AMERICAN ROMANTICISM (1836-1860)
Introduction
Americans will walk with our own feet, we will work with our own hands, we will speak
our own minds. (Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar,” 1836)
This grand oration [“The American Scholar”] was our intellectual Declaration of
Independence. . . . (Oliver Wendall Holms, 1885)
We were socially and intellectually moored to English thought, til Emerson cut the cable
and gave us a chance at the dangers and glories of blue water. (James Russell Lowell,
1871)
Introduction
1. What are (roughly) the dates that cover the American romantic movement and
why?
2. In what ways way romanticism a reaction against the American age of reason?
a. Age of reason: science, reason, logic
b. Romantic age: emotion, intuition, imagination, fantasy, introspection, the
exotic, madness
3. Characterize the spirit of the age:
a. Westward expansion
b. Rise in technology/industrial revolution (steam engines, cotton gin, sewing
machine, telegraph)
c. Growing feminist movement
d. Anti-slavery movement
e. Transcendentalism
f. Rise in political parties
g. Expanding population
1776: thirteen states
1810: seventeen states (population 7,000,000)
1860: thirty-four states (population 31,000,000)
h. Assembly-line production
Characteristics of Romantic Literature
1. Dark side (Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville)
a. Mysticism
b. Melancholy
c. Gothic features
d. Love of past
e. Psychic/emotional stress (especially Poe)
f. Preoccupation with sin and evil
g. Interest in symbols
h. Multiple interpretations of literature
i. Interest in dream states and inner realm of dreams
j. Interest in exotic places
k. Interest in the non-rational (including insanity, madness)
2. Transcendental side (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May
Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Walt Whitman)
a. Value of the individual
b. Intuitive perception
c. Love of Nature
d. Nature as the great teacher (reflection of God)
e. Humanitarianism and democracy
f. Interest in primitive and simple life
g. Preoccupation with goodness
h. Reaction against materialism and commercialism
i. Reaction against traditional Christian religious beliefs
j. Belief in the indwelling divinity within humankind
k. Belief in God, humans, and nature as sharers in universal soul
3. Continued quest for freedom and human rights
a. Frederick Douglass
b. Sojourner Truth
c. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
4. One who cannot be categorized or “boxed”: Emily Dickinson
CRITICAL THINKING
1. Connect Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Sonnet—to Science” with Walt Whitman’s poem
“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.” Note both content and style.