AMERICAN ROMANTICISM
1800-1860
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Values feeling over intuition and reason
A. Had a strong influence on literature, music, and art in Europe
B. Developed in Europe in part as a reaction against Rationalism
1. Squalid cities and wretched working conditions caused by the Industrial Revolution
2. Didn’t come to America until four decades later
C. Believed that the imagination could apprehend truths that reason could not
1. Accompanied with strong emotion (pathos)
2. Associated with natural, unspoiled beauty
D. Valued imagination, spontaneity, individual feelings, and wild nature over reason, logic,
planning and cultivation
E. Considered poetry to be the highest embodiment of the imagination
Characteristics of American Romanticism
A. Values feeling and intuition over nature
B. Places faith in inner experience and the power of the imagination
C. Shuns the artificiality of civilization for unspoiled nature
D. Prefers youthful innocence to educated sophistication
E. Champions individual freedom and the worth of the individual
F. Contemplates nature’s beauty as a path to spiritual and moral development
G. Looks backward to the wisdom of the past and distrusts progress
H. Finds beauty and truth in exotic locales, the supernatural realm, and the inner world of th imagination
I. Sees poetry as the highest expression of the imagination
J. Finds inspiration in myth, legend, and folk culture
Took two different roads on the journey to understanding higher truths
A. Exploration of the past and exotic, even supernatural, realms Gothic novel
B. Contemplation of the natural world
Characteristics of the new American Romantic hero
A. Is young or possesses youthful qualities
B. Is innocent and pure of purpose
C. Has a sense of honor not based on society’s rules but on some higher principle
D. Has a knowledge of people and life based on deep, intuitive understanding, not formal education
E. Loves nature and avoids city life
F. Quests for some higher truth in the natural world
Romantic poets
A. Wanted to prove American writers were not unsophisticated hicks
1. Worked within European literary traditions rather than crafting an American voice
2. Typically used European themes, meter, and imagery
3. For several generations, the staple of home and school reading
B. Became known as the Fireside Poets because they were popular among the American audience
1. Included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes,
and James Russell Lowell
2. Subject matter included love, patriotism, nature, God, and family
3. Often preachy and didactic
4. Furthered the evolution of American poetry by such topics as American folk themes, descriptions of
the American landscape, abolitionist issues, American Indian culture, and celebrations of American
people, places, and events