A Growing Nation 18001870

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A Growing Nation (1800-1870)

• Junior Language Arts

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The City, Grim and Gray

• To Franklin and other rationalists, the city was
  a place to find success and self-realization. To
  the Romantic writers who came after Franklin the
  city was often a place of moral ambiguity and,
  worse, of corruption and death
• The characteristic Romantic journey is to the
  countryside, which Romantics associated with
  independence, moral clarity, and healthful living.

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Romanticism

• Romanticism is the name given to those schools of
  thought that value feeling and intuition over
  reason.
• Romanticism (especially in Europe) developed in
  part as a reaction against Rationalism.
• In the dirty wake of the Industrial Revolution,
  people had come to realize the limits of reason.

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Romanticism (cont.)

• The Romantics came to believe that the
  imagination was able to capture truths that the
  rational mind could not reach.
• These truths were usually accompanied by powerful
  emotions associated with natural, unspoiled
  beauty.
• To the Romantics, imagination, spontaneity,
  individual feelings, and wild nature were of
  greater value than reason, logic, planning, and
  cultivation

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Characteristics of American Romanticism

• Prefers youthful innocence to educated
  sophistication
• Champions individual freedom and the worth of the
  individual
• Contemplates natures beauty as a path to
  spiritual and moral development

• Finds beauty and truth in exotic locales, the
  supernatural realm, and the inner world of the
  imagination
• Sees poetry as the highest expression of the
  imagination
• Finds inspiration in myth, legend, and folk
  culture

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American Novel and the Wilderness Experience

• The development of the American novel coincided
  with westward expansion, the growth of a
  nationalist spirit, and the rapid spread of
  cities.

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A New Kind of Hero

• The rationalist heroexemplified by a real-life
  figure like Ben Franklinwas