American Romanticism

Romanticism• Idea that God is actively involved in Creation - Universe is evolving

• Rejection of Industrialism and large cities - celebration of pastoral setting

• Value feeling and intuition over reason - a rejection of classicism and rationalism and deism

• Imagination, dream/fantasy world

• Reflect on the natural world until dull reality fell away to reveal underlying beauties and truths

• Romantics find a less clearly defined divinity in nature, not necessarily the God of Christianity

• Six I’s of Romanticism: Intuition, Imagination, Innocence, Inspiration (from Nature), Inner experience, Individualism

• To the Rationalist the city was the place to find success, wealth and self-discovery

• To the Romantics it was a place of immorality, pollution, over-crowdedness, corruption and death

• You can’t be an individual in the city – you conform and lose your innocence and spirituality

Plato - famous Greek Philosopher • Plato held that reality is an imperfect reflection of an ideal,

permanent realm.

• Divided Line: On the surface are pure forms, behind these pure forms are universals - what lies behind reality. Making up the pure forms are the particulars of the physical universe, that which we see around us in the physical world

• General Concepts relate to specific objects. For example, he wondered what enables human beings to refer to thousands of different objects - say, trees - by using a single word, tree. Plato concluded that all trees share something in common; this is the form or idea of a tree

Divided Line

Pure Forms – Objects we see in Nature

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Universals – The spiritual truth that lies beyond the surface

Plato

Ralph Waldo Emerson• Famous Essayist, Poet, Philosopher and Minister. Studied Plato

and all of the Romantic writers coming out of England extensively

• He called for a national Epic - superior civilizations have superior art forms - can’t be just imitation

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Transcendentalism

• To Transcend means to “rise above”• In determining the ultimate reality of God, the Universe, the self

one must go beyond everyday human experiences - Based in Idealism

• Believed in human perfectibility

Divine Soul or Oversoul•Everything in the world is a reflection of this

•The physical facts of the natural world are a doorway to the spiritual or ideal world

•God is found in intuition, feeling, and nature

Intense Optimism

• Death is simply part of the cycle of life. Evil occurs because we separate from a direct, intuitive knowledge of God - have to reaffirm our connection to the Divine Soul

• Organic Forms - Things that are natural and evolve and change

Children to a Romantic•Children are more “in tune” with the spiritual realm because they have just come from there

•Children retain the wonder of immortality and then they gradually lose it as they get older and live life

•Childhood innocence is characterized by a wonder for nature

Emerson’s Contributions

• In his essays he tries to produce an artistic tradition. He laid the ground work for posterity

• He felt the Puritans had had a negative influence on the U.S.

• He saw life as a search for truth, but not grim - joyful and exciting

• He influenced architecture and music

• He calls God the Oversoul; takes theistic conception out of a purely Christian context and places it in the context of nature

• Felt that nature is the mediator between these 2 realms

• He reduces the importance of reason; he felt that the real world couldn’t be understood through human reasoning alone

• Art is the way of living that people live creatively - that they shape their perception to gain better insight into the Universal truths

Emerson’s Contributions• Emerson embraced change - saw the Universe as being in the

process of becoming something - creation is still going on, still being molded

• Poetry is the highest of callings

• Poet is involved in the creation of God’s Will

• Poets are liberating Gods - they look for truth and help others search for truth; they help others live a more elevated existence

• He embraced American ideals of freedom and democracy

• Embraced intuition, rejected science as the only means of understanding the world

• God is the supreme artist - all creation is a work of art

Emerson’s Contributions• Restore a balance where art is at the center of things - create room

for art in civilization

• Not a pantheist – God works through nature but is distinct from it

• Emerson was a great optimist and idealist but he was accused of having little understanding of evil

From “Nature”•A simple glimpse of the Divine -the night sky

•If the stars only came out once every 1,000 years people would be amazed and filled with faith and love and they would remember it

•The “eye” - can integrate the parts of nature into a landscape

From “Nature”• Lovers of nature are young at heart and feels the necessity to

commune with nature regularly

• Emerson is obsessed with the ocular - the “eye” - also the “I” of the individual. The focus on the self disappears, becomes transparent and sees everything.

