1. Open to page 302 in your textbook
Unit Two Introduction
Open to page 302 in your textbook

2. In your journal answer the following:
Is progress always worth the price?
Under what circumstances (if any) should citizens loose their right to protest?
Do you think that everyone has a dark side? What do you believe might make the “dark” side prevail?
Where do you think people turn to make sense of their lives?

3. Romanticism: Historical Context
Manifest destiny: the idea that it was the destiny of the united states to expand to the Pacific Ocean and into Mexican territory.
Writers like Henry David Thoreau thought the war (Mexican-American War) was immoral and fought mainly to expand slavery.
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes that occurred in the period from about 1760 to some time between 1820 and The Industrial Revolution marks a major turning point in history; almost every aspect of daily life was influenced in some way.

4. Romanticism: Historical Context
Historical forces clearly shaped the literature of the American romantic period. Writers responded – positively and negatively – to the country’s astonishing growth and to the booming industrial revolution.

5. Understanding
Reread the second sentence of The Spirit of Exploration. What was the “price” of the physical expansion of the United States?
What were the chief effects of the Industrial Revolution?
Reread the final sentence of Growth of Industry. How does the earlier Thoreau quotation connect to that idea?

6. The Tragedy of Slavery Call for Social Reform
Demand for cotton=increase in slavery
Brutal treatment of enslaved workers
North-South tension over the issue
View of South: slavery as economically necessary
View of North: slavery as immoral
Involvement of writers
Call for Social Reform
Rise in opposition to social ills
End to slavery
Improved conditions for workers
Opportunities for women

7. Ideas of the Age
Reflecting the optimism of their growing country, American romantic writers forged a national literature for the very first time. Yet sectionalism threatened to tear the nation apart.
Nationalism – Established by John Quincy Adams – the belief that national interest should be placed ahead of regional concerns or the interest of other countries.

8. Romantic Literature
Themes of individualism and nature unified the writing of the American romantic movement, despite dramatic differences in the writers’ focus and style.
Romanticism (or the Romantic era/Period) was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850
Transcendentalist : a philosophical and literary movement the emphasized living in a simple life and celebrating the truth found in nature and in personal emotion and imagination.

9. Romantic Literature For each of the following Identify
Who was involved
Why they were identified in those specific groups
The Early Romantics
The Fireside Poets
The Transcendentalists
The “Brooding” Romantics

10. American Gothic
Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Howthorn, and Herman Melville are “brooding” romantics
“Brooding” romantics or “Anti-transcedentalists” - man is born with the stain of the original sin, man is the most destructive force in nature, one can only find God through good works and life experience. There are no Universal truths just individual truths, and there is no midway just Heaven and Hell.
Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance.

11. What did the romantics reject and what did the admire?
Why are these poets called the Fireside Poets?
What did the transcendentalists reject, and what did they admire?
The brooding romantics: How does the work of these writers compare and contrast with that of the early romantics?

12. Timeline Answer the 4 questions at the top of page 315
Which American author published his first novel 20 years after James Fenimore Cooper wrote The Last of the Mohicans? What was the title?
How many years after the USA banned the slave trade sis Mexico abolish slavery?
What innovations in transportation took place in the USA during this era?