1. American Romanticism

2. “Romanticism,” derives from Romance – a story that is adventuristic and improbable.
Romantic writers saw themselves as revolting against the “Age of Reason” and its values.
Romanticism begins in the U.S. with writings from Irving and Emerson.

3. Romantic Values Classical Values Emotional Reasonable Individualistic
Public responsibility
Revolutionary
Conservative
Loves solitude & nature
Loves public & urban life
Fantasy/introspection
External reality
The particular
The universe
Right brain
Left brain
Organic
Mechanical
Exotic
Mundane

4. American Romantics tend to worship nature as a sanctum of non-artificality, where the self can fulfill potential. (How is this different than the Puritans and from the Age of Reason?)
Casper David Friedrich’s “The Wanderer above the sea of fog”

5. American Romantics will use symbols, myths, or fantastic elements as the focus and expression of the protagonist’s mental processes or to convey deeper psychological or archetypal themes. John Everett Milais’s “Ophelia”

6. One is no longer part of a traditional, Old World hierarchy
The obsession and celebration of individualism takes on a particular social relevance because U.S. culture has always prized individualism and egalitarianism.
One is no longer part of a traditional, Old World hierarchy
Everyone is given a chance to maximize one’s own worth
It is key that American Romantics can both celebrate the “common man” and their own, more spiritually/psychologically elite selves.
Literary Themes
Highly imaginative and subjective
Emotional intensity
Escapism
Common man as hero
Nature as refuge, source of knowledge and/or spirituality

8. The Clove Catskills by Thomas Cole 1827

9. Subgenre
Slave Narrative: protest; struggle for authors self-realization and identity
Domestic (sentimental): social visits; women secondary in their circumstances to men
Female gothic: devilish childhood; family doom; tyrannical father
Women’s fiction: anti-sentimental
Heroine begins poor and helpless
Heroine succeeds on her own character
Husband less important than father

10. American Romanticists
European Romanticists
Emily Dickinson
William Blake
Washington Irving
John Keats
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ann Radcliffe
Maragaret Fuller
Percy Bysshe Shelly
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Samuel Coleridge
Herman Melville
Lord Byron
Edgar Allan Poe
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Walt Whitman

11. Theodore Gericault’s “The Raft of the Medusa”

12. What characteristics in the painting “The Raft of the Medusa” qualify the work as Romantic?
Romantic Characteristic
Description of Characteristic
Interest in the common man and childhood
Strong senses, emotions, and feelings
Awe of nature
Celebration of the individual
Importance of imagination

13. An interest in the common man and childhood.
The individuals on the raft consisted of people from the lower classes of society. Géricault’s decision to use these “common” men as subjects of the painting is typical of the Romantic creators. By depicting the common man suffering due to the actions of the upper class of urban society Géricault was able to elevate them to a level of martyrdom.
A stress on strong senses, emotions, and feelings.
In the center of the painting is a pyramid created by dead figures on
the bottom, dying figures in the middle, and a topmost figure who
waves a cloth in hopes of being rescued. This rise from death to hope
creates a “pyramid of hope” and helps establish the two different tones
of the painting. The figure at the topmost of the pyramid frantically
waving a rag at a tiny ship on the horizon is a good illustration of
Wordsworth’s “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”
A stress on the awe of nature in art and language and the
experience of sublimity through a connection with nature.
There are many examples of imagery in this painting which emphasize
the Romantic’s awe of and connection to nature. One example is seen
on the left side in the mid section where a large, dark wave threatens
to swamp the raft. However just above this wave is a “ray of hope”
breaking through a lowering cumulus cloud

14. A celebration of the individual.
Each of the characters tells a story about the predicament that has
befallen the survivors on this raft. In the bottom left quarter of the
painting a gray-haired man clasps the body of his dead son. In the
center top of the painting another man gestures with his hand as he
turns back to the despairing people on the raft behind him. These are
two examples of how Géricault celebrates the individual.
An emphasis on the importance of imagination.
Romantics legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority.
To help elevate the individuals on the raft to heroic status Géricault
allowed his imagination to heavily influence his depiction of the
survivors on the raft. A good example of this is the exaggerated
muscular bodies of the survivors. In reality the survivors who had
been adrift at sea for 13 days and had begun to resort to cannibalism
would have looked quite different.

15. William Wordsworth - "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802"
Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty; This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theaters, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!

16. What characteristics in the poem “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802” qualify the work as Romantic?
Romantic Characteristic
Description of Characteristic
Interest in the common man and childhood
Strong senses, emotions, and feelings
Awe of nature
Celebration of the individual
Importance of imagination