American Romanticism1800—1860

The journey begins!…yearning, striving, becoming…

Let’s REVIEW!

Puritans

Focus: GodForm of Government: Theocracy—Divinely

appointed governmentThe American: a hard worker, faithful, spiritual

and family-orientedThe American’s values: based on his relationship

to God and his family.Truth: Acquired through spiritual experiencesLiterature: the Bible, personal texts, poetry based

on God and familyView of Nature: The Devil’s domain, the last

stronghold of Satan, a place/force to be feared

Rationalists

Focus: The nationForm of Government: The emergence of

democracyThe American: intellectual, politically-active, self-

made manThe American’s values: higher education,

political debate, survival of the nationTruth: Acquired through intellectual reasoningLiterature: speeches, pamphlets, journals,

almanacs, brochures and autobiographiesRhetoric: derived from the theories of

Enlightenment philosophers and thinkersView of Nature: Valued for its scientific offerings

and should be studied

Romantics

Focus: The individualForm of Government: Democracy focused on

expanding boundariesThe American: the frontiersman, explorer,

Romantic heroThe American’s values: intuition and feelings

were valued over intellect and reasonTruth: Acquired through personal journeyLiterature: folk tales, poetry, the short storyView of Nature: place of refuge, holds the key

to spiritual truths and healing

Intellectual Reasoninggives way to

The Spirit of Individualism

• Man should rely more on his instincts and intuition than his reasoning abilities

• Nature which was evil to the Puritans and practical to the Rationalists becomes a place of refuge to the Romantics.

Nature as an ideal

• Man can live in harmony with nature

• Absence of crime• Free from corrupting influences of city life• Uncorrupted by “civilization”• Truth is found in nature• Nature instructs and heals• Nature was God’s finest work

What kind of people?

What kind of country?

What kind of culture are we becoming?

Who will be our heroes?

The New Frontier

• Post-Revolutionary War Citizens of new nation –restless Many journey into the American frontier The frontier was the spirit of America The frontier provided original American literature markedly different from European writing

• “Manifest Destiny” Westward expansion Many Americans began to feel it was the destiny or fate of the

United States to rule North America from coast to coast.

• The “Frontier Hero” emerged in life and in literature

The Romantic Hero“A Frontier Man”

• Young, or possesses youthful qualities• Innocent -- pure of purpose• Possesses a sense of humor based not

on society’s rules but on some higher principle

• Has knowledge of people and of life based on deep, intuitive understanding, not on formal learning

• Loves nature and avoids town life• Quests for some higher truth in the

natural world

Natty Bumppo“His face…was simply guileless truth, sustained by an earnestness of purpose and a sincerity of feeling, that rendered it remarkable.” James Fennimore Cooper,describing Natty Bumppo in The Deerslayer, 1823

Davy Crockett:King of the Wild

Frontier!

He became famous in

Tennessee as a noted hunter, backwoods politician and speaker for the common man. In Texas, however, he will always be remembered as a hero at the Battle of the Alamo.

Romantic Hero

Daniel Boone:an American pioneer and frontiersman who settled in Kentucky. His exploits in the wilderness and during the American Revolution led to his becoming a folk hero.

Paul Bunyan -- giant lumberjack… created America and invented logging in  the Pacific Northwest. He dug a sound in Washington to float huge logs to the mill, cleared trees from both North and South Dakota, dragged his ax a ways and accidentally formed the Grand Canyon, scooped out the Great Lakes so Babe, his blue ox Babe would have drinking water.

 

AmericanFolk Tale Hero (Tall Tales)

Characteristics of American Romanticism

• Values feeling and intuition over reason

• Places faith in inner experience and the power of the imagination

• Shuns the artificiality of civilization and seeks unspoiled nature

• Prefers youthful innocence to educated sophistication

• Champions individual freedom and the worth of the individual

Characteristics of American Romanticism

• Contemplates nature’s beauty as a path to spiritual and moral development

• Looks backward to the wisdom of the past and distrusts progress (nostalgia)

• Finds beauty and truth in exotic locales, the supernatural realm, and the inner world of the imagination