• The “eye” is able to see the beauty in Nature - the artist

• Light is the artist in nature because we need light to see

• “nature always wears the colors of the spirit” meaning that our emotions are reflected in nature

From “Self Reliance”• Americans have the indomitable will to be successful and to work

hard

• Different people, facts and places strike each of us as “right” or familiar when we first encounter them, almost as if we had already known them.

• These “preestablished” differences hint at our unique purpose in life and at an overall design or harmony

• Overall sense that people have a goodness about them

• People should trust in themselves and beware of society - remain a nonconformist

American Frontier• Louisiana Purchase of 1803 more than doubles the size of the

nation• The Frontier, the myth of the WEST continues to expand• Journey Motif - People pursue dreams of land, $, and prosperity• Frontier movement helped break the country away from the

Puritan grip, to move away from the East• Sense that America doesn’t have the history and developments

that Europe has• Explorers are Adam, landscape is Eden, a pre-fallen realm• Paradox of how we looked at the landscape - saw it as a

special/holy place to be preserved and admired as God’s creation but also as a place to be controlled, utilized for value, produce natural resources

• First great American literature was about the frontier

Louisiana Purchase

The Leatherstocking Tales• James Fenimore Cooper writes 5 novels (The Pioneers, The Last

of the Mohicans, The Prairie, The Pathfinder, and The Deerslayer) about different adventures of a wilderness man

• His name – Nathaniel (people call him Natty) Bumpo (he is renamed as Hawkeye, Deerslayer, The Trapper, Pathfinder and Leatherstocking)

• He is constantly moving and changing his identity - important motif in American Literature

• The Pioneers - 1823 - Natty Bumppo is in his 70s

• The Last of the Mohicans - 1826 - Hawkeye is in his 20s. Most famous and popular of the 5 texts

• The Prairie - 1827 - The Trapper is in his 80s

• The Pathfinder - 1840 - The Pathfinder is in his 30s

James Fenimore Cooper

The Pioneers - 1st book written, 2nd to last book chronologically

The Last of the Mohicans was made into a popular film in 1992 starring Daniel Day

Lewis as Hawkeye

•

The Prairie by James Fenimore Cooper - Last book chronologically, 3rd book written

The Leatherstocking Tales• The Deerslayer - 1841 - The Deerslayer, or Hawkeye, is 18

• He gets his names and identities through experiences with nature outside the community setting, not with people

• Juxtaposed with real frontiersmen, some are criminals, some destroy the environment

• Cooper looked at life on the early Frontier

• Natty Bumpo is the first great American literary figure

• A Romantic Hero, rugged, handsome, loved nature while distrusting town life

• American Romantic Hero was innocent, intuitive, youthful and close to nature

• Stories also question what America is to do with the American Indian

• In the texts the bad Indians get killed and the good Indians fade away

The Leatherstocking Tales

• Cooper suggested that the U.S. government allow the Indians to move west of the Mississippi because Westward expansion hadn’t gotten that far yet

• Cooper gave Europeans what they wanted to hear - myth, not history

• The first couple of novels are fairly realistic but the latter novels become more and more mythologized

• Bumpo recognizes nature as a place for spiritual rejuvenation• Cooper intermingles history with myth - first novel is more

history, last novel is all myth• Bumpo - a country bumpkin or hick• His search for identity representative of a country in search of

identity• He moves constantly West, looking for a newer Eden

The Leatherstocking Tales• Natty Bumpo has a Native American traveling by his side in most

of the stories - the traveling minority companion became another American literary motif

• Cooper had not direct knowledge of Native Americans so he latched on to two stereotypes

• Native Americans are either vicious villains or the noble savage who has a great sense of connection to the land, very spiritual, idealized

• Ignored the real human character in between