3.  Ben Franklin’s goals › Personal and eighteenth century ideal (1771)  Charles Brockden Brown › Arthur Mervyn › Ideals of rationalist commerce vs. romantic view of “industrial hell that devours all hope and ambition”

4. RationalistsRomantics Progress Industry Corruption Death Journey AWAY from corruption of civilization PURSUIT of nature, freedom of imagination

5.  Began in Germany  Was developed as a counter-movement to rationalism  Romantics valued spontaneity, individual feelings, and wild nature OVER reason, logic, planning, and cultivation.  Poetry is the highest expression of the imagination—the most sublime experience possible

6.  Values feeling over reason  Faith in inner experience  Shuns artificial civilization/pro nature  Prefers youthful innocence to educated sophistication  Champions individual freedom  Contemplates nature’s beauty as a path to spiritual development  Looks backward to the wisdom of the past—distrusts “progress”  Finds beauty and truth in exotic locales, the supernatural realm, and the inner world of the imagination  Sees poetry as the highest expression of the imagination  Finds inspiration in myth, legend, and folk culture

7.  Exotic setting › Edgar Allan Poe—gothic tales › Ghosts and otherworldly tales  Contemplation of natural world until dull reality falls away › Nature brings epiphany and insight (James Wright’s “A Blessing”

8.  The development of the American novel expands with Westward expansion— focus on frontier, town, country

9.  Are young or youthful  Are innocent  Have a sense of honor based upon higher principles  Love nature  Pursue higher truth in the natural world

10.  American Romantic poets used British themes, meter, and imagery  “Fireside” or “Schoolroom” poets: › Henry Wadsworth Longfellow › John Greenleaf Whittier › Oliver Wendell Holmes › James Russell Lowe

11.  Are you… › Practical › Ambitious › Worldly? OR › Intuitive › Nature-loving › Creative