1. American Romanticism 1800 - 1860
We will walk with our own feet
we will work with our own hands
we will speak our own minds
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

2. Political and Social Milestones
The Louisiana Purchase
The Gold Rush
Education and Reform

3. Rationalism vs Romanticism
The rationalists believed the city to be a place to find success and self-realization
The romantics associated the countryside with independence, moral clarity, and healthful living.

4. 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
Contemplates nature’s beauty as a path to spiritual and moral development

5. Characteristics (continued)
Looks backward to the wisdom of the past and distrusts progress
Finds beauty and truth in exotic locals, 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

6. Rising to higher truths
through the exploration of the past and of exotic, even supernatural, realms--the Gothic novel--old legends and folklore
through the contemplation of the natural world--lyric poetry--its underlying beauty and truth

7. New American Novelists
Herman Melville - (ex-sailor) wrote Moby Dick
Nathaniel Hawthorne - wrote The Scarlet Letter

8. The Fireside Poets
Opposite of novelists - worked within European literary traditions
Used English themes, meter, imagery with American settings and subjects
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendel Holmes, James Russell Lowell

9. Transcendentalism
The idea that in determining the ultimate reality of God, the universe, the self, and other important matters, one must transcend, or go beyond, everyday human experience in the physical world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson influenced by ancient Greek - Plato
Also based on Puritan belief and Romantics
Based on intuition; optimistic
Henry David Thoreau Emerson’s close friend

10. The Realm of Darkness Dark Romanticism
Edgar Allen Poe with Hawthorne and Melville known and anti-Transcendentalists
Had much in common with Transcendentalists
Explored conflicts between good and evil, psychological effects of guilt and sin, and madness