
"Romanticism" is a style or movement in
literature, music, and other arts beginning in the
late 1700s that thrives even now in popular
forms and attitudes.

Historically, the Romantic era may be called
"The Age of Revolution" from the French
Revolution (1789-99) and the American
Revolution (1775-83) but also from social and
cultural changes that more broadly
revolutionized society as well as the arts.
Romanticism is the name given to those schools
of thought that value feeling and intuition over
reason. Developed in part as a reaction against
rationalism.
 Romanticism almost always values something
beyond or something lost, another reality to
challenge or transform the everyday.
 It 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 the imagination.

American Romanticism took two roads on the journey
to understanding higher truths. One road led to the
exploration of the past and the exotic, even
supernatural, realms; the other road led to the
contemplation of the natural world.
 It involves many diverse, even contradictory
elements, gestures, and meanings:

 individualism
 sentimental love of nature
 feeling over logic or experience ("Anything you want you
can have if you only want it enough.")
 nostalgia
 utopian thought (perfect community)
 escapism

Characteristics are:
 Is young, or possess youthful qualities
 Is innocent and pure of purpose
 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 deep,
intuitive understanding, not on formal learning
 Loves nature (adventure, even) and avoids town life
 Quests for some higher truth in the natural world
▪ Examples: Natty Bumppo in The Last of the Mohicans, or
Indiana Jones in the that series.

"Gothic." A term for aspects of medieval art first applied
to pointed architecture in the early seventeenth century.
The gothic revival [in architecture in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries] in its literary aspects was
closely associated with the green copses, disordered
stone piles, enchanting shadows and sweet melancholy
of these ruined buildings. . . .

"The Gothic Novel." A form of novel in which magic,
mystery, and chivalry are the chief
characteristics. Horrors abound: one may expect a suit
of armor suddenly to come to life, while ghosts, clanking
chains, and charnel houses impart an uncanny
atmosphere of terror.

“They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape
those who dream only by night” – Poe

haunted houses / castles / woods; mazes/ labyrinths; closed doors &
secret passages / rooms

light and dark interplay with shades of gray or blood-red colors fair &
dark ladies

repressed fears & desires; memory of past crime or sin, death & decay,
bad-boys

blood as visual spectacle and genealogy / ethnicity spectral or grotesque
figures, lurid symbols

creepy or startling sounds, screams in the night, groans from unknown
rooms

the unknown, guilt of repressed crime, sin (the scary or naughty)

Gothic novels or romances, horror films, thrillers, mysteries, film noir

“Goth” fashion and gothic rock or metal music

Frequently today (and earlier) the gothic is spoofed or satirized as a formula: The
Addams Family, Young Frankenstein, etc.

The gothic has deep roots in theology, architecture, psychology, the imagination,
and many literary traditions.

Images associated with the gothic stretch back to Christian visions of hell,
devils, and demons, with Lucifer as the original Byronic hero: proud,
rebellious, attractive, dangerous to know. As the gothic develops, such imagery
becomes secularized but may still evoke the supernatural.

The indispensable feature of nearly any gothic narrative is a haunted space that
reflects or corresponds to a haunted mind. In European literature the gothic
space is typically a haunted castle or other architectural structure such as a maze
or labyrinth.

“During the whole of the dull, dark, and
soundless day in the autumn of the year, when
the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens,
I had been passing alone, on horseback, through
a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length
found myself, as the shades of the evening drew
on, within view of the melancholy House of
Usher… I reined my horse to the precipitous
brink of the black and lurid tarn that lay in
unruffled luster by the dwelling… (with) vacant
and eye-like windows.”
-Edgar Allan Poe

Characteristics of how Transcendentalists see
the world:
 Free thought (individualism)
 Confidence
 Importance of nature
 Self-reliance
 Non-conformity

1. The Transcendental Club – Emerson and
Thoreau
 Next slide…

2. The Dark Romantics – Poe, Hawthorne,
Melville
 Focus on the conflict between good and evil; the
psychological effects of guilt and sin; madness and
derangement in the human mind

3. Similarities between the two.
 Valued intuition over logic; like the Puritans, they saw
signs and symbols in human events



Transcendentalism – the idea that in
determining the ultimate reality of God, the
universe, the self, and other important
matters, one must transcend or go beyond
everyday experience in the natural world.
Dates back to the Greek philosopher Plato, in
the 4th century B.C.
Values intuition and human perfectibility







“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of
your own mind.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882
Appealed to intellectuals and the public
They refer to him as a poet
Young rebel
He left and went on a European tour
Suffered from a severe loss of memory in old
age

Short statements that express wise or clever
observations about life.
 Also called ‘maxims’ or ‘adages’




“Nothing great was ever achieved without
enthusiasm.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most
people exist, that is all.” Oscar Wilde
“Good and bad are but names.” Emerson
“We are determined to be starved before we
are hungry.” Thoreau