Romanticism

Quickwrite:  What do you fear? List everything you fear, realistic or not.

Overview:  We fear the evils we know  Poverty, violence, disease, madness, and death  The first parts we talked about were the influences of nature, optimism, and the belief in the individual  Other writers in this time viewed those writings as “unrealistic,” or that “optimism was ‘nonsense’ that ignored the disagreeable facts of life” (184).

Hawthorne and Melville  Hawthorne- fiction based on stories of the past  History and legends of Puritan ancestors  Explorations of good and evil  Melville- gained literary reputation for romantic tales of adventure in the South Seas  Sea stories- explore the mystery of the evil that he saw in both human life and the forces of nature

Gothic Horror  Recognized the power of darkness  England’s example = Shelley’s Frankenstein  Relies chiefly on atmosphere and mood to achieve its effects  Create an atmosphere through plot, characters, and settings = all chilling

Gothic Literature Atmosphere  Plot = mysterious happenings, tragic events, and hideous outcomes  Characters = often mad, half-mad, or frightened to death  Strange behavior and physical traits  Settings = dark and often contain decayed dwellings with shadowy passageways, haunting sounds, and damp rooms

Poe and the Terror of the Soul  Most of the stories and poems deal with:  Loss and sorrow  Ruin and revenge  Disease and death  Works reflect his own troubles and fears  Readers embrace it and confront their own fears

Poe and the Terror of the Soul Cont.  Transcendentalists and Emerson believed that humans are inherently good  Poe thought humans had dark impulses

Poe’s Short Stories  He invented the new type of short fiction, the detective story  First detective story = “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”  It was gothic horror and solid reasoning by Poe’s fictional detective  Poe’s stories show his idea that any artistic composition should have a single, unique effect

Poe’s Short Stories Cont.  Poe’s stories show his idea that any artistic composition should have a single, unique effect

Comprehension Check:  Answer the following question based on the excerpt you’ll see on the following slide:  In what sense were Poe and Emerson both Romantics? How did their Romanticism differ?

Poe’s excerpt from “The Fall of the House of Usher” During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was- but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.

Continued:  I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me- upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain- upon the bleak walls- upon the vacant eye-like windows- upon a few rank sedges- and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees- with an utter depression of soul…”