ROMANTICISM TRANSCENDENTALISM AND REALISMREGIONALISM Romanticism 1800 1860 Genres

ROMANTICISM TRANSCENDENTALISM AND REALISM/REGIONALISM

Romanticism � 1800 -1860

Genres and Style of Romanticism � Character sketches � Slave narratives � Poetry � Short stories

Effects and Aspects of Romanticism � Value feeling and intuition over reasoning � Journey away from corruption of civilization and limits of rational thought toward the integrity of nature and freedom of the imagination

Historical Context � Expansion of magazines, newspapers, and book publishing � Slavery debates � Industrial revolution brings ideas that the old ways of doing things are now irrelevant

Authors and Titles � Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” � Dunbar’s “We Wear the Masks” � Emily Dickinson � Walt Whitman

American Renaissance/Transcendentalis m � 1840 � Note – 1860 the overlap in time period with Romanticism. Some consider the transcendentalists to be the dark romantics or gothics

Genres and Style of Am. Renaissance/Transcendentalis m � Poetry � Novels � Anti-transcendentalists � Holds readers’ attention through dread of a series of terrible possibilities � Feature landscapes of dark forests, extreme vegetation, concealed ruins with horrific rooms, depressed characters

Effects and Aspects of Transcendentalists � True reality is spiritual � Comes from the 18 th century philosopher of Immanuel Kant � Idealists � Self reliance and individualism � Emerson and Thoreau

Effects and Aspects of Anti-Transcendentalism � Used symbolism to great effect � Sin, pain, and evil exist � Hawthorne, Poe, and Melville

Historical Context � Portrayal of alluring antagonists whose evil characteristics appeal to one’s sense of awe � Stories of the persecuted young girl forced apart from her true love � People seeking beauty in life and in nature, a belief in true love and contentment

Authors and Titles � Poems, aphorisms, and essays of Thoreau and Emerson � Edgar Allen Poe � Nathaniel Hawthorne*

Realism and Regionalism � 1855 – 1900 � Civil War period and post Civil War

Styles and Genres � Novels and short stories � Objective narrator � Does not tell reader how to interpret the story � Voices from around the country � Local color stories

Effects and Affects � Social realism seeks to change a social problem � Aesthetic realism: art that insists on detailing the world as one sees it

Historical Context � Civil War brings demand for a truer type of literature that does not idealize people or places

Authors and Titles � Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (some say it is the first American novel) � Ambrose Bierce � Stephen Crane � The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass � Jack London