Research Paper
10th Grade
Puritans
• Saw direct connections between Biblical
events and their own lives
• Used writing to explore their inner and outer
lives for signs of the workings of God
• Diaries and histories were the most common
form of expression
• Plain style- avoided complicated figures of
speech
Rationalists
• People arrive at truth by using reason rather than by
relying on the authority of the past, on religion, or on
intuition
• God created the universe but does not interfere in its
workings
• The world works according to God’s rules, and we can
discover those rules through reason
• People are basically good and perfectible
• The best way to worship God is by helping other
people
• Human history is marked by progress toward a more
perfect existence
Romantics 1
• Value feeling and intuition over reason
• Faith in inner experiences and the power of
the imagination
• Shuns artificiality of civilization and seeks
unspoiled nature
• Prefers youthful innocence to educated
sophistication
• Individual freedom and worth of the
individual
Romantics 2
• Contemplates nature’s beauty as a path to
spiritual and moral development
• Looks backward to the past and distrusts progress
• Finds beauty and truth in exotic locales and the
supernatural realm
• Sees poetry as the highest expression of the
imagination
• Find inspiration in myth, legend, and folk culture
Transcendentalism
• Everything in the world is a reflection of the
Divine Soul
• The physical facts of the natural world are a
doorway to the spiritual, or ideal world
• People can use their intuition to behold God’s
spirit revealed in nature or in their own souls
• Self-reliance and individualism must outweigh
external authority and blind conformity to
custom and tradition
• Spontaneous feelings and intuition are superior
to deliberate intellectualism and rationality
Dark Romantics
• Value intuition over logic and reason
• Saw signs and symbols in human events
• Their view of existence developed from both the
mystical and melancholy aspects of Puritan
thought
• Explored the conflict between good and evil
• Explored the psychological effects of guilt and sin
• Explored the madness and derangement of the
human psyche
New American Poetry
• Walt Whitman
– Cadence
– Free verse
– Lets loose his passion,
philosophy, and
observations in a torrent
of language
• Emily Dickinson
– Neat stanzas
– Controlled rhyme and
meter
– Aimed to evoke the
feelings of things
– Private thoughts and
feelings
Realism
• Became the predominant style of writing
after the Civil War
• Relied on the emerging sciences of biology,
psychology, and sociology
• Tried to depict life accurately without
idealizing or romanticizing it
• Often focused on the lives of middle or lower
class people of the time period