The American Renaissance:
Romanticism and Transcendentalism
1800-1860
Thomas Cole, The Falls of the Kaaterskill, 1826
Characteristics
Values feeling/intuition over Reason
Values imagination over reality
Emphasizes the individual and individual freedom
Nature is unspoiled and is the pathway to spiritual and moral
development
Civilization is artificial and corrupts the individual
Trusts the wisdom of the past and distrusts progress
Focuses on the supernatural
Draws from myth, legend, and folklore
Notable Authors
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
Washington Irving (1783-1859)
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)
The TranscendentalistsWho Were They?
Transcendentalists held to the belief that to apprehend
ultimate reality regarding God, the universe, the self, and
other important metaphysical matters, one had to
transcend, or go beyond, everyday human experience
Preeminent among the Transcendentalists was Ralph
Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), who promulgated the
belief that human beings are capable of evil because they
are separated from a direct, intuitive knowledge of God
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where
there is no path and leave a trail.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
The abolitionist and poet Henry David Thoreau
(1817-1862) engaged in a social experiment by living for
two years two months and two days in natural
surroundings at a cabin he built near Walden Pond on
woodland owned by friend and mentor Ralph Waldo
Emerson. He compressed his experiences into one
calendar year and recorded his reflections in his work
Walden, part personal declaration of independence, part
manual on self-reliance.
Transcendentalist Values
The entire external world, including human beings, is a reflection of the Divine Soul
Physical facts of the natural world are gateways to the spiritual or ideal world
Intuition is the means to behold God’s spirit revealed in self or Nature
Self-reliance and rugged individualism over external authority and blind conformity to custom
and tradition
Spontaneous feeling is superior to rationality
Mysticism
Optimism about human nature
Into the Wild clip
Notable Works
“Nature” (1836)
By Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The American Scholar” (1837)
By Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The Over-Soul” (1841)
By Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Self-Reliance” (1841)
By Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Walden” (1854)
By Henry David Thoreau
Notable Authors
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888)
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)
The Dark Romantics
The Dark Romantics focused on the conflict between good and evil, the innate wickedness of
human beings, madness in the human psyche, the psychological effects of sin and guilt, and the
horror elements of the supernatural.
Sometimes called, anti-Transcendentalists, because of they rejected the optimism of the
Transcendentalists, the Dark Romantics in fact shared a lot of common beliefs with their
forebears. Like the Transcendentalists, the Dark Romantics maintained that there exists a kind of
intuitive thinking that brings more immediate knowledge to the soul than logic and reason.
The Dark Romantics also wrote on hypocrisy and saw that behind the pasteboard of social
respectability lay the sheer horror of evil within the human heart.
Notable Authors
Nathaniel Hawthorne
(1804-1864)
Herman Melville
(1819-1891)
Edgar Allan Poe
(1809-1849)
Notable Works
Moby Dick
by Herman Melville
“The Telltale Heart”
by Edgar Allan Poe
“The Raven”
by Edgar Allan Poe
“The Pit and the Pendulum”
by Edgar Allan Poe
“The Masque of the Red Death”
by Edgar Allan Poe
“The Cask of Amontillado”
by Edgar Allan Poe
“The Minister’s Black Veil”
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment”
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Questions?