The American Romantic Movement(aka The American

Renaissance)

~ 1800-1860

Romanticism

• The name given to those schools of thought that value feeling and intuition over reason.

• Reaction against the Rationalism of Ben Franklin

• Reaction against the corruption and decay found in the cities – inspiration and value found in nature

The 5 “I’s” of Romanticism

• Intuition• Imagination• Innocence• Inspiration– Nature– Supernatural

• Inner Experience

Aims of the American Romantic Novelists & Short Story Authors

Create a new art formCapture the American landscape and

American sentiment through a “new hero” in a “new story”

Authors: James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving

The new American Hero

• James Fenimore Cooper & Natty Bumppo

• Take notes on the “characteristics of the new American hero” on page 146-149

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Aims of the American Romantic Poets

• Wanted to be respected by European authors• Used classical themes and imagery in addition

to images of nature• Did not want to be seen as “American country

bumpkins” – almost too traditional in their formats and themes

• The Fireside Poets (poems often read aloud at campfires and in front of the hearth) – Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Dark Romantics

• The darker side of the 5 “I’s”• Supernatural elements• Gothic images• Authors: Herman Melville, Edgar

Allan Poe

Herman Melville

The Transcendentalists

• Romantic Philosophers• Authors: Ralph Waldo Emerson,

Henry David Thoreau• More notes later…

Ralph Waldo Emerson