Outline of American Romanticism

I.              The Early Romantics

a.    Romanticism first emerged in Europe in reaction to neoclassicism

b.    Neoclassists valued reason

c.     Romantics celebrated nature for inspiration

d.    Romanticism writers saw the limits of reason and instead celebrated the glories of the individual spirit, the emotions, and the imagination

e.    The splendors of nature inspired romantics more than the fear of God

f.      William Cullen Bryant wrote “Thanatopsis” in 1817 and went a very long way towards making romanticism a major writing theme

g.    Washington Irving wrote short stories and put America on the literary map and influenced other writers like Hawthorne

h.    James Fenimore Cooper is said to have written the first truly American novel known as “The Leatherstocking Tales”

II.            The Fireside Poets

a.    The Fireside poets were a group of New England poets who wrote morally uplifting and romantically engaging pieces

b.    Their name came from the family custom of reading by the fire

c.     With their poetry they were finally on equal writing terms with the British

d.    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the best known of this group

e.    He stressed individualism and an appreciation of nature in his work

f.      He wrote many poems about more colorful parts of America’s past

g.    “Evangeline” was about the lovers being separated during the French and Indian war and “The Song of Hiawatha” was from Native American folklore

h.    Longfellow was honored with a plaque in Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey in London- he is the only American to have achieved this

i.      The other Fireside Poets, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and John Greenleaf Whittier wanted strongly to bring out social reform

j.      They also championed the common person, they wrote about many farmers, lumberman, migrants, and the poor

III.         The Transcendentalists

a.    Transcendentalism is a philosophical and literary movement that emphasized living a simple life and celebrating the truth found in nature and in personal emotion and imagination.

b.    Transcendentalism means a knowledge that exists beyond reason and experience.

c.     Thought people were inherently good and should follow their own beliefs.

d.    Ralph Waldo Emerson said that every individual is capable of discovering this higher truth on their own.

e.    Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” addresses this faith in the integrity of the individual.

f.      The Puritans did not like this

g.    Their optimism faded when they realized the persistence of slavery and the difficulty in abolishing it

IV.          America Gothic: The “Brooding” Romantics

a.    Includes Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville

b.    Their philosophy was filled with darkness and a deep awareness of the human capacity for evil

c.     Their stories were characterized by a probing of the inner life of their characters and examination of the mysterious forces that motivate human behavior

d.    Romantic in their emphasis on emotion, nature, the individual, and the unusual

e.    Uses gothic elements such as grotesque characters, bizarre situations, and violent events

f.      Edgar Allen Poe explored human psychology by using first-person narrators. His plots were extreme, involving not only murder, but live burials and also physical and mental torture.

g.    Nathaniel Hawthorne’s works, such as The Scarlet Letter, focus on the darker facets of the human soul.

h.    Herman Melville explored issues such as madness and conflict of good and evil.