1. American Romanticism

2. Historical Background
Optimism
Successful revolt against English rule
Room to grow
Frontier
Vast expanse
Freedom
No geographic limitations

3. Historical Background
Experimentation
Science
Social institutions
Immigration
Industrialization
Differences between North and South grow (agricultural v. industrial economies)

4. Characteristics The Five I’s Imagination Intuition Idealism
Inspiration
Individuality

5. Subject Matter Quest for beauty Escape from daily troubles
Journey to freedom, represented in nature as opposed to the oppressive city
Use of far-away, imaginative settings
Supernatural, myth, legend & folklore

6. Literary Techniques Remote settings Improbable plots
Experimentation in new forms of writing

7. Romantic Authors Washington Irving Nathaniel Hawthorne Rip Van Winkle
The Scarlet Letter

8. Sub-Movements of Romanticism
Gothicism
Edgar Allan Poe
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Raven
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Minister’s Black Veil

9. Sub-Movements of Romanticism
Transcendentalism
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature
Self-Reliance
Henry David Thoreau
Walden
Resistance to Civil Government

10. Romantic Poets William Cullen Bryant Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Thanatopsis
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls
The Cross of Snow
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The Chambered Nautilus

11. Romantic Poets Emily Dickinson Walt Whitman Heart! We will forget him!
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant
Walt Whitman
I Hear America Singing
Song of Myself

12. The Arts
Romanticism was a movement across all the arts: visual art, music, and literature.
All of the arts embraced themes prevalent in the Middle Ages: chivalry, courtly love.
Shakespeare came back into vogue.

13. Visual Arts: Examples
Romantic Art
Neoclassical Art