Romanticism

1
Romanticism

• A school of thought that values feeling and
  intuition over reason
• Different from the modern definition of romantic

2
Principles of Romanticism

• A reaction against rationalism
• The Declaration of independence is based on
  rationalist principles
• The imagination can reach truths that the
  rational mind cannot!!!!!

3
Principles of Romanticism

• Emphasis on powerful emotion, natural unspoiled
  beauty
• felt vs. logic
• Highest form of imagination poetry
• Lowest form of imagination science

4
Romantic Heroes
The Rationalist Hero The American Romantic Hero
Worldly Youthful
Educated Innocent
Sophisticated Intuitive
Wants to be in civilization Wants to be in Nature
Example Example
5
Romantic Heroes

• Romantics implied that virtue is in American
  innocence, not European sophistication
• Huge influence over literature, music and art
• Edgar Allan Poe referred to science as a
  vulture with wings of dull realities, preying
  on hearts of poets

6
Purposes of Romanticism

• Romantics searched for exotic settings in a more
  natural past, or a world away from the
  industrial age
• Romantics wanted to reflect on the natural world
  until the dull reality fell away to reveal
  underlying beauty and truth
• This is how Romantics created poetry
• Sees the object ? brought to deeply felt insight
  ? recorded feelings

7
Purposes of Romanticism

• Same as the Puritans, but the Puritans found God
  in the Bible, where as the Romantics found God in
  nature
• Contemplation of the natural world led to a more
  emotional and intellectual awakening

8
Dark Romanticism

• As opposed to the perfectionist beliefs of
  Transcendentalism, the Dark Romantics emphasized
  human fallibility and proneness to sin and
  self-destruction, as well as the difficulties
  inherent in attempts at social reform.
• The Dark Romantics adapted images of
  anthropomorphized evil in the form of Satan,
  devils, ghosts, werewolves, vampires, and ghouls
  to help display humans inherit negatives.
• Nathanial Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar Allen
  Poe (coincides with Gothic)

9
The Dark Romantics

• The Anti-Transcendentalists
• However, still had much in common with the
  Transcendentalists
• Value of intuition over logic and reason
• Nature is not necessarily good
• Emphasis on Original Sin
• Combination of mystical and the melancholy of
  Puritan thought
• Good vs. evil
• Psychological effects of guilt and sin
• Madness and the human psyche

10
Allegory

• A story or poem in which characters, settings,
  and events stand for abstract ideas or moral
  qualities, yet can also strictly represent
  another time overall.