Puritanism (Review)   Government: Theocracy  Wrote mostly diaries and histories, which expressed the connections between God and their everyday lives.  Sought to “purify” the Church of England by reforming to the simpler forms of worship and church organization described in the New Testament  Saw religion as a personal, inner experience.  Believed in original sin and “elect” who would be saved.  Used a plain style of writing

Rationalism Period “The Age of Reason”   Focus: The nation  Revolutionary War  Form of Government: The emergence of democracy  The American: intellectual, politically-active, self-made man  The American’s values: higher education, political debate, survival of the nation  Truth: Acquired through intellectual reasoning  Literature: speeches, pamphlets, journals, almanacs, brochures and autobiographies  Rhetoric: derived from the theories of Enlightenment philosophers and thinkers

Famous Authors & Works   Revolutionary War  The Constitution, The Bill of Rights, and The Declaration of Independence were created.  Benjamin Franklin (Autobiography),  Patrick Henry “Speech to the Virginia Convention”,  Thomas Paine (“The Crisis”)

Puritanism vs. Rationalism  The Puritans came to America in search of religious freedom—their American dream.  The Rationalists’ desire for autonomy sent them in search of independence from British rule—a new independent nation—their American dream.

Romanticism  Romanticism is the name given to those schools of thought that value feeling and intuition over reason.  Romantics believed that the imagination was able to discover truths that the rational mind could not reach.  Usually accompanied by powerful emotion and associated with natural, unspoiled beauty.  Imagination, individual feelings, and wild nature were of greater value than reason, logic, and cultivation.

Romanticism Romantic writers placed a new emphasis on intuitive, “felt” experience and often contrasted poetry with science, which they saw as destroying the very truth it claimed to seek. The romantics wanted to rise above “dull realities” to a realm of higher truth and searched for exotic settings in the more “natural” past or in a world far removed from the grimy and noisy industrial age. Romantic writers tried to reflect on the natural world until dull reality fell away to reveal underlying beauty and truth.

Characteristics of American Romanticism  Values feeling and intuition over reason.  Places faith in inner experience and the power of 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.  Reflects on nature’s beauty as a path to spiritual and moral development.  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 imagination.  Finds inspiration in myth, legend, and folklore.

The Romantic Hero  The romantic hero was one of the most important products of the early American novel.  The rational hero, like Ben Franklin, was worldly, educated, sophisticated, and bent on making a place for himself in civilization.  The typical hero in American Romantic fiction was youthful, innocent, intuitive, and close to nature.

Characteristics of the American Romantic Hero  Young or possesses youthful qualities.  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.  Loves nature and avoids town life.  Quests for some higher truth in the natural world.

Romantic Techniques  Remoteness of setting in time and place.  Improbable plots.  Unlikely characterization.  Informal writing style.  Experiments in new forms.  Individualized form of writing.

American Romantic Writers  Washington Irving  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow  Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe ( ) Father of the American detective story. As famous for his troubled life as his literature. Defined the short story as we know it today, as well as the psychological thriller. Poetry reflects his belief in the power of sound and the impact of the death of a beautiful woman. Stories are not typically American, in that they don’t highlight American characters or settings. Works include “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Telltale Heart,” and “The Raven.”

American Gothic The Dark Side of Individualism

Gothic Literature The Beginnings…  Gothic Literary tradition came to be in part from the Gothic architecture of the Middle Ages.  Gothic cathedrals with irregularly placed towers, and high stained-glass windows were intended to inspire awe and fear in religious worshippers.

Think of the gargoyle as a mascot of Gothic, and you will get an idea of the kind of imaginative distortion of reality that Gothic represents. Gargoyles—carvings of small deformed creatures squatting at the corners and crevices of Gothic cathedrals—were supposed to ward off evil spirits, but they often look more like demonic spirits themselves.

Romanticism vs. Gothic  Romanticism developed as a reaction against the rationalism of the Age of Reason. The romantics freed the imagination from the hold of reason, so they could follow their imagination wherever it might lead.  For some Romantic writers, the imagination led to the threshold of the unknown—the shadowy region where the fantastic, the demonic and the insane reside.  When the Gothic's saw the individual, they saw the potential of evil. Romantic writers celebrated the beauties of nature. Gothic writers were peering into the darkness at the supernatural.

The Gothic dimension of Poe’s fictional world offered him a way to explore the human mind in these extreme situations and so arrive at an essential truth

Southern Gothic  After the real horrors of the Civil War, the Gothic tradition lost its popularity.  During the 20 th century, it made a comeback in the American South.  Authors like William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Truman Capote, and Flannery O’Connor are grouped together because of the gloom and pessimism of their fiction.