American Romanticism
1820-1865
National Optimism
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Rapid expansion of US acreage and population
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Louisiana Purchase and Gold Rush
Agricultural advancement
Industrial advancement
Frontier
Technological advancements
Problems Facing the Nation
SECTIONALISM
 North vs. South
 Economic
security/superiority
 Slavery expansion
 Political leadership
Beginnings of
American
Literature
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Was American lit. to be
“strikingly American”?
Narrower view
 Resulted in hokey work
that tried to encompass
American in its entirety,
praising its past and
supposed future greatness
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Or…
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Was American writing
to be universal and
comparable to the great
works of Europe?
 Broader view that
wound up prevailing
 Aided by the
achievement of
Romantic writers
Puritanism
~ 1620-1700
Purpose for Literature:
provide spiritual insight
and instruction
–Mostly sermons,
theological studies, and
hymns
Puritan Style
Signing the Mayflower Compact
Simple, Sparce, Straightforward.
The Founding Fathers:
Neoclassicists
1750-1800
Emphasized
reason,
Rationalism
harmony,
and restraint
Also some embraced Deism
American Romanticism
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Roots in Europe
In the U.S., it ran from
1820-1865
Of all the literary and
philosophical
movements, this one has
probably most affected
the perception of
people’s relationships to
others and to God.
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Romance: Less formal version of epic
 Noble character on a series of
adventures
 Pastoral (wilderness) setting
 Love interest and the idealization of
women
Characteristics of American Literary Romanticism
1. INDIVIDUALISM
 Popularized by the
frontier tradition
 Jacksonian
democracy
 Abolitionism
Rejection of the Puritan belief in total depravity:
 People were naturally benevolent
 Mind was a tabula rosa at birth
individuals are born without built-in mental content
and that their knowledge comes from experience
and perception ("blank slate“)
 Corrupted by institutions that
sought to dehumanize individuals
People worth highlighting are those
closest to Nature
 “Noble savage”
 Truth can best be found in Nature…
unadulterated, uncorrupted by man
…the purest form of man was the
most Native.
2. IMAGINATION
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Reaction against the earlier age’s emphasis on
Reason
3. EMOTION
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Feeling is now considered superior to rationality or
intellect, as the mode of perceiving and
experiencing reality
Intuition leads one to truth
Truth/reality are now highly subjective
4. NATURE
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The means of knowing Truth
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God reveals himself solely through Nature
Nature becomes a moral teacher
Eden-like and untouched by Adam’s fall
A retreat for men
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U.S. literature full of lavish descriptions of Nature
U.S. literature different in the sense of wild Nature
vs. Europe’s cultivated Nature
5. DISTANT SETTINGS
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Both in terms of time and place
Used to comment on attitudes of the time period
1840-1855
Part of the American Romantic Movement
Believed that:
Truth could not be perceived with the five senses
Human soul is part of the Oversoul or universal
spirit, which it returns to at a person’s death
Held nature in as an object of worship
AntiTranscendentalism
Hawthorne and
Melville
• Evil Abounds
•Not Optimistic
GOTHIC
ROMANTICISM
EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849)
In his short stories and poetry applied universal
standards of literary criticism. Developed the
American short story; brevity concept.
American Authors
THE KNICKERBOCKERS
1.WASHINGTON IRVING
(1783-1859)
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Not so much fiction as “sketches”
 Distinctly American settings and
characters
 The History of New York
Narrator: Diedrich Knickerbocker
“Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of
Sleepy Hollow”
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2. JAMES FENIMORE
COOPER (1789-1851)
•First successful American author
•Grew up in Cooperstown, NY
•Wrote 32 novels, including The
Last of the Mohicans and The
Leatherstocking Tales
NEW ENGLAND SCHOOL
(Fireside Poets)
1. Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow
2. Oliver Wendell Holmes
3. John Greenleaf Whittier
4. James Russell Lowell
5. William Cullen Bryant
The Fireside Poets
America’s First Literary Stars
We watched the first red blaze appear,
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,
Until the old, rude-furnished room
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom;
While radiant with a mimic flame
Outside the sparkling drift became,
And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free.
from Snow-bound, John Greenleaf Whittier
What are the Fireside Poets?
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First group of American poets to rival British
poets in popularity in either country.
Notable for their scholarship and the
resilience of their lines and themes.
Preferred conventional forms over
experimentation. Attention to rhyme and
strict metrical cadences made their work
popular for memorization and recitation.
Often used American legends and scenes of
American life as their subject matter.
Who were the Fireside Poets?
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Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow
William Cullen
Bryant
James Russell
Lowell
Oliver Wendell
Holmes
John Greenleaf
Whittier
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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1807-1882
Composed “Song of Hiawatha”
“Paul Revere’s Ride”
(ballad – narrative poem)
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“Psalm of Life”
“The Day Is Done”
“The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls”
“The Cross of Snow”
(sonnet – 14 line poem – Italian sonnet: octave + sestet)
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Translated Dante’s Inferno from Italian into English
William Cullen Bryant
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1794-1878
Composed
“To a Waterfowl” and
“Thanatopsis”
One of the founders of
the Republican party
and supporter of Lincoln
James Russell Lowell
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1819-1891
Composed “The First Snowfall”
and “The Present Crisis” and
“Under the Old Elm”
Active in anti-slavery causes
Satirist and critic
Lyric poet, best remembered for
his nature poems
Oliver Wendell Holmes
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http://www.online-literature.com/oliver-holmes/
1809-1894
Son of a Calvinist minister
Medical doctor – invented the term
“anesthesia.”
one of the founding editors of the
journal Atlantic Monthly in 1857
Composed “Old Ironsides,” which
saved the U.S.S. Constitution from
the scrap yard
Father of Supreme Court Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
John Greenleaf Whittier
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1807-1892
Son of Quakers
Little formal schooling
Composed Snow-bound ,
“Maude Muller” and
“Barefoot Boy”
Devoted to social causes
Active in anti-slavery movement
helped to found Atlantic Monthly
in 1857
The Civil War inspired the famous
poem "Barbara Frietchie"
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/720
Lasting Impact of Fireside Poets
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Longfellow remained the most popular American poet
for decades. When Poe criticized him, he was all but
ostracized. Longfellow remains the only American
poet to be immortalized by a bust in Westminster
Abbey’s Poets’ Corner
They took on causes in their poetry, such as the
abolition of slavery, which brought the issues to the
forefront in a palatable way.
Through their scholarship and editorial efforts, they
paved the way for later Romantic writers like Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt
Whitman.
TRANSCENDENTAL OPTIMISTS
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Famous for poetry, Nature, and
“Self-Reliance”
Spokesman for transcendentalism
 very optimistic about humans’ benevolent nature
Spent much of his life in Concord, Mass
Lectured and made the rounds as a
proponent of transcendentalism
(lyceum)
TRANSCENDENTAL OPTIMISTS
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Probably best known for Civil
Disobedience and Walden
Practiced his own preaching
Influenced future leaders
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Walden
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I went to 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 had to teach, and
not, when I came to die,
discover that I had not lived.
I did not wish to live what
was not life, living is so
dear, nor did I wish to
practice resignation, unless
it was quite necessary. I
wanted to live deep and
suck out all the marrow of
life, to live so sturdily and
Spartan-like as to put to rout
all that was not life . . ."