American Romanticism Celebrating the Individual The Early Romantics The Transcendentalists The Fireside Poets American Gothic

Romanticism: Historical Context  The Spirit of Exploration Writers saw that America was growing, but Native Americans were being pushed from their homes “manifest destiny”: “the idea that it was the destiny of the United States to expand to the Pacific Ocean and into Mexican territory.” Mexican-American War. Many Americans found the war to be immoral.

Growth of Industry  Writings reflect the shift in attitudes and working habits.  Industrial Revolution began, changing the country from an agrarian (one that is based on agriculture as its prime means for support) to an industrial powerhouse.  Americans’ lives were changed- they left their farms for the cities, working long hours in harsh conditions for low pay.  Writers of this period reacted to the negative effects of industrialization- the hectic pace, commercialism, and lack of conscience (slavery) by turning to nature and to the self for simplicity, truth, and beauty.

3 Main Struggles of the time  Slavery  workers’ conditions  women’s rights

Cultural Influences: Struggle 1  From 1793 to 1860, cotton production rose greatly.  Plantation owners felt that slavery had become necessary for increasing profit.  For slaves, life was brutal They rose before dawn and worked in the fields until bedtime. Many were beaten or otherwise abused. Family members were sold away from one another. Escapes were rarely successful.  Tension over slavery increased between the North and the South. Many poets wrote antislavery poems.  “Perhaps the greatest social achievement of the romantics was to create awareness of slavery’s cruelty.”

 By the mid 1800’s, many Americans joined together to fight slavery.  At first, the slavery abolition movement began by advocating the resettlement of AA in Africa; most AA were born in America and resented the idea of being forced to leave.  Abolitionists worked together to work for emancipation. They formed societies, spoke at conventions, published newspapers, and swamped Congress with petitions to end slavery.

Struggle 2  Workers began to protest the low wages and deteriorating working conditions. Many workers went on strike, but immigrants were always available to take their places, so nothing changed.  Workers began to join unions, and slowly conditions improved.

Struggle 3  Women began to protest in the 1800’s.  They could not vote or sit on juries.  Their education rarely extended beyond elementary school.  When they were married, their property and money became their husband’s.  Many women lacked guardianship rights over their children.  Women worked for change and met in 1848 at Seneca Falls, New York, to continue their long fight for women’s rights. First Women’s Rights Convention.

Ideas of the Age: Voice  Writers of this age reflected the national pride and optimism of the American people and created a literature entirely the nation’s own.  Writers listened to their own voices and wrote with a distinctly American accent instead of imitating European writings.

Ideas of the Age: Nationalism vs. Sectionalism  Nationalism vs. Sectionalism  Nationalism= belief that national interests should be placed ahead of regional concerns or the interest of other countries.  Sectionalism- or the placing of the interests of one’s own region ahead of the nation as a whole- began to take hold.

 Nationalism was challenged by the idea of slavery. Until 1818, the U.S. consisted of 10 free states and 10 slave states. As new territories tried to enter the Union, the North and South wrestled over the balance of power between free and slave states  Nationalism was challenged by economic interests. Tariffs on British imports forced Southerners to buy expensive Northern-made goods. From the South’s P.O.V., the North was getting rich at the South’s expense.

Romantic Literature

The Early Romantics  Romantics looked to nature for inspiration and celebrated emotions of the imagination.  American Romanic writers were reacting to Puritanism and the Age of Reason.  Beauty of nature inspired the romantics more than the fear of God.

 As the U.S. population increased, writers aimed to capture the energy and character of their growing country. They saw the limits of reason and instead celebrated the glories of the individual spirit, the emotions, and the imagination as basic elements of human nature.

 William Cullen Bryant’s 1817 poem “Thanatopsis” helped establish romanticism as the major force in the literature of mid 19 th century America.  He often celebrated nature in his works.  Edgar Allan Poe, Washington Irving, and James Fenimore Cooper were also romantic writers.

Fireside Poets  A group of New England poets whose work was morally uplifting and romantically engaging.  Group’s name came from the family custom of sitting beside a fire and reading aloud.  For the first time, the poetry of American writers was equal to that of British writers.  Interested in issues such as abolition, women’s rights, improvement of factory conditions, temperance, and championing the common person.

Transcendentalist Writers  By the mid 1800’s, Americans were taking new pride in their emerging culture.  Transcendentalism: philosophical and literary movement that emphasized living a simple life and celebrating the truth found in nature and in personal emotion and imagination.  Believed people were inherently good and should follow their own beliefs, even if those beliefs went against the norm.  Stressed optimism, freedom, self-reliance, and spiritual well-being in their works.

American Gothic: The “Brooding” Romantics  “Anti-transcendentalism”  Not all American romantics were optimistic or had faith in the innate goodness of humankind.  Once the romantics freed the imagination from the restrictions of reason, they could follow it wherever it might go.  American Gothics were filled with dark currents and a deep awareness of the human capacity for evil.  They are romantic in their emphasis on emotion, nature, the individual, and the unusual.

 Use gothic elements such as grotesque characters, bizarre situations, and violent events in their fiction.  Edgar Allan Poe was the master of the gothic form in the United States. He explored human psychology from the inside. His plots involved extreme situations- murder, live burials, physical and mental torture, and retribution from beyond the grave.

 Nathaniel Hawthorne agreed with the romantic emphasis on emotion and the individual. He examined the darker facets of the human soul.  Herman Melville explores madness and the conflict of good and evil.  These three writers- Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville- profoundly affected the development of the American literary voice throughout the remainder of the 19 th century.