• Sees poetry as the highest expression of the imagination

• Finds inspiration in myth, legend and folk culture

Fireside Poets • First group of American poets to rival British

poets in popularity in either country.• Preferred conventional forms over

experimentation.• Often used American legends and scenes of

American life as their subject matter. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow William Cullen Bryant James Russell Lowell Oliver Wendell Holmes John Greenleaf Whittier

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

• Worldwide best selling poet of the era

• The Poets and Poetry of Europe

• Narrative poems – romanticized early American history and democratic ideals

• “overly optimistic and sentimental”

Emily Dickinson

• We will take notes from the textbook to acquaint ourselves with the life and style of Dickinson, pages: 404-405 406-407 418-419

TheDark

Romantics

Edgar Allan Poe

Herman Melville

Nathaniel Hawthorne

“Gothic”? Term from architecture (castle, cathedrals)

Setting: bleak or remote; “pseudo-medieval,” e.g. in a dark castle or abbey with secret passageways and hidden trap doors

Themes often focused on the darker side of human nature: betrayal, the desire for revenge, insanity, superstition, etc.

Supernatural Elements: ghosts and spirits, macabre incidents

Mood and Tone: mysterious, dark, suspenseful, meant to arouse terror

Writers such as Hawthorne, Melville, and

Poeacknowledged the existence

of

sinpainevil

in human life.

Tales of the ghastlyand the grotesque…Master ofthe Macabre!

Edgar Allan Poe

Pages 288-289 in textbook

Transcendentalism

Determining the ultimate reality of God, the universe, the self by

TRANSCENDING everyday human experience.

Ralph Waldo Emerson-Son of a minister; short-lived career as a minister

-Wanted to create a more perfect society (utopia)

-To Emerson, “the individual is the world”

He helped inspire many movements to--improve public education--abolish slavery--elevate the status of women--improve social conditions

There is an ideal spiritual state which “transcends” (rises above)

the physical and the practical state.

Basic Premise #1

An individual is the spiritual center of the universe

In an individual can be found the clue to nature, history and, ultimately, the cosmos itself.

It is not a rejection of the existence of God, but a preference to explain an individual and the world in terms of an individual.

Basic Premise #2

All knowledge comes from self-knowledge

The structure of the universe duplicates the structure of the individual self. Therefore, in order to have knowledge you must "know thyself."

Basic Premise #3

Nature is symbolic.

Transcendentalists accepted the concept of nature as a living mystery, full of signs and insight into the world.

Basic Premise #4 Individual virtue and happiness depend upon

self-realization.

To achieve this, we must combine two elements of our personalities:(1) our desire to know and become one with the world.

(2) our wish to remain a unique and separate individual.

People can use their INTUITIONto behold God’s spirit revealed in Nature or in their own souls:

the “Oversoul”

“…within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related.” - RWE

Spontaneous feelings and INTUITIONare superiorto deliberate intellectualism and rationality.

Everything in the world is a reflection of the

Oversoul:

“To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the heart of the child. “

--RWE

Emerson believed we can find God directly in nature.God is good.God works through nature, he believed. Therefore, even the natural events that seem most tragic—disease, death, disaster—can be explained on a spiritual level.

Transcendentalists were idealists who believed in human perfectability.

They worked to achieve this goal: utopian society.

So…which is your preference?

Gothic RomanticisM?

Transcendentalism?

THOREAU

SELF-RELIANCE and INDIVIDUALISM must outweighexternal authority and blind conformity

to custom and tradition.

Death is simply a part of thecycle of life.

We are capable of evilbecause we are separated from a direct, intuitive knowledgeof God, according to Emerson.

“I unsettle all things.No facts are to me Sacred; none areProfane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no Past at my back.” --Emerson

Henry David ThoreauHenry David Thoreau was a complex man of many talents who worked hard to shape his craft and his life, seeing little difference between them. Born in 1817, one of his first memories was of staying awake at night "looking through the stars to see if I could see God behind them." One might say he never stopped looking into nature for ultimate Truth.

“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.”

--Henry David Thoreaufrom WALDEN, or Life in the Woods

“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, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it is sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men…have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to “glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: That if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

“Some are dinning in our ears that we Americans, and moderns generally, are intellectual dwarfs compared with the ancients, or even the Elizabethan men.But what is that to the purpose?

A living dog is better than a dead lion.Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let everyone mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.”

“Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises?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 which he hears, however measured or far away.”