1. Moving from the Revolutionary Period & Rationalism to ….
Source:
“Holt Adapted Reader” – 5th Course
American Romanticism

2. Benjamin Franklin – The Autobiography
In his Autobiography, Franklin describes his own personal quest.
Young Ben leaves Boston & travels to Philadelphia to seek fortune by declaring independence from his family & seeks opportunity in the city.
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3. Charles Brockden Brown – Arthur Mervyn
In Brown’s novel, a young boy leaves home for Philadelphia and instead of a place of promise, the boy is plunged into a world of disease, decay, corruption, & evil.
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4. The City of Philadelphia & Civilization
Rationalists
Romantics
Franklin’s journey is told from a rationalist point of view.
Rationalists saw the city as a place of civilization and opportunity.
Brown’s tale is a Romantic one and saw the city as a place of immorality & death.
The Romantic journey often leads to the countryside & away from the city (civilization).

5. The Romantic Journey
To the Romantics, the countryside was a place of independence, morality, & healthful living.
Sometimes the journey may be into the imagination, such as works by Edgar Allan Poe.
The Romantic journey is both a flight from something & a flight to something.
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6. What is Romanticism? In general, Romantics valued feeling over reason.
Romanticism first grew in response to Rationalism, which focused on reason & science.
The Romantics distrusted pure reason & instead turned to the imagination.

7. The Values of Romanticism
The Romantics claimed that the imagination could see and understand truths that the rational mind could not.
The Romantics valued imagination, feeling, and nature over reason, logic, & civilization.
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8. Dull Realities to Higher Truths
Romantics explored exotic settings in locations far from civilization & industry.
Romantics tried to reflect on the natural world in order to see truth & beauty.
Like the Puritans, the Romantics found truth in nature, but instead of finding moral lessons of a biblical nature, they found a more general feelings of mental & emotional rebirth.
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9. Characteristics of American Romanticism
Values feeling over reason
Places faith in the imagination
Prefers innocence to sophistication
Fights for the individual’s freedom and worth

10. Characteristics of American Romanticism
Shuns civilization and seeks nature
Trusts past wisdom, not progress
Reflects on nature to gain spiritual wisdom
Finds beauty & truth in supernatural or imaginative realms

11. Benjamin Franklin - Rationalism
A New Kind of Hero
Benjamin Franklin - Rationalism
General Romantic Hero
Represents the rationalist hero
He is worldly, educated, & civilized
He looks to the city to better himself and make a brighter future
The typical Romantic hero is youthful & innocent.
He relies on common sense rather than book learning & is close to nature.
Because women represented marriage & civilization (to many male writers), Romantic heroes are often uncomfortable around them.

12. Characteristics of the American Romantic Hero
Is youthful & innocent
Has a strong sense of honor
Has a knowledge that comes from experience, not formal learning
Loves nature & avoids town life
Seeks truth in the natural world
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13. The Transcendentalists True Reality is Spiritual
Transcendentalists believed that to find the truth about God, the universe, & one’s self, one must transcend, or go beyond, the everyday experience of the physical world.
They believed in idealism & that humanity could be perfected, and they worked to make this ideal a reality.

14. A Transcendental View of the World
Everything, including people, is a reflection of the divine.
The physical world is a doorway to the spiritual world.
People can use intuition to sense God in nature or in their own souls.
A person is his or her own best authority.
Feeling & intuition are superior to reason & intellect.

15. The Dark Romantics
Setting is in bleak or remote places.
Plot involves morbid or violent incidents.
Characters are in psychological and/or physical torment.
A supernatural or otherworldly element is often present.
Dark Romantic writers explored the human potential for evil, including the psychological effects of guilt, sin, and madness.