Transcript American Romanticism 1800-1860

American Romanticism
1800-1855
Lit book pg. 304
Historical Context
• Westward Expansion:
– 1803: The Louisiana Purchase
doubled the size of the country
– Manifest Destiny: the idea
that it was the destiny of the United
States to expand to the Pacific Ocean
and down into Mexico
– Many Americans (such as Thoreau)
found the Mexican-American War
immoral, as it would expand slaveholding states
• Growth of Industry:
– Industrial Revolution changed the country from
agrarian (farming-based) to an industrial nation
– Writers responded to the negative effects of
industrialization
Cultural Influences and Ideas
• The Tragedy of Slavery:
– Rise in production of cotton meant more demand for slaves
in the South
– Life in slavery was brutal and often inescapable
• Call for Social Reform
– Rise of abolitionist movements and writers (fiction,
nonfiction, and poetry)
– Americans began to fight for the rights of other groups, such
as workers and women
• Nationalism vs. Sectionalism
– Nationalism: the belief that national interests should be
placed ahead of regional concerns
– Sectionalism: placing the interests of one’s own region
ahead of the nation as a whole
– Factions in the United States were split over issues such as
slavery and economic issues
1. Early Romantic Literature:
• First emerged in Europe
• Inspired by the beauty of nature
• Emphasized emotions and imagination over
reason (anti-rationalists)
• Celebrated the individual spirit
• Some had fascination
with the supernatural
• William Cullen Bryant,
Washington Irving,
James Fenimore Cooper
Romanticism was seen as a Journey
• Away from civilization and back to
nature
• Away from corruption and back to
innocence and youth
• Away from industrialization and
back to intuition and emotion
• Away from rationalization and
back to imagination
• Away from science and back to
poetry
2. The Fireside Poets
• Read aloud for family entertainment
• First time American
poetry seen as equal to
English
• Mimicked European styles,
themes, meter, imagery
• Subjects include love,
patriotism, nature, family,
God/religion
• Fireside Poets also introduced new subjects: American
landscapes, abolitionist issues, women’s rights,
American Indian culture
• Championed the common person (reflected the
movement of government in the time period)
• Focused on moral issues and themes; committed to
social reform
• Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Whittier
3. Transcendentalists
• Ralph Waldo Emerson &
Henry David Thoreau
• Also inspired by European ideas
Emerson
• Emphasized living a simple life
• Stressed close relationship with nature
• Celebrated emotions and imagination
• Stressed individualism and
self-reliance
Thoreau
• Believed intuition lead to knowledge
• Inherent goodness in people (optimism!)
• Spiritual well-being over financial well-being
• Each person is part of the Divine Soul
4. American Gothic
• “Anti-transcendentalists”: Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar
Allan Poe
• Did not believe in the innate goodness
of people (pessimistic)
• Explored the human capacity for evil
• Probed inner life of the characters and
explored their motivations
• Agreed with Romantic emphasis on
emotion, nature, and the individual
• Elements of fantasy and the
supernatural; gothic elements of
grotesque characters, bizarre situations,
and violent events