Romanticism

Also called American Renaissance1850-1855

What is Romanticism?

• A movement that considers the rational inferior to the intuitive.

What are Romanticism’s roots?

Romanticism roots

• Reaction against Age of Reason(Jefferson, Paine, Henry)

`Reliance on science, logic to explain the mysteries of the world

• People realized the limits of reason

Beliefs of Romantics

• Imagination is able to discover truths that reason cannot reach

• The truths are accompanied by powerful emotions which are associated with beauty

• Did not totally reject logical thought but had more faith in emotional experiences

Qualities of Romanticism1. Exploring exotic settings in a world far removed from the sooty and noisy industrial age

Qualities of Romanticism

2. Contemplating nature until dull reality falls away to reveal underlying beauty and truth

Nature as source for the knowledge of the primitive.

Nature as refuge. Nature as revelation of

God to the individual.

Qualities of Romantic heroes

• Innocence• Love of nature• Distrust of town life• Uneasiness with women• Need to engage in a search for

some highter truth in natural life

Techniques of Romantic writers

• Remoteness of settings in time and space. • Improbable plots. • Inadequate or unlikely characterization. • Socially "harmful morality;" a world of "lies." • Experimentation in new forms: picking up and

using obsolete patterns. • Cultivation of the individualized, subjective ,

non-formal form of writing.

Attitudes of Romantics

• Appeals to imagination; use of the "willing suspension of disbelief."

• Stress on emotion rather than reason; optimism, geniality.

• Subjectivity: in form and meaning.

Romantic subject matter

• 1. The quest for beauty: non-didactic, "pure beauty.“

• 2. The use of the far-away and non-normal - antique and fanciful

• .

Romantic subject matter

3. In historical perspective: a. Interest in the past, all that is old. b. Characterization and mood: grotesque,

Gothicism, sense of terror, fear; use of the odd and queer. (Poe, Hawthorne, Melville)

4. Escapism - from American problems. (Thoreau, Emerson)

Romantic subject matter

5. Interest in external nature - for itself, for beauty: a. Nature as source for the knowledge of the

primitive. b. Nature as refuge. c. Nature as revelation of God to the individual.

Gothicism

Qualities of Gothic novels

• Supernatural

• Crime against society

• Gloomy mood set

As it pertains to Scarlet Letter

• Lurid quality of the letter

• Meteor in the sky• Adulterous

relationship• Prison door, woods

Fireside poets

• Last great popular poets in America

• Appealed to ordinary, literate man and woman

• Subjects: patriotism, nature, family, God, relligion

Contemplation of the natural world“To a Waterfowl”

He who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight

In the log way that I must tread alone

Will lead my steps aright

American Romantic poets

• Wanted to prove that Americans were not unsophisticated but polished as Europeans

• “Thantopsis” William Cullen Bryant

To him who in the love of Nature holdsCommunion with her visible forms she speaksA various language.