1. Unit 2 Literary Focus Essays
Collection 4: American Romanticism
Collection 5: Gothic Fiction

2. Collection 4: American Romanticism
Characteristics of American Romanticism
Affirmation of feeling and intuition over reason
Faith in imagination, inner experience, and youthful innocence, rather than educated sophistication
Belief in the unspoiled natural world, as opposed to the artificiality of civilization
Regard for individual freedom and the worth of the individual

3. American Romanticism A Reaction Against Rationalism
After winning independence from the British, Americans began to form their own cultural identity.
The Granger Collection, New York
Writers called Romantics helped build this identity.
The works of the Romantic writers still influence the way Americans view themselves, their society, and the natural world.

4. American Romanticism A Reaction Against Rationalism
Romanticism is a school of thought that values feeling and intuition over reason.
The Romantic movement began in Germany in the second half of the eighteenth century.
Romanticism strongly influenced literature, music, and painting in Europe and Britain.
Romanticism developed in part as a reaction against rationalism, after the Industrial Revolution, with its squalid cities, led people to see the limits of reason.

5. American Romanticism A Reaction Against Rationalism
To the Romantics,
the imagination could discover truths that the rational mind could not reach.
such truths were accompanied by powerful emotions and were associated with natural beauty.
individual feelings and wild nature were more important than reason, logic, and sophistication.

6. American Romanticism Romantic Escapism
To rise above what Edgar Allan Poe called “dull realities” and find a realm of higher truth, the Romantics used two principal approaches:
They chose settings and situations that did not come from the real, modern world. 1
They tried to reflect on the natural world until dull reality fell away to reveal beauty and truth. 2

7. American Romanticism Romantic Escapism
Romantics chose settings and situations that did not come from the real, modern world. 1
Situations are from the more “natural” past.
Settings show worlds that are very unlike the grimy and noisy industrial age.
Tales include those of the supernatural.
Stories sometimes draw from old legends and folklore.

8. American Romanticism Romantic Escapism
Romantics tried to reflect on the natural world until dull reality fell away to reveal beauty and truth. 2
In lyric poems, natural scenes help speakers understand and express profound emotion.
The Romantic approach is similar to the Puritans’ efforts to draw moral lessons from nature; however, Romantic reflections lead to a more generalized emotional and intellectual awakening.

9. American Romanticism The American Novel and the Wilderness Experience
The American Romantic novelists used distinctly American subject matter to distinguish themselves from European writers.
Americans had a sense of limitless frontiers that Europeans did not possess.
Westward expansion, the growth of a nationalist spirit, and the idealization of frontier life all influenced the American novel.

10. American Romanticism The American Novel and the Wilderness Experience
The novels of James Fenimore Cooper explored uniquely American settings and characters.
His works featured backwoodsmen, American Indians, frontier communities, and the wilderness.
Cooper’s Natty Bumppo—one of the first American Romantic heroes—is a virtuous, skilled frontiersman with a simple morality, a love of nature, and a distrust of town life.

11. American Romanticism American Romantic Poetry: Read at Every Fireside
Romantic poetry also had some American settings and subject matter.
However, the Romantic poets worked within European literary traditions.
Seeking to show that Americans were a sophisticated people, they used typically English themes, meter, and imagery.

12. American Romanticism American Romantic Poetry: Read at Every Fireside
The Fireside Poets were a group of very popular Romantic poets.
Their poems were meant to be read aloud at the fireside—as family entertainment.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
John Greenleaf Whittier
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
James Russell Lowell

13. American Romanticism 1. How does Romanticism differ from rationalism?
Ask Yourself
1. How does Romanticism differ from rationalism?
2. In what two principal ways did Romantics try to rise above “dull realities”?
3. How were the goals of the American Romantic novelists different from the goals of the Fireside Poets?
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14. Collection 5: Gothic Fiction
Characteristics of Gothic Fiction
Use of haunting, eerie settings and strange, chilling events
Romantic interest in intuition, imagination, and hidden truths
Reaction against the optimism of the Transcendentalists
Exploration of evil and the irrational depths of the human mind

15. Gothic Fiction The Dark Side of Romanticism
The Dark Romantics shared some of the ideas of the Transcendentalists:
They took an interest in the spiritual world.
They valued intuition and imagination over rationalism.
They wanted to explore the mysteries of human existence.

16. Gothic Fiction The Dark Side of Romanticism
However, the Dark Romantics disagreed with the Transcendentalist notions that the divine is implicit in nature and that people are essentially good.
They felt that literature should take into account
the darker side of human nature
the presence of suffering in the world
the ongoing conflict between good and evil

17. Gothic Fiction The Dark Side of Romanticism
European Beginnings
The Gothic novel, a form of Dark Romanticism, emerged in England in the late eighteenth century.
These tales of terror often used the setting of the medieval gothic castle to evoke fear.
Two classic examples are Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

18. Gothic Fiction The Dark Side of Romanticism
European Beginnings
The term Gothic was later used to describe any fiction that
created a haunting atmosphere
included strange and chilling events

19. Gothic Fiction The Dark Side of Romanticism
American Developments
The emerging trend in American fiction was the short story.
Short stories were meant to be read in one sitting.
The cast of characters was small, and the plot was generally uncomplicated.
This structure allowed a writer to focus on the internal workings of the main character’s mind.

20. Gothic Fiction The Dark Side of Romanticism
American Developments
The Gothic short story was born when the form of the short story met the content of the Gothic novel.
Dark Romantic writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and Washington Irving incorporated Gothic elements into the developing short story genre.
Gothic short stories often show the madness and violence under the seemingly tranquil surface of civilization.

21. Collection 5: Gothic Fiction
Ask Yourself
1. What did the Dark Romantics have in common with the other Romantics, particularly the Transcendentalists?
2. What two trends in literature came together to form the Gothic short story? Explain.
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22. The End