2.  "Romanticism" is a style or movement in literature, music, and other arts beginning in the late 1700s that thrives even now in popular forms and attitudes.  Historically, the Romantic era may be called "The Age of Revolution" from the French Revolution (1789-99) and the American Revolution (1775-83) but also from social and cultural changes that more broadly revolutionized society as well as the arts.

3.  Romanticism is the name given to those schools of thought that value feeling and intuition over reason. Developed in part as a reaction against rationalism.  Romanticism almost always values something beyond or something lost, another reality to challenge or transform the everyday.  It can best be described as a journey away from the corruption of civilization and the limits of rational thought and toward the integrity of nature and the freedom of the imagination.

4.  American Romanticism took two roads on the journey to understanding higher truths. One road led to the exploration of the past and the exotic, even supernatural, realms; the other road led to the contemplation of the natural world.  It involves many diverse, even contradictory elements, gestures, and meanings:  individualism  sentimental love of nature  feeling over logic or experience ("Anything you want you can have if you only want it enough.")  nostalgia  utopian thought (perfect community)  escapism

5.  Characteristics are:  Is young, or possess youthful qualities  Is innocent and pure of purpose  Has a sense of honor based not on society’s rules but on some higher principle  Has a knowledge of people and of life based on deep, intuitive understanding, not on formal learning  Loves nature (adventure, even) and avoids town life  Quests for some higher truth in the natural world ▪ Examples: Natty Bumppo in The Last of the Mohicans, or Indiana Jones in the that series.

6.  "Gothic." A term for aspects of medieval art first applied to pointed architecture in the early seventeenth century. The gothic revival [in architecture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries] in its literary aspects was closely associated with the green copses, disordered stone piles, enchanting shadows and sweet melancholy of these ruined buildings....  "The Gothic Novel." A form of novel in which magic, mystery, and chivalry are the chief characteristics. Horrors abound: one may expect a suit of armor suddenly to come to life, while ghosts, clanking chains, and charnel houses impart an uncanny atmosphere of terror.

7.  “They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night” – Poe  haunted houses / castles / woods; mazes/ labyrinths; closed doors & secret passages / rooms  light and dark interplay with shades of gray or blood-red colors fair & dark ladies  repressed fears & desires; memory of past crime or sin, death & decay, bad-boys  blood as visual spectacle and genealogy / ethnicity spectral or grotesque figures, lurid symbols  creepy or startling sounds, screams in the night, groans from unknown rooms  the unknown, guilt of repressed crime, sin (the scary or naughty)

8.  Gothic novels or romances, horror films, thrillers, mysteries, film noir  “Goth” fashion and gothic rock or metal music  Frequently today (and earlier) the gothic is spoofed or satirized as a formula: The Addams Family, Young Frankenstein, etc.  The gothic has deep roots in theology, architecture, psychology, the imagination, and many literary traditions.  Images associated with the gothic stretch back to Christian visions of hell, devils, and demons, with Lucifer as the original Byronic hero: proud, rebellious, attractive, dangerous to know. As the gothic develops, such imagery becomes secularized but may still evoke the supernatural.  The indispensable feature of nearly any gothic narrative is a haunted space that reflects or corresponds to a haunted mind. In European literature the gothic space is typically a haunted castle or other architectural structure such as a maze or labyrinth.

9.  “During the whole of the dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher… I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of the black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled luster by the dwelling… (with) vacant and eye-like windows.” -Edgar Allan Poe

10.  Characteristics of how Transcendentalists see the world:  Free thought (individualism)  Confidence  Importance of nature  Self-reliance  Non-conformity

11.  1. The Transcendental Club – Emerson and Thoreau  Next slide…  2. The Dark Romantics – Poe, Hawthorne, Melville  Focus on the conflict between good and evil; the psychological effects of guilt and sin; madness and derangement in the human mind  3. Similarities between the two.  Valued intuition over logic; like the Puritans, they saw signs and symbols in human events

12.  Transcendentalism – the idea that in determining the ultimate reality of God, the universe, the self, and other important matters, one must transcend or go beyond everyday experience in the natural world.  Dates back to the Greek philosopher Plato, in the 4 th century B.C.  Values intuition and human perfectibility

13.  “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson  1803-1882  Appealed to intellectuals and the public  They refer to him as a poet  Young rebel  He left and went on a European tour  Suffered from a severe loss of memory in old age

14.  Short statements that express wise or clever observations about life.  Also called ‘maxims’ or ‘adages’  “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” Ralph Waldo Emerson  “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” Oscar Wilde  “Good and bad are but names.” Emerson  “We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.” Thoreau