1. American Romantic Period
Also known as the American Renaissance

2. Expansion (Manifest Destiny…)
Expansion (Manifest Destiny…)

3. 1800 - 1860 What’s going on in the world: 1803 – Louisiana Purchase
1810 – Mexico begins it’s war of independence from Spain
1812 – British attempt to take back America in the War of 1812
1815 – Napoleon defeated at Waterloo
– Missouri Compromise (free state/ slave state)
1830 – Underground railroad begins
1837 – Queen Victoria rules England
1845 – United States annexes Texas (leads to war with Mexico, 1846)
1849 – California gold rush
1854 – Republican party formed (opposed extension of slavery)
1859 – John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry

4. Louisiana Purchase From France
4 cents an acre (15 million dollars total)
Doubled US Territory

5. The Gold Rush Helped to develop the West
Led to the building of railroads
California and Alaska were major rushes

6. Reaction to Rationalism and the age of reason
Romanticism
Reaction to Rationalism and the age of reason

7. Romanticism NOT about love Values feeling and intuition over reason
Romantics believed that imagination could discover truths that the rational mind could not
Nature is very important
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
-Edgar Allan Poe

8. Characteristics of the American Romantic period
Values feeling and intuition over reason
Places faith in the power of the imagination
Rejects the societal aspects of civilization and seeks unspoiled nature
Prefers youthful innocence to educated sophistication.

9. Characteristics of the American Romantic period
Celebrated individual freedoms and the worth of the individual, NOT society
Sees nature’s beauty as a path to God and moral development
Looks backward to the past and distrusts progress

10. Characteristics of the American Romantic period
Finds meaning in the imaginary realm and the inner world of the supernatural
Sees poetry as the highest expression of the imagination
Finds inspiration from myths, legends, and folklore

11. What genres of literature?
Gets its basis in imagination
Has no use for facts, logic,
and things that are actually possible
Deals with emotion and feeling
Novels, short stories, poems

12. Early Romantics William Cullen Bryant Washington Irving
James Fenimore Cooper
Were inspired by the beauty of nature
Emphasized emotions and imagination over reason
Celebrated the individual spirit

13. Fireside Poets
People liked to read their works by the fireside at night
Emphasized moral themes in their work
Were viewed as equals of British poets of the day
Stressed individualism and an appreciation of nature
Were committed to social reform
Often considered the most popular poets ever
Very un-Romantic in their style

14. Fiction The American Hero: Innocent and pure
Sense of honor higher than society’s honor
Has knowledge of people and life based on a deep understanding,
not based on education
Loves nature
Quests for a higher truth

15. The Hero First American Hero – created by James Fennimore Cooper:
Natty Bumppo (went by other names:
Hawkeye,Deerslayer,Leatherstocking)

16. The Fireside Poets Henry Wadsworth Longfellow John Greenleaf Whittier
Oliver Wendell Holmes
James Russell Lowell

17. Subgroups: Extremists
Romantics
Transcendentalists
Dark
Romantics

18. The Dark Romantics
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville
Believed what the Romantics did, but felt that at the core of everyone was a dark, sinister being
Has a lot of crazy or guilt-racked people in their stories

19. Transcendentalists
One must go beyond (transcend) the everyday human experience in order to determine the ultimate reality of God
What is perceived by the senses is not necessarily true
Believed in human perfectibility
Ralph Waldo Emerson is best known

20. The Over-Soul (by the Transcendentalists)
God
Individual
Nature

21. A Comparison… Romantics Dark Romantics Transcendentalists
Individual is inherently good.
Individual is inherently evil.
Individual can achieve perfection.
Nature should be respected/revered.
Nature should be feared.
We are connected to nature.
God created nature.
God has forsaken us to nature.
God is within us.
Society is hazardous to nature - progress destroys nature.
Evil, evil, evil,
groups of people!!!!
Society restricts the individual.
Let the tree grow!
Fear the wrath of the tree!
Become one with the tree!