Individualism: American Romanticism,
Transcendentalism and Anti-Transcendentalism
Romanticism:
1. Time period: early to mid 1800s.
2. Brought about as a reaction to the Age of Reason and the strict doctrines of
Puritanism (very strict religious beliefs and practices in America from 1600-late
1700s)
3. Major themes or characteristics of Romanticism: importance of the individual,
values the imagination, and emotional side of human nature rather than rational
(logical) side of human nature. Some writers had a fascination with the
supernatural. Writers had an optimistic outlook.
4. The natural world was glorified.
5. Famous Romantic writers: Washington Irving (“Rip Van Winkle,” “The Devil
and Tom Walker”) Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (“A Psalm of Life”),
Poet William Cullen Bryant (“Thanatopsis”), and novelist James Fennimore
Cooper (created the frontier‟s man character; Last of the Mohicans).
Washington Irving
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Transcendentalism:
(An optimistic offshoot of Romanticism)
1. Time period: mid 1800s to late 1800s.
2. A belief that „transcendent forms‟ of truth exist beyond reason and experience.
3. Values intuition as a means of gaining this higher truth.
4. Communing with nature made possible an intuitive connection with the entire
universe.
5. This connection with all: God, mankind, the natural world was known as the
Universal Oversoul. All living things could tap into this spirituality.
6. Valued non-conformity.
7.
Major writers of the time: Ralph Waldo Emerson (“Self-Reliance”), Henry
David Thoreau (Walden and “Civil Disobedience”) and Walt Whitman (Leaves
of Grass).
Henry David Thoreau
Walt Whitman
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Anti-Transcendentalism or Gothic
(A pessimistic offshoot of Romanticism)
1. Time period: mid 1800s to late 1800s.
2. Known as the Dark Side of Individualism.
3. The focus on the imagination in Romanticism led to a focus on the demonic, the
fantastic and the insane for the Gothic.
4. Gothic writers took a pessimistic view of humans and saw the potential for evil
in all people.
5. „Essential truths’ about life were found in extreme situations or the darker side
of human nature (greed, betrayal, fear, etc.).
6. Major writers: Edgar Allan Poe (“The Raven” and “Fall of the House of Usher”)
and Nathaniel Hawthorne (“The Minister‟s Black Veil”).
Edgar Allan Poe
Nathaniel Hawthorne
7. Gothic lives on: Southern Gothic (William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily” and
Flannery O’Connor “A Good Man is Hard to Find”), and contemporary writers
(Anne Rice, Interview With A Vampire).