ROMANTICISM (1800 – 1870)THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE

Definition of Romanticism

Demonstration of a high level of moral enthusiasm

A commitment to individualism and the unfolding of the self

An emphasis on intuitive perception The assumption that the natural world was

inherently good, while human society was filled with corruption.

Definition of Romanticism

It is an international artistic and philosophical movement that redefined the fundamental ways in

which people in Western cultures thought about themselves and about their world.

Definition of Romanticism

Embraced the individual and rebelled against the confinement of neoclassicism and religious tradition.

Novels, short stories, and poems replaced the sermons and manifestos of yore.

Was personal, intense, and portrayed more emotion than ever seen in neoclassical literature.

Freedom became a great source of motivation. Free to express emotion without fear of ridicule and controversy.

Characteristics of Romantics

Explored what it meant to be an American (artist)

Looked at American government and political problems

The problems of war and Black slavery

Emerging materialism and conformity

Influence of immigration, new customs and traditions

Sexuality; relationships between men and women

The power of nature

Individualism, emphasis on

destructive effect of society on individual

Idealism

Spontaneity in thought and action Not an optimistic vision of

America; pictures of human frailty, weakness, limitation

Characteristics of Romantics

Writers spoke not directly but obliquely, ambiguously

Christianity a valuable source of symbols

Stories built around dreams Stories of emblematic

pilgrimages or journeys

Hero seems to represent a general type of person

Belief that evil is merely the absence of good

Through the symbolism of writing, portrayal of the reality beyond what’s visible, thus putting into practice the central notion of Transcendental thought.

Critique of formalized church, faith must come from within

TRANSCENDENTALISM

Definition of Transcendentalism

Textbook defines it as:

“A group of writers, artists, and reformers who flourished in the 1830s and 1840s, the individual was at the center of the universe, more powerful

than any institution, whether political or religious.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson is considered the “founder” of this literary movement.

Definition of Transcendentalism

A generation of well educated people who lived in the decades before the American Civil War and the national division that it both reflected and helped to create. These people were attempting to create a uniquely American body of literature. It was already decades since the Americans had won independence from England. Now, these people believed, it was time for literary independence. And so they deliberately went about creating literature, essays, novels, philosophy, poetry, and other writing that were clearly different from anything from England, France, Germany, or any other European nation.

Definition of Transcendentalism

In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson:

"We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds...A

nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul

which also inspires all men.“

Characteristics of Transcendentalism

Basically religious, emphasized role and importance of individual conscience and value of intuition in matters of moral guidance and inspiration. Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Fuller. Critical of formalized religion.

All constructive practical activity, great literature viewed as an expression of the divine spirit.

An ambition to achieve vivid perception of the divine as it operates in common life which would lead to personal cultivation

Insistence on authority of individual conscience

A trust in the individual, democracy, possibility of continued change for the better

A need to see beyond what is before our eyes, to see a deeper significance, a transcendent reality

Intellectual eclecticism; a vague conception of the God-like nature of human spirit

Nature conceived of not as a machine but as an organism, symbol and analogue of the mind

Spontaneous activity of the creative

artist seen as the highest achievement

Transcendentalism

Overall gist: The Transcendental philosophy is one that requires one to transcend above normal thinking to a higher state of consciousness.

ANTI-TRANSCENDENTALISM

Anti-Transcendentalism

a small philosophical movement predominantly consisting of only two writers, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville.

Hawthorne and Melville are considered two of the great fiction writer of their time and together they stood up in opposition to what they felt was impractical perspective.

Anti-Transcendentalism

Anti-Transcendentalists have important elements that are generally agreed on:

man is born with the stain of the original sin, man is the most destructive force in nature, one can only find God through good works and

life experience, There are no universal truths just individual

truths.

GOTHIC ROMANCE

Definition of Gothic Romance

Writers looked at the individual and saw potential evil

Deals with desolate and mysterious and grotesque events

Individuals are prone to sin and self-destruction and the natural world is dark and decaying.

Rebelled against the philosophy that man is basically good.

Evil is a powerful force in the world.

Characteristics of Gothic Romance

More interest in action than in the development of character

Action often fantastic, allegorical, interest in the supernatural, terror, madness

Characters have mysterious origins; tend to be ideal, exaggerated, more types

Suspense and mystery involving fantastic and supernatural, interest in light and shade

Interest in evil, its origins

Descriptions of various mental states often verging on the abnormal

Writers of Romantic Period

Prose: Washington Irving (1783 – 1859) James Fennimore Cooper (1789 – 1851)

William Cullen Bryant (1794 – 1878)  Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849)

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882) Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 – 1864)

Margaret Fuller (1810 – 1850)

Henry David Thoreau 1817 –1862)

 Herman Melville (1819 – 1891)

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811- 1896) Louisa May Alcott (1832 – 1888)

Poetry: “The Boston Brahmins”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow                                               (1807–1882) Oliver Wendell Holmes  (1809 – 1894) James Russell Lowell  (1819 – 1891) Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892) Emily Dickinson   (1830 – 1886)

Historical Events

1812 – War with England 1815-50 – Westward Expansion 1846-48 – Mexican War 1849 – California gold rush 1861-1865 – Civil War 1863 - Gettysburg Address

PUBLICATIONS

Emerson, Nature (1836) Poe, The Raven (1845) Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850) Melville, Moby Dick (1851) Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) Thoreau, Walden (1854) Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855)