American Romanticism 1800

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American Romanticism18001860
Feature Menu
Interactive Time Line Milestone Rise of
American Romanticism Milestone The Louisiana
Purchase Milestone Education and Reform
Milestone Transcendental Influence Milestone
The Gold Rush Milestone The Slavery
Issue What Have You Learned?
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American Romanticism18001860
Choose a link on the time line to go to a
milestone.
1800 Rise of American Romanticism
1830s1850s Transcendental Influence
18501859 The Slavery Issue
1860
1820
1800
1840
1826 Lyceum Movement
1803 The Louisiana Purchase
1849 The Gold Rush
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Forces
Historical, Social, and Cultural Forces
The Industrial Revolution

• In the mid-1700s, a huge economic change known
  as the Industrial Revolution happened
• Manufacturing shifted from skilled workers using
  hand tools to unskilled laborers tending large,
  complex machines.
• Factories, some housing hundreds of machines and
  workers, replaced homebased workshops.

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Forces
Historical, Social, and Cultural Forces
The Industrial Revolution

• The Industrial Revolution brought economic
  growth, but it also helped divide Americans into
  two nations.
• The North had large cities and an economy based
  on manufacturing.
• The South had few large cities and a farming
  economy dominated by a single cropcotton.

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Forces
The Age of Reform

• In the 1820s, idealistic Americans produced an
  outburst of reform movements.
• Many of these reformers were inspired by the
  Second Great Awakening, a major religious
  movement that reached its peak in the 1820s and
  1830s.
• During the Age of Reform, Americans banded
  together in dozens of organizations to end
  slavery, stop drunkenness, secure womens rights,
  provide better care for the mentally ill, and
  improve prisons.

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Rise of American Romanticism
Reaction Against Rationalism

• Cities filled with poor living conditions and
  disease

• Value placed on nature and exotic settings

• Characteristic Romantic journey to the
  countryside, away from city

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Rise of American Romanticism
Romantic Escapism

• Valued feelings and intuition over reason

• Found beauty in exotic locales and supernatural

• Poetry highest expression of imagination

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Rise of American Romanticism
Fireside Poets
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
John Greenleaf Whittier

• Wrote about American settings and subject matter
  using traditional styles and forms

• Very popularfamilies read their poems at family
  firesides for entertainment

Oliver Wendell Holmes
James Russell Lowell
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Rise of American Romanticism
Romantic Heroes

• Frontier life idealized in novels

• Typical Romantic hero youthful, innocent
  intuitive, close to nature

• James Fenimore Coopers Natty Bumppo is the first
  American heroic figure

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The Louisiana Purchase
Westward Expansion
The United States

• gained all land between Mississippi River and
  Rocky Mountains

• paid about four cents an acre for the land

• immediately doubled in size

Louisiana Purchase
Oh Susanna! Polka
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The Louisiana Purchase
Westward Expansion

• Louisiana purchase launched 100 years of westward
  expansion.

• President Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to
  explore western territory.

• More people moved into frontier areas.

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Transcendental Influence
True Reality Is Spiritual

• Everything, including humans, is a reflection of
  Divine Soul.

• Physical facts of natural world are a doorway to
  spiritual world.

• Intuition allows people to behold Gods spirit
  revealed in nature or in their own souls.

• Spontaneous feelings are superior to
  intellectualism and rationality.

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Transcendental Influence
Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Combined beliefs from Europe and Asia with
  Puritan, revival, and Romantic traditions

• Published important essays such as
  Self-Reliance and The Over-Soul

• Had an extremely optimistic view of the world and
  nature

• Optimism appealed to people living in period of
  economic downturn, strife, and conflict

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Who Were the Transcendentalists?

• A group of nineteenth-century writers and artists
  who believed in the goodness and ultimate
  perfectibility of human beings.

• Valued self-reliance and individualism over
  custom and tradition.

• They saw the natural world as a doorway to a
  mystical or ideal reality.

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The Dark Romantics

• Challenge to the Transcendentalists

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A Dark Romantic View
I know not how it wasbut, with the first glimpse
of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom
pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable for the
feeling was unrelieved by any of that
half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with
which the mind usually receives even the sternest
natural images of the desolate or terrible. From
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan
Poe
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Who Were the Dark Romantics?

• The Dark Romantics were a group of
  nineteenth-century writers who explored the dark
  side of human nature.
• Dark Romantic writers explored the human
  potential for evil, including the psychological
  effects of guilt, sin, and madness.
• The Dark Romantic view countered the optimism of
  the Transcendentalist writers of the time.

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Differences Between Transcendentalists and Dark
Romantics
Saw divine goodness and beauty beneath everyday
reality
Believed spiritual truths may be ugly or
frightening
Embraced the mystical and idealistic elements of
Puritan thought
Reintroduced the dark side of Puritan beliefs
the idea of Original Sin and the human potential
for evil
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Similarities Between Transcendentalists and Dark
Romantics
True reality is spiritual.
Intuition is superior to logic or reason.
Human events contain signs and symbols of
spiritual truths.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne(18041864)

• Hawthornes short stories and novels reflect Dark
  Romantic views of humanity.
• In The Ministers Black Veil, a Puritan
  minister decides to wear a black veil for the
  rest of his life to represent the universality of
  sorrow and secret sin.
• The novel The Scarlet Letter tells a story of sin
  and redemption and explores the evil of hypocrisy.

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Herman Melville(18191891)

• Herman Melvilles short stories and novels also
  reflect a Dark Romantic view of nature and
  humanity.
• In the novel Moby-Dick, Captain Ahab doubts
  whether there is any real truth or meaning behind
  the appearances of nature.

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Edgar Allan Poe(18091849)

• Poes masterful short stories told tales of
  madness, revenge, and tragic fate.
• In the classic horror tale The Pit and the
  Pendulum, the narrator barely escapes a horrible
  death in a dark dungeon.

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The Dark Romantic Legacy

• Dark Romantic themes still appear in stories,
  books, movies, TV shows, and comic books.
• Present-day horror stories and movies borrow
  images and themes from the original master of
  horror, Edgar Allan Poe.
• The conflict between good and evil and the
  effects of guilt and sin are major themes in
  current literature, popular writing, and
  television.

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The Devil and Tom Walker Short Story by
Washington Irving
Introducing the Short Story Literary Analysis
Satire Reading Skill Analyze Imagery Vocabulary
in Context
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Satire
Irving was a master of satire, a literary device
in which people, customs, or institutions are
ridiculed with the purpose of improving society.
In this passage, Irving pokes fun at quarrelsome,
complaining women
. . . Though a female scold is generally
considered to be a match for the devil, yet in
this instance she appears to have had the worst
of it.
Washington Irving 1783-1859
Satire is often subtle, so as you read, watch for
its indicators humor, exaggeration, absurd
situations, and irony.
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Analyze Imagery
Irving develops his characters and establishes
mood through imagerywords and phrases that
appeal to the five senses.
. . . There lived near this place a meager,
miserly fellow, of the name Tom Walker. He had a
wife as miserly as himself. . . . They lived in a
forlorn-looking house that stood alone and had an
air of starvation.
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What Have You Learned?
1. The Transcendentalists had a dark vision of
the world. a. true b. false 2. Hawthorne was
a Transcendentalist. a. true b. false 3. The
Dark Romantics believed in spiritual but
not necessarily optimistic truths behind
nature. a. true b. false
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What Have You Learned?
Indicate whether the following statements refer
to the time before, during, or after the Gold
Rush.
______ Novelists popularize the American
Romantic hero. ______ Western New York
represents frontier of the country. ______ The
first transcontinental railroad is built. ______
Education reform begins in Massachusetts.
Before
before
During
before