1. American Romanticism 1800-1860
The Raft of the Medusa, 1819 Théodore Géricault (1791–1824) Source:

2. What is Romanticism?
Romanticism is a school of thought that values feeling and intuition over reason.
Imagination can uncover truths that reason cannot.
Natural, unspoiled beauty often accompanies powerful emotion.

3. Romanticism was a reaction against Rationalism.
Romantics
Rationalists
Imagination
Reason
Individual feelings
Logic
Wild nature
Cultivation (e.g., worldly experience, education, and sophistication)

4. How Did We Get Here? The Puritan Connection
Puritans saw answers to life’s big questions in nature. These answers brought them closer to religion.
Example: Natural disaster (house fire) in Anne Bradstreet’s poem brings the speaker closer to God.
Romantics also saw the answers to life’s questions in nature, but these answers dealt with personal emotions and intellectual thought.

5. Ben Franklin (Rationalist Hero) American Romantic Hero
This was also when a distinct American style began to emerge. Up until now, American literature had modeled European writers.
Ben Franklin (Rationalist Hero)
American Romantic Hero
Worldly, sophisticated
Youthful, innocent, intuitive
Educated
Close to nature
Bent on making a place for himself in civilization
Uneasy with women (when a woman symbolized a domestic life)

6. Transcendentalism
Transcendentalists believed that to determine the ultimate reality of God, the self, and the universe, one must transcend, or go beyond, every day experience in the physical world.
This belief created optimistic works of literature.
Key authors: Ralph Waldo Emerson; Henry David Thoreau

7. Dark Romantics Lacked Transcendentalist optimism
Examined effects of physical and psychological nature, and often found that these natures could be dark and dangerous
Key authors: Edgar Allan Poe; Nathaniel Hawthorne

8. Authors & Genres We Will Study
Washington Irving
Short Story
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Poetry
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Edgar Allan Poe
Short Story; Poetry

9. Read “Snow-Flakes,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
First draft reading: Read for literal understanding.
 Paraphrase each stanza; look up unfamiliar words; check with partner for understanding.
Second draft reading: Circle Romantic ideas/qualities throughout the poem (based on our notes about American Romanticism).
Answer the question: In what way does this poem reflect ideals of the Romantic movement? To answer this, look for one or two patterns among all of the individual details and data you found in step two.