2.  In general, Romanticism is the name given to those schools of thought that value feeling and intuition over reason. The first rumblings of Romanticism were felt in Germany in the second half of the eighteenth century. Romanticism had a strong influence on literature, music, and painting in Europe and England well into the nineteenth century.

3.  The characteristic Romantic journey is to the countryside, which Romantics associated with independence, moral clarity, and healthful living. Sometimes, as shown in the works of writers like Edgar Allan Poe (page 277), the Romantic journey is a psychological voyage to the country of the imagination. Whatever the destination of the Romantic journey, it is a flight both from something and to something.

4.  Romanticism, especially in Europe, developed in part as a reaction against rationalism. In the sooty wake of the Industrial Revolution, with its squalid cities and wretched working conditions, people had come to realize the limits of reason. The Romantics believed that the imagination was able to discover truths that the rational mind could not reach.

5.  To the Romantics, imagination, individual feelings, and wild nature were of greater value than reason, logic, and cultivation.

6.  The lyceum movement furthers American education, self-improvement, and cultural development.  Reform movements begin for women’s rights, child labor, temperance, and the abolition of slavery involving many Americans in social activism.  Utopian planners attempt to turn idealized visions of human potential into practical realities.

7.  To the Romantic mind, poetry was the highest embodiment of the imagination. Romantic artists often contrasted poetry with science, which they saw as destroying the very truth it claimed to seek. Edgar Allan Poe, for example, called science a “vulture” with wings of “dull realities,” preying on the hearts of poets

8.  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

9.  Prefers youthful innocence to educated sophistication  Champions individual freedom and the worth of the individual  Reflects on nature’s beauty as a path to spiritual and moral development

10.  Looks backward to the wisdom of the past and distrusts progress  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 folklore

11.  Is young or possesses youthful qualities  Is innocent and pure of purpose  Has a sense of honor based not on society’s rules but on some higher principle  Has a knowledge of people and life based on deep, intuitive understanding, not on formal learning

12.  Loves nature and avoids town life  Quests for some higher truth in the natural world

13.  Romantic poets wanted to prove that Americans were not unsophisticated hicks. They attempted to prove this by working solidly within European literary traditions rather than by crafting a unique American voice. Even when they constructed poems with American settings and subject matter, the American Romantic poets used typically English themes, meter, and imagery

14.  The Fireside Poets—as the Boston group of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (page 194), John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell was called—were, in their own time and for many decades afterward, the most popular poets America had ever produced. They were called Fireside Poets because their poems were read aloud at the fireside as family entertainment.

15.  A group of Romantics called the Transcendentalists believes that everything in the physical world is a reflection of the Divine Soul.

16.  Another group of Romantic writers explores the conflict between good and evil, the effects of guilt and sin, and the destructive underside of appearances.

17.  Gothic fiction (sometimes referred to as Gothic horror) is a genre of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. As a genre, it is generally believed to have been invented by the English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto.horror romance Horace WalpoleThe Castle of Otranto

18.  Prominent features of Gothic fiction include terror (both psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses and Gothic architecture, castles, darkness, death, decay, doubles, madness, secrets, and hereditary curses.supernaturalghostshaunted housesGothic architecturecastles darknessdeathdecaydoublesmadness secretshereditarycurses

19.  The stock characters of Gothic fiction include tyrants, villains, bandits, maniacs, Byronic heroes, persecuted maidens, femmes fatales, madwomen, magicians, vampires, werewolves, monsters, demons, angels, fallen angels, the beauty and the beast, revenants, ghosts, perambulating skeletons, the Wandering Jew, and the Devil himself.stock characters tyrantsvillainsbanditsmaniacsByronic heroespersecuted maidensfemmes fatales madwomenmagiciansvampires werewolvesmonstersdemonsangels fallen angels revenantsghostsperambulating skeletonsWandering JewDevil