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American Romanticism 1800-1860. A Romantic American Journey. What do you think of when you hear the word “Romanticism?” List your answers in your notes. You probably listed things like Valentines Day, roses, weddings, romance, love or the like.
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A Romantic American Journey • What do you think of when you hear the word “Romanticism?” List your answers in your notes. • You probably listed things like Valentines Day, roses, weddings, romance, love or the like. • WRONG!! Romanticism has not a thing to do with romance or love!
If it has nothing to do with romance and love, what is it? • American Romanticism can best be described as a journey away from the corruption of civilization and the limits of rational thought and toward the integrity of nature and the freedom of imagination. • Remember, each unit in this course builds upon the one before it. From this definition, what changes can you see from the beliefs of the Rationalists? Write you answers in your notes.
Romanticism is the name given to those schools of thought that value feeling and intuition over reason. Influences 1. Began in Germany in the late 1600’s and had a strong influence on literature, music, and painting in Europe and England in the 1700’s. 2. Arrived in America late, the 1800’s, and took different forms. Romantic Sensibility: Celebrating the Imagination
Cont’d • Romanticism developed as a reaction against Rationalism 1. In the wake of the Industrial Revolution, cities became dirty, bustling, impersonal places where working, and often living, conditions were deplorable. People had come to see the limits of reason. 2. As a result, Romantics came to believe that the imagination was able to contain truths that the rational mind could not reach. These truths were usually accompanied by powerful emotion and were associated with natural, unspoiled beauty. It was a form of escape.
Characteristics of American Romanticism • Values feeling and intuition over reason (Note: This borrows back from the Puritans!) • Places faith in inner experience and the power of the imagination • Shuns the artificiality of civilization and seeks unspoiled nature • Prefers youthful innocence to educated sophistication • Champions individual freedom and the worth of the individual • Contemplates nature’s beauty as a path to spiritual and moral development • Looks backward to the wisdom of the past and distrusts progress • Finds beauty and truth in exotic locales, the supernatural realm, and the inner world of the imagination • Sees poetry as the highest expression of the imagination • Finds inspiration in myth, legend, and folk culture
American Romanticism, the Wilderness and a New Kind of Hero • American writers had a limitless frontier to write about that the European writers didn’t. Thus, the early development of “American” style corresponded with western expansion, the growth of a nationalist spirit, and the rapid spread of cities westward. • As a result of this, America developed it’s own, new version of a hero.
Characteristics of the American Romantic Hero • Is young, or possesses youthful qualities • Is innocent and pure of purpose (naïve) • Has a sense of honor based not on society’s rules but on some higher principle • Has a knowledge of people and of life based on a deep, intuitive understanding, not on formal learning • Loves nature and avoids town life • Quests for some higher truth in the natural world List some modern day Romantic heroes in movies in your notes.
What is a “Fireside Poet?” • The “fireside poets” were a group of Boston poets who were the most popular poets of their time and for quite some time after. They were the most widely popular poets America produced at this point in history. • Their names were: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell. • They were called “fireside poets” because their poems were so often read aloud at the fireside as family entertainment.
