The Romantic Period, 1820-1860
The Romantic Period, 1820-1860
literature depicting emotional matter in an imaginative form
－－The German poet Friedrich Schlegel
liberalism in literature
－－Victor Hugo
The background
1.
2.
3.
The Romantic movement, which originated in
Germany but quickly spread to England, France, and
beyond, reached America around the year 1820, some
20 years after William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge had revolutionized English poetry by
publishing Lyrical Ballads.
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In America as in Europe, fresh new vision startled
artistic and intellectual circles. Yet there was an important
difference: Romanticism in America coincided with the
period of national expansion and the discovery of a
distinctive American voice. The solidification of a national
identity and the surging idealism and passion of
Romanticism nurtured the masterpieces of "the American
Renaissance."
The Distinct Features of
The Romantic Period:
1. The expression of “a real new
experience”
2. The heritage of American Puritanism
3. The “newness” of the Americans as a
nation
4. Both imitative and independent
Principal Romantic Themes in A.L.
Intuition is more trustworthy than reason
To express experiences
Individual
Nature
Ideal
The major writers belonging to
A. R.
Washington Irving
James Fenimore Cooper
William Cullen Bryant
Edgar Allan Poe
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Herman Melville
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Washington Irving(1783-1859)
the first author produced in the new republic.
Washington Irving(1783-1859)
His contribution to A. L.
1.The first writer of A. imaginative literature
2.The beginning of short story as a genre
3.The Sketch Book----the beginning of
American Romanticism
Rip Van Winkle
The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow
The features of Irving’s writings
1.Avoiding moralizing
2.Developing the story in an atmosphere
3.The characters
4.His humor
5.Musical language
Washington Irving(1783-1859)
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Rip Van Winkle
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Rip Van Winkle
Explanation to Picture 1
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I have observed that he was a simple goodnatured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor,
and an obedient hen-pecked husband.
The children of the village, too, would shout with
joy whenever he approached. He assisted at their
sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly
kites and shoot marbles, and told them long
stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians.
Explanation to picture 1
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In a word Rip was ready to attend to
anybody’s business but his own; but as to
doing family duty, and keeping his farm in
order, he found it impossible.
Explanation to picture 2
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For a long while he used to console himself,
when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of
perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and
other idle personages of the village; which held
its sessions on a bench before a small inn,
designated by a rubicund portrait of His Majesty
George the Third. Here they used to sit in the
shade through a long lazy summer’s day, talking
listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless
sleepy stories about nothing.
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On entering the amphitheatre, new objects of
wonder presented themselves. On a level spot in
the centre was a company of odd-looking
personages playing at nine-pins
What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, that
though these folks were evidently amusing
themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces,
the most mysterious silence, and were, withal, the
most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever
witnessed. Nothing interrupted the stillness of the
scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever
they were rolled, echoed along the mountains like
rumbling peals of thunder
Rip Van Winkle
The story has been seen as a symbol of
several aspects of America.
1. Rip
2. The Village
 The story reveals the conservative attitude
of its author.
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The theme of the story
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The story of man who has difficulties facing his
advancing age
The contradictory impulses in America toward
work- the puritan attitude as opposed to the
American desire for leisure
The theme of escape from one’s responsibilities
and even one’s history
The loss of identity
James Fenimore Cooper(1789-1851)
Leather-stocking Tales
The Last of the Mohicans
“Accident first made me a writer, and the same accident
gave a direction to my pen. Ashamed to have fallen into
the track of imitation, I endeavored to repair the wrong
done to my own views, by producing a work that should
be purely American, and of which love of country should
be the theme.”
Major Works
Sea fiction: The Pilot
Historical novel: The Spy
Frontier tales: Leather-stocking Tales
Social criticism: The Littlepage Manuscript
Leather-stocking Tales
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Leatherstocking Tales is a series of novels set in the
early frontier period of American history. The
Deerslayer depicts Natty Bumppo's experiences as a
young man. The Last of the Mohicans in set in the 1757
during the Seven Years' War between the French and
the British. The Pathfinder is also set during the war,
and tells a story of betrayal and love. The Pioneers is
set in 1793 in Otsego County in the recently settled
region of New York state. The Prairie is set in 1804.
Natty Bumppo meets a wagon train and helps it to
evade an Indian raiding party. The travellers endure a
prairie fire, a buffalo stampede, and capture by the
Sioux. In the end of the tale Bumppo peacefully dies
on the prairie, surrounded by his friends.
Natty Bumppo
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His various names: hawk-eye,the
pathfinder,
the deerslayer,
leatherstocking
Central American myth-the image of an
independent,self-reliant, solitary man,the
quintessence of individualism in the
untouched , unimaginably huge, virgin
forest.
D.H.Lawrance’s Comments
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The Leatherstocking novels …go backwards,
from old age to golden youth. That is true
myth of America. She starts old, old wrinkled
and writhing in an old skin. And there is a
gradual sloughing of the old skin, towards a
new youth. It is the myth of America.”
The Last of the Mohicans
MOHICAN
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Mohican is an Indian tribe,which was persecuted
and killed by the Whites. So only the leader of the
tribe Chingachgook and his son Uncas left when
the novel begins. They were described by Cooper
as “novel Savages”.They were much more
respectable than some vicious Whites.And Uncas
even sacrificed his life in order to rescue the
White girls.
Cooper’s contribution to AL
1. An enduring American mythic hero in his Leather-stocking
novels
2. Subjects: the Revolution, the frontier, the sea, and the
wilderness
3. An important social critic
Irving and Cooper
Similarities:
 A distinctly romantic strain
 Be deeply concerned with the meaning of America
Differences:
 Subject
 literary achievement
William Cullen Bryant(1794-1878)
The first native American poet to gain
worldwide fame.
To a Waterfowl
“The most perfect brief
poem in the language”
-----Matthew Arnold
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Whither, 'midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?
Vainly the fowler’s eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky
Thy figure floats along.
Seek'st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean side?
There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,-The desert and illimitable air,-Lone wandering, but not lost.
All day thy wings have fann'd
At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere:
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.
And soon that toil shall end,
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reed shall bend
Soon o'er thy sheltered nest.
Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.
He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.
To a Waterfowl
1. The poem is arranged in alternating rhymed quatrains.
2. typographic feature: gliding quatrains
3. Theme :
 A divine power is guiding the bird in its solitary flight
and the divine spirit guides and protects everything in
nature, including man. Man will not get lost in his
lonely travel.
Seek'st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean side?
There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,-The desert and illimitable air,-Lone wandering, but not lost.
All day thy wings have fann'd
At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere:
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.
And soon that toil shall end,
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reed shall bend
Soon o'er thy sheltered nest.
Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.
He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.
To a Waterfowl
1. The poem is arranged in alternating rhymed quatrains.
2. typographic feature: gliding quatrains
3. Theme :
 A divine power is guiding the bird in its solitary flight
and the divine spirit guides and protects everything in
nature, including man. Man will not get lost in his
lonely travel.