1. The American Transcendental Movement

2. Earliest American Literature to the Romantic Era
Earliest Literature to 1800:
Native Americans
Puritan and Colonial Literature
American Romanticism (1800 – 1860)

3. History of Romanticism
( )
A number of changing attitudes related to a sense of nationalism—a devotion to one’s nation or patriotism—not a philosophy yet

4. The Romantics’ emphasis on the individual reflects the political ideal set forth in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.”
This new emphasis leads to a new focus on the dignity and worth of the common individual and to social reforms that were meant to fulfill this ideal of equality.

5. Romantic Literature and Attitudes
Romantics were mostly interested in the expression of their own intuitive experiences.

6. Subjects of Romantic attitudes:
NATURE
THE PAST
HUMAN NATURE

7. Subjects characteristic of Romantic attitudes:
NATURE: Romantics emphasized the beauty, strangeness, and the mystery of nature. As opposed to the rational laws of the realists/rationalists
They saw nature not as a machine, but as an organic process, constantly developing and changing.
They placed emphasis on the organic connection between the human imagination and the natural world.
The mystery and grandeur of the vast and still unknown land were part of their heritage and a powerful influence on their imaginations.

8. Subjects characteristic of Romantic attitudes:
THE PAST:
The rise of nationalism brought a new interest in the American past.

9. Subjects characteristic of Romantic attitudes:
THE INNER WORLD OF HUMAN NATURE:
Romantics emphasized the emotions, intuition, and the individual and thus encouraged the expression of the writer’s most private inner being.
Think: Feelings

10. The American Romantic writers had found in Romanticism a new way of expressing their experiences as Americans. In this process, they expressed the nationalistic spirit of the age and
created a truly
significant
national
literature.

11. Significant Romantic Writers
The Transcendentalists:
Ralph Waldo Emerson ( )
Henry David Thoreau ( )
Walt Whitman ( )
The Brahmin Poets:
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ( )
James Russell Lowell ( )
Oliver Wendell Holmes ( )
John Greenleaf Whittier ( )
Margaret Fuller ( )
Emily Dickinson ( )
Dark Romantics/Anti-Transcendentalists:
Nathaniel Hawthorne ( )
Herman Melville ( )
Edgar Allan Poe ( )

12. Characteristics of Transcendentalists:
Chiefly an attitude toward humans, nature and the world.
The term came from the German philosopher Immannuel Kant.
Transcendental =the knowledge or understanding a person gains intuitively, although it lies beyond
direct physical experience.

13. Characteristics of Transcendentalists:
intense individualism and self-reliance
believed in the unity of God and the world

14. Characteristics of Transcendentalists:
Revered (respected; worshipped) nature and its relationship to humanity.
philosophy of individualism, simplicity, and passive resistance to injustice.
maintained a positive, optimistic, or rosy view of life.
focused their attention on the human spirit.