1. American Romanticism

2. Romanticism Literary and artistic movement
Affected literature, paintings, sculpture, and music
Internationally:
England:
America:
Distrust of reason
Reaction against Neoclassicism

3. Characteristics of Romanticism
Excess of emotion/Emotion over reason
Power of the individual and his/her imagination
Power and celebration of nature as wild and mysterious; the sublime
Some emphasis on drug use to reach the edge of reason (some English and American Romantics) or no such use to reach a “natural high” (American Transcendentalists)
Every man can learn wisdom—common man
Subjective experiences: intuition, feelings, desires, hopes, and dreams
Spontaneity in thought and action
Interest in the supernatural
Nationalism

4. Contributing Factors to the Romantic Movement
Printing presses
More leisure time
More women readers
Ideals of democracy
Lifelessness of Deism and Enlightenment thought
French Revolution
Industrialization
Puritanism, guilt, salvation, wilderness of America
Rousseau and Kant

5. Thomas Cole of the American Romantic “Hudson School”
Compare this image of nature to the image of the gardens at Versailles in the Neoclassicism PowerPoint, and you will see the stark differences. Man is not in charge but is part of the mysterious natural world.
Thomas Cole of the American Romantic “Hudson School”
The Voyage of Life: Youth

6. American Romantics
Emerson
Thoreau
Melville
Hawthorne
Whitman
Poe