American Romanticism
The American Renaissance
1800-1865
Historical & Cultural Context
• U.S. becomes its own country and grows as a global power.
• Westward Expansion, Gold Rush, Louisiana Purchase
• Slavery necessary for economic success by Southern
plantation owners
• Many advances in transportation (railroad, horseless carriage)
and communications (telegraph)
• First copyright laws and protections
• Free public education (primary & secondary) was widespread
in the North
Views and Beliefs (Tenets)
• Man is born innocent, but corrupted by society and
civilization.
• Man can be “saved” by returning to his natural state
through the power of nature and the individual
human mind.
• Truth is no longer found in reason, but in trusting
one’s emotions, spontaneity, and sincerity.
• NATURE is the source of instruction, delight, and
nourishment for the soul.
• Life in nature VERSUS unnatural life in society
Views and Beliefs (Tenets) Cont…
• Strong beliefs in values of democracy and freedom (esp. of
the individual)
• Art moves toward highlighting the sublime, grotesque, and
the beautiful with a touch of strangeness INSTEAD OF the
order and proportion from the Age of Reason (Rev.)
• The philosophy behind the movement comes from the French
moralist Jean Jaques Rousseau. He believed evil is not
inherent in human nature or the natural world (Nature and
people are essentially good, so evil is the result of society’s
corruption).
• Romantics held up nature, youth, ordinary men, the
individual, simplicity, and emotions.
Romantics searched for truth through
imagination and nature.
• They believed intuition (“the truth of the heart”) was more trustworthy
than reason.
• Romantics believed the individual is at the center of life and God is at
the center of every individual
• Romantics believed the supernatural could be intuited from nature and
all of its physical symbols
• They wrote stories about dangerous adventures, set in the past or
remote places.
• Authors used expressive descriptive language, double meanings, and
symbols.
• Romantics valued poetry, imagination, and the gothic novel.
• Romantics believed people should aspire to the Ideal and change the
world as it is to what it ought to be.
The American Hero
• Used to dispel the European
belief that all Americans were
uncultured and uncivilized
• Need to engage in a quest for
some higher truth in the natural
world
• Young/ Innocent
• Love of nature
• Distrust of town life
• Common man values
Sub-Categories of Romanticism
• Romantics: focus on freedom of expression and
imagination
– Washington Irving, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman
• Dark Romantics/Gothic: focus on supernatural and
complexities of death/afterworld
– Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Transcendentalists: focus on nature and renewing
power of nature
– Transcend = to move beyond/to be superior
– Henry Thoreau, Ralph Emerson
Individualism
God is in each of us.
Therefore, the
thoughts from
within us are divine,
and must be correct
Self-Reliance
Nature
Self reliance is
essential. Belief in
the individual and
breaking from the
structure of society
Nature, man and God
exist in a fluid
connectivity.
Emerson refers to
this as the Oversoul
Antimaterialism
Money and
things are not
important. It is
what we
contribute to
society that
determines our
value.
Simplicity
We must avoid the
distractions and
truly seize each
and every
moment as if it
were the last
Non Conformity
Be yourself. Do
not follow what
others believe you
to be.
The most distinctively American Romantic
movement is Transcendentalism.
American Transcendentalism
“ It was a high counsel that I once heard given
to a young person, always do what you are
afraid to do.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Transcendentalism
• A literary movement in the 1830’s that
established a clear “American Voice”.
• Emerson first expressed his philosophy in his
essay “Nature.”
• A belief in a higher reality than that achieved
by human reasoning.
• Suggests that every individual is capable of
discovering this higher truth through intuition.
• Unlike Puritans, they saw humans and nature
as possessing an innate goodness.
“In the faces of men and women, I see God”
-Walt Whitman
• Opposed strict ritualism and
dogma of established religion.
Transcendentalism: The tenets:
• Believed in living close to nature/importance
of nature. Nature is the source of truth and
inspiration.
• Taught the dignity of manual labor
• Advocated self-trust/ confidence
• Valued individuality/non-conformity/free
thought
• Advocated self-reliance/ simplicity
The first transcendentalists
•
•
•
•
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Margaret Fuller
Henry David Thoreau
Bronson Alcott
• They stressed individualism, and instead of borrowing
from traditional literary forms, they prided
themselves of inventing new forms of literature.
• They believed that the physical universe and all great
literature were an expression of the divine spirit.
“Self-Reliance” -Emerson
“There is a time in every man’s education when
he arrives at the conviction that envy is
ignorance; that imitation in suicide…”
“Trust thyself…”
“What I must do is
all that concerns me,
not what people think…”
“…to be great is to be misunderstood”
“Nature”
• Thoreau began “essential” living
• Built a cabin on land owned to Emerson in
Concord, Mass. near Walden Pond
• Lived alone there
for two years studying
nature and seeking
truth within himself
“Civil Disobedience”
• Thoreau’s essay urging passive, non-violent
resistance to governmental policies to which
an individual is morally opposed.
• Influenced individuals such a Ghandi, Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr., and Cesar Chavez
Quotes by Emerson
& Thoreau
“I went into the woods because I
wished to live deliberately, to
front only the essential facts of
life and see if I could not learn
what it has to teach, and not,
when I came to die, discover that
I had not lived.”
“If a man does not keep pace with his
companions, perhaps it is because he hears a
different drummer. Let him step to the music
he hears, however measured or far away.”
"If the law is of such nature that it requires you to be an
agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law."
July 1846 Thoreau’s Night in Jail
The Fireside Poets
• The first group of New England Renaissance poets were
known as the Fireside or Schoolroom Poets, because their
words were so often read by families at the fireside and
recited by students in American schoolrooms.
• Fireside poets had a social purpose in their writing, and
they wrote against slavery and offered an idealized
morally uplifting view of the nation.
• The lyrical and narrative verse of the Fireside poets was
not difficult, but it helped to create a popular interest in
poetry.
• Some of the fireside poets include; Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, James Russel Lowell, John Greenleaf Whittier,
and Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Major Authors and Texts
• Washington Irving
– “The Devil and Tom Walker” (Faustian Legend)
– “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (Headless Horseman)
• Walt Whiman/Emily Dickinson (poets)
• Ralph Waldo Emerson/Henry David Thoreau
– “Walden,” “Self-Reliance,” “Civil Disobedience”
• Edgar Allan Poe
– “The Raven” (poem)
– “The Masque of the Red Death”
What Corrupts Us?
INNATELY CORRUPT- RELIGION SAVES
Humans are born corrupt and in need of saving
(Puritanical Ideal)
INNATELY CORRUPT-LOGIC/REASON SAVES
Humans are born corrupt, but can be saved
through careful attention and development of
reasoning and deep thinking to find truth.
(Revolutionary Ideal)
INNATELY INNOCENT- SOCIETY CORRUPTS
Humans are born innocent, but
society/civilization corrupts them by stripping
them of their innocent roots. (Romantic Ideal)