THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE PLEASE CHECK THE SEATING CHART ON THE PODIUM HONORS ENGLISH 10 THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE PLEASE CHECK THE SEATING CHART ON THE PODIUM

Schools of Thought: “-ISMs” American Literature Pre-Civil War to 1910

ROMANTICISM A literary and artistic movement of the 19th century that arose in reaction against 18th century Neoclassicism and placed a premium on imagination, emotion, nature, individuality and exotica.

ROMANTICISM Romantic elements can be found in the works of American writers as diverse as Cooper, Poe, Thoreau, Emerson, Dickinson, Hawthorne and Melville. Romanticism is especially evident in the works of the Transcendentalists.

TO HELEN – EDGAR ALLAN POE Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome. Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand, Ah! Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy Land!

TRANSCENDENTALISM Transcendentalism was an American literary and philosophical movement of the 19th century, based in New England. Transcendentalists believed that intuition and the individual conscience “transcend” experience and are thus better guides to truth than are the senses and reason. Influenced by Romanticism, the Transcendentalists respected the individual spirit and the natural world, believing that divinity was everywhere, in nature and in each person.

TRANSCENDENTALISM The Transcendentalists included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, W.H. Channing, Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Peabody.

REALISM Realism is the presentation in art of the details of actual life. Realism was also a literary movement that began during the 19th century and stressed the actual as opposed to the imagined or the fanciful. Realists tried to write objectively about ordinary characters in ordinary situations. They reacted against Romanticism, rejecting heroic, adventurous or unfamiliar subjects

WEAVING Lucy Larcom All day she stands before her loom; The flying shuttles come and go: By grassy fields, and trees in bloom, She sees the winding river flow: And fancy's shuttle flieth wide, And faster than the waters glide. Is she entangled in her dreams, Like that fair weaver of Shalott, Who left her mystic mirror's gleams, To gaze on light Sir Lancelot? Her heart, a mirror sadly true, Brings gloomier visions into view.

NATURALISM Naturalism was a literary movement primarily among novelists at the end of the 19th century and during the early part of the 20th. Naturalists tended to view people as hapless victims of immutable natural laws. Naturalists traced the effects of heredity and environment on people helpless to change their situations. Early exponents of Naturalism included Stephen Crane, Jack London and Theodore Dreiser.

RICHARD CORY Edwin Arlington Robinson Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored, and imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed, 5 And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, "Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked. And he was rich—yes, richer than a king, And admirably schooled in every grace: 10 In fine, we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head.