American Romanticism 1800 1860 Imagination and the Individual

American Romanticism 1800 - 1860 Imagination and the Individual We will walk on our own feet: We will work with our own hands; We will speak our own minds.

The Journey The journey – there is probably no pattern so common in all of narrative literature, from the Bible to Homer’s Odyssey to films like The Wizard of Oz and Star Wars. Moral Clarity Healthful Living. Independence A Psychological Voyage to the Country of the Imagination Whatever the destination of the Romantic Journey, it is a flight both from something and to

Sensibility: Celebrating Imagination Romanticism: To the Romantic mind, poetry was the highest The name given to those schools of thought that value feeling embodiment of the imagination. Romantic artists and intuition over reason. often contrasted poetry with science, which they Rationalism: saw as destroying the very truth it claimed to The belief that human beings can arrive at truth by using reason, rather than by relyingseek. on the authority of the past, on religious faith, or on intuition.

Romantic Escapism: From Dull Realities to Higher Truths Dull Reality:

Romantic Escapism: From Dull Realities to Higher Truths Searched for exotic Tried to reflect on the settings in the more natural world until dull “natural” past or in a reality fell away to world far removed from reveal underlying the grimy and noise beauty and truth. industrial age.

The American Novel and the Wilderness Experience American provided a sense of limitless frontiers that Europe, so long settled, simply did not possess. The First American Heroic Virtuous Skillful Simply Morality Distrust of Town Life Frontiersman Love of Nature Superhuman Resourcefulness A True Romantic Hero

A New Kind of Hero Eternal truths were waiting to be discovered not in dusty libraries, crowded cities, or glittering court life, but in the American wilderness that was unknown and unavailable to Europeans. Some of Our Romantic Heroes

American Romantic Poetry: Read at Every Fireside Romantic poets wanted to prove that Americans were not unsophisticated hicks. The Fireside Poets were, in their own time and for many decades afterward, the most popular poets America had ever produced. The Romantic poets were limited by their literary conservatism.

The Transcendentalists: True Reality is Spiritual Like many Americans today, they also believed in human perfectibility, and they worked to achieve this goal. Emerson and Transcendentalism: The American Roots Emerson’s Optimistic Outlook

The Dark Romantics didn’t disagree with Emerson’s belief that spiritual facts lie behind the appearances of nature; they just did not think that those facts are necessarily good or harmless. Emerson, they felt, had taken the ecstatic, mystical elements of Puritan thought and ignored its dark side – its emphasis on Original Sin, its sense of innate wickedness of human beings, and its notions of predestination.

HOMEWORK 1 -Read pages 174175 2 -Take Notes On Both Pages 3 -Locate and Define the Bolded Words