1. American Romanticism and Transcendentalism
Overview

2. Characteristics of American Romanticism
Values feeling and intuition over reason
Places faith in inner experience and the power of the imagination
Shuns the artificiality of civilization and seeks unspoiled nature
Prefers youthful innocence to educated sophistication
Champions individual freedom and the worth of the individual

3. American Romanticism cont…
Reflects on nature’s beauty as a path to spiritual and moral development
Looks backward to the wisdom of the past and distrusts progress
Finds beauty and truth in exotic locales, the supernatural realm, and the inner world of the imagination
Finds inspiration in myth, legend, and folklore
Sees poetry as the highest expression of the imagination

4. Characteristics of the American Romantic Hero
Is young or possesses youthful qualities
Is innocent and pure of purpose
Has a sense of honor based not on society’s rules but on some higher principle

5. Characteristics of American Hero
Has a knowledge of people and life based on deep, intuitive understanding, not on formal learning
Love nature and avoids town life
Quests for some higher truth in the natural world

6. Transcendental View of the World
Everything in the world, including human beings, is a reflection of the Divine Soul.
The physical facts of the natural world are a doorway to the spiritual or ideal world.
People can use their intuition to behold God’s spirit revealed in nature or in their own souls.

7. Transcendental View
Self-reliance and individualism must external authority and blind conformity to custom and tradition.
Spontaneous feelings and intuition are superior to deliberate intellectualism and rationality.

8. Philosophical Views
A movement called Romanticism celebrates feeling over reason, imagination over science and nature over civilization. The Romantics also champion freedom and the development of the individual spirit
A group of Romantics called the Transcendentalists believes that everything in the physical world is a reflection of the Divine Soul.
Another group of Romantic writers explores the conflict between good and evil, the effects of guilt and sin, and the destructive underside of appearances.

9. Social Influences
The lyceum movement furthers American education, self-improvement, and cultural development.
Reform movements begin for women’s rights, child labor, temperance, and the abolition of slavery involving many Americans in social activism
Utopian planners attempt to turn idealized visions of human potential into practical realities