The –isms!
Classicism
• An approach to literature and the other arts
that stresses reason, balance, clarity, ideal
beauty, and orderly form in imitation of the
arts of ancient Greece and Rome
Romanticism
• A literary and artistic movement of the
nineteenth century that arose in reaction
against eighteenth century Classicism and
placed a premium on imagination, emotion,
nature, and individuality.
Romanticism- Early to mid 1800s
Romanticism
Famous Romantic Authors
• Washington Irving
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• James Fenimore Cooper
Romanticism’s two offshoots
• Transcendentalism
• Anti-Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism- Mid to late 1800s
“Transcendent forms” of truth
exist beyond reason and
experience
Intuition should be used to gain
higher truth
Optimistic offshoot
of Romanticism
Communing with nature helped
form an intuitive connection with
the universe; the Universal
Oversoul
Non-conformists
Famous Transcendental Authors
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Henry David Thoreau
Famous Emerson Quotes
• We have no experience of a Creator, therefore we
know of none
• Why should we not have a poetry and philosophy of
insight, and not of tradition, and a religion by
revelation to us, and not the history of theirs
• Speak what you think now in hard words and
tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words
again, though it contradict everything you said today
• Good men must not obey the laws too well
• To be great is to be misunderstood
• Imitation is suicide
Anti-Transcendentalism- Mid to late
1800s
Dark side of individualism
Focus on the demonic, fantastic, insane
Pessimistic offshoot of
Romanticism- Reaction
to Transcendentalism
Pessimistic view of humans; saw the
potential for evil
Essential truths found in extreme
situations or the darker side of human
nature (greed, betrayal, fear)
Nature
• Transcendentalists saw nothing but good in
nature; anti-transcendentalists were very
different
• Nature is vast and incomprehensible, a
reflection of the struggle between good and
evil
• Nature is the creation and possession of God
and it cannot be understood by human beings
Literary
Works
• Prose- Short stories and novels
• Allegories
Allegory
• A work of literature in which events, characters, and details of a setting have a
symbolic meaning
• Ex. A character representing one trait of mankind, like guilt
Symbolism
• A symbol is a person, place, or thing that has a meaning in itself and also
represents something larger than it.
• Ex. Moby Dick is massive and threatening, but also beautiful and inspiring, just
like nature
Writing Style
•
•
•
•
Man vs. Nature brings out the evil in humanity
Raw, morbid diction
Focus on the protagonist’s inner struggles
Typical protagonists are haunted outsiders
who are alienated from society
Famous Anti-Transcendental Authors
• Herman Melville
• Edgar Allen Poe
• Nathaniel Hawthorne
Realism
• The presentation in art of the details of actual
life. A literary movement that began during
the nineteenth century and stressed the
actual as opposed to the imagined or the
fanciful. Realists attempted to write
objectively about ordinary characters in
ordinary situations. Authors included Mark
Twain, W.E.B. DuBois, and Kate Chopin.
Naturalism
• A literary movement among novelists at the
end of the nineteenth century and during the
early decades of the twentieth century. The
Naturalists tended to view people as hapless
victims of immutable natural laws. Stephen
Crane, Jack London, and Theodore Dreiser
were Naturalists.