1860

American Renaissance

A Literary Coming of Age

1840-1860

Breakdown of American Romanticism

Keep in mind that during this period there are several different subgroups that fall into the American Romantics. All categories fall under the umbrella of American Romance. Renaissance (Romantics) Dark Romantics Transcendentalism

Renaissance What does this word mean? Renaissance means “rebirth” What do you think the American

Renaissance means when talking about literature?

American Literature Renaissance It is a time when America would finally find their

place in literature. Romanticism symbolized America's break away from traditional European literature.

Romanticism DOES NOT have to do with our ideology of being romantic. i.e., love, flowers chocolate, poems, etc. Why do you think they copied European literature for so

long? Why do you think they started doing their own thing?

American Literature Renaissance

For the first time writers journeyed to nature. They let their imaginations run free.

Romanticism dared to explore the supernatural. Americans were able to explore beyond rational

thought.

American Literature Renaissance (cont.) Romanticism was spontaneous. Writers and readers

could explore individual feelings, wild nature and AVOID rational thought, logic, planning, and cultivation.

Through their poetry, short stories, novels, and other works, writers during this period established a clear American voice. In the mid-nineteenth century, writers, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne

Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Herman Melville produced some of the early masterpieces of American Literature.

James Fenimore Cooper created America's first literary hero Natty Bumpo.

Characteristics of American Romanticism1. Values feeling and intuition

over reason

2. Places faith in inner experience and the power of the imagination

3. Shuns the artificiality of civilization and seeks unspoiled nature

4. Prefers youthful innocence to educated sophistication

5. Champions individual freedom and the worth of the individual

6. Contemplates nature’s beauty as a path to spiritual and moral development

7. Looks backward to the wisdom of the past and distrusts progress

8. Finds beauty and truth in exotic locals, the supernatural realm, and the inner world of the imagination

9. Sees poetry as the highest expression of the imagination

10. Finds inspiration in myth, legend, and folk culture

Characteristics of the American Romantic Hero

1. Is young or possesses youthful qualities

2. Is innocent and pure of purpose

3. Has a sense of honor based not on society’s rules but on some higher principal

4. Has knowledge of people and of life based on deep, intuitive understanding, not on formal learning

5. Loves nature and avoids town life

6. Quests for some higher truth in the natural world

What was going on during this time?Where did they get their “crazy” ideas?

1. Frontier: vast expanse, freedom, no geographic limitations.

2. Optimism: greater than in Europe because of the presence of frontier.

3. Experimentation: in science, in institutions. 4. Mingling of races: immigrants in large

numbers arrive to the US. 5. Growth of industrialization: polarization of

north and south; north becomes industrialized, south remains agricultural.

Art in the American Renaissance:Hudson River School

First group of landscape painters to emerge in the United States after independence from Great Britain.

Flourished between 1820 and 1880. Many of the artists in the group lived and painted in the

Catskill Mountains region of New York State, particularly along the Hudson River.

Their work is characterized by meticulous and realistic attention to detail and a poetic feeling for nature characteristic of romanticism.

Hudson River School Artwork

More HRS Artwork

ReflectionRationalist or Romantic?

If you had to classify yourself as either a rationalist or a romantic, which would you be? Would you be a practical, ambitious, worldly rationalist or an intuitive, feeling driven, close-to-nature romantic? Explain why.

Which traits of either era do you truly value and think you would like to encourage in your own life?

Explain you answer in at least 4-6 sentences.