1. Romantic Period 1820 - 1860

2. Origins • The Romanticism movement began around the late 18th - early 19th century • Started in Europe and then spread to America

3. Definition • Romanticism can be seen as a rejection of the precepts of order, calm, harmony, balance, idealization, and rationality. • It was a reaction to the Enlightenment movement and Rationalism (during the Revolutionary period), which advocated reason as the highest authority.

4. Characteristics • Celebrated the individual spirit rather than God • Some Romantic writers had a fascination with the supernatural. • The Gothic movement was born out of Romanticism. • One of the mostnoted American Gothic writers is Edgar Allan Poe. • The modern horror novel and woman's romance are both descendants of the Gothic romance. • Examples: Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and her sister Emily's Wuthering Heights; Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

5. Notable Romantic Writers • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “Paul Revere’s Ride” and The Song of Hiawatha • Washington Irving: “The Devil and Tom Walker” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” • Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter, “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment”

6. Transcendentalism • Distinctly American offshoot of Romanticism. Focuses on the belief that transcendent forms of truth exist beyond reason and experience. •  Transcendentalists believed that every individual was capable of discovering higher truth on his own through intuition, rather than established religion

7. Notable Transcendentalist Writers • Ralph Waldo Emerson: Self-Reliance, Nature • Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass • Henry David Thoreau: Civil Disobedience, Walden