American
Romanticism
1800 -1860
American Romanticism
• For Rationalists – the city was a place of
civilization and opportunity
• For Romantics – the city was a place of
immorality and death.
• For these reasons, the Romantic Journey often
leads into the countryside.
– A place of independence, morality, and healthful
living
American Romanticism
• Sometimes, the journey might be into the
mind.
– The works of Edgar Allen Poe show journeys into
the imagination.
– The Romantic journey is both a flight from
something and a flight to something.
The Romantic Sensibility: Celebrating
Imagination
• Romantics valued feeling over reason.
• Romanticism – originally a European
movement – began in late 1700s
– Spread throughout Europe into the 1800s.
– Came to America slightly later and took somewhat
different forms
Romanticism
• First grew in response to rationalism.
• Rationalism had focused on reason and science.
• Sparked the Industrial Revolution
• With Industrial Revolution came filthy cities and terrible working
conditions.
• Romantics distrusted pure reason and instead turned
to the imagination.
– Claimed that the imagination could see and understand truths
that the rational mind could not.
Romanticism
• Romantics valued imagination, feeling, and
nature over reason, logic, and civilization.
• Romantics valued poetry above all other
works of the imagination.
– They contrasted poetry with science, which they
viewed as a destroyer of truth.
– Edgar Allen Poe once called science a “vulture”
with wings of “dull realities” that preyed upon the
hearts of poets.
Romantic Escapism: From Dull Realties to
Higher Truths
• Romantics – explored exotic settings
– In the more natural past or in locations far from
civilization and industry.
• Romantics – explored supernatural worlds
– Explored legends and folktales
Romantics
• Tried to reflect on the natural world in order
to see truth and beauty.
– This approach is found in many lyric poems
• In these poems, the speaker discovers in ordinary
scenes or objects (flower by a stream, bird flying
overhead) some important deeply felt understanding
about life.
• Like the Puritans, Romantics found truth in nature
– But rather than finding moral lessons, Romantics found a
more general feeling of mental and emotional health.
Characteristics of American Romanticism
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Values feeling over reason
Places faith in the imagination
Shuns civilization and seeks nature
Prefers innocence to sophistication
Fights for individual’s freedom and worth
Trusts past wisdom, not progress
Reflects on nature to gain spiritual wisdom
Finds beauty and truth in supernatural or imaginative realms.
Sees poetry at the highest work of the imagination
Is inspired by myth, legend, and folklore.
The American Novel and the Wilderness
Experience
• Some American writers imitated English and European
models of writing.
• Others believed that America should develop a literary
style of its own.
• The great American frontier provided a sense of
unlimited possibilities that was not available in Europe.
• The first truly American novels looked westward.
James Fenimore Cooper (1789 -1851)
• Wrote about unique American settings and
characters.
– Frontier communities
– American Indians
– Backwoodsmen
– Created the first American hero: Natty Bumppo
• This character’s simple morality, love of nature, and
almost superhuman inventiveness make him a true
Romantic hero.
A New Kind of Hero
• The typical Romantic hero is youthful and
innocent.
• He relies on common sense rather than book
learning and is close to nature.
• Because women represented marriage and
civilization (to many writers), Romantic heroes
are often uncomfortable around them.
Romantic Heroes
• In contrast to Romantic heroes, Ben Franklin
represents the rationalist hero.
– He looks to the city to better himself.
• Today Americans still create Romantic heroes
in the form of Superman, Luke Skywalker, and
Indiana Jones, along with dozens of other
western, detective, and fantasy heroes.
Characteristics of the American Romantic
Hero
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Is youthful and innocent
Has a strong sense of honor
Has knowledge that comes from experience
Loves nature and avoids town life
Seeks truth in the natural world.
American Romantic Poetry: Read at Every
Fireside
• Goals of American Romantic poets were
different from those of Romantic novelists.
– Novelists looked for new subject matter
– Poets wanted to prove that Americans were not
ignorant hicks.
• To do this, they wrote poems is a style much like the
poems of England.
Fireside Poets
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882),
John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell
Holmes, and James Russell Lowell were known
as the Fireside Poets.
– Poems often read aloud by the fireside
– In their time period and for a long time after, they
were the most popular poets America ever
produced.
Fireside Poets
• Because they preferred the old, established styles of
poetry, the fireside poets were unable to recognize the
American poetry of the future.
• In 1855, Whittier read the work of a young poet, Walt
Whitman, and promptly threw it into the fire.
– After reading the same poetry, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote the
young poet a letter.
– “I greet you,” Emerson wrote to Whitman, “at the beginning of
a great career.
The Transcendentalists: True Reality is
Spiritual
• Emerson led a group know at the
Transcendentalists.
– These people believed that to find the truth about
God, the universe, and one’s self, one must
transcend, or go beyond, the everyday
experiences of the physical world.
– Transcendentalism was not new
• It originated in the ancient Greek philosophy of
idealism.
Transcendentalists
• Idealists said that true reality was found in
ideas, not in the imperfect physical world.
• They sought the pure reality – the “ideal” that
was beneath physical appearances.
• American Transcendentalists were idealists in
a more practical sense.
– They believed that humanity could be perfected,
and they worked to make this idea a reality.
Emerson and Transcendentalism
• Through his books and lectures, Emerson became the
best-known member of the Transcendentalists.
– His transcendentalism added ideas from Europe and Asia to a
distinctly American base.
• Emerson drew much of his thought from Puritanism.
– God revealed himself through the Bible and the physical world.
– This mystical view of the world was passed on to American
Romantics and to Emerson.
Emerson
• He wrote, “Every natural fact is a symbol of
some spiritual fact.”
• His view of the world came from his intuition,
not from logic.
– Intuition is our ability to know things through
feeling rather reason.
– In contrast, Franklin saw nature as something to
be examined scientifically.
Emerson’s Optimistic Outlook
• Positive thinking (optimism) guided Emerson.
• Strongly believed that God is good and works through nature.
• If we trust in our own power to know God directly, we will see that
we, too, are a part of the Divine Soul.
• Emerson’s optimism appealed to many people who lived in a time
full of worries – about money, slavery, and future of our nation.
– Emerson gave them a comforting message. If the world depresses
you, look within yourself.
– The God within will connect you to the peace and beauty of the
universe.
A Transcendental View of the World
• Everything, including people, is a reflection of the
divine.
• The physical world is a doorway to the spiritual world.
• People can use intuition to sense God in nature or in
their own souls.
• A person is his or her own best authority.
• Feeling and intuition are superior to reason and
intellect.
The Dark Romantics
• Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Edgar
Allen Poe are known as the Dark Romantics.
• Because of their gloomy view of the world, some
people see these writers as anti-Transcendentalists.
• Dark Romantics had much in common with Emerson
and his followers.
– Both groups valued feeling over reason.
– Both groups saw the events of the world as a signs or symbols
that pointed beyond.
The Dark Romantics
• Did not agree with the optimism of the Transcendentalists.
• Thought that Emerson took only the bright side of Puritanism and
ignored the belief in the wickedness of humanity.
• To create a greater balance, the Dark Romantics explored both good
and evil.
– Looked at the effects of guilt and sin on the mind, body and soul,
including madness.
– Behind the pasteboard masks of polite society, they saw the horror of
evil.
– From this vision, the Dark Romantics shaped a new, truly American
literature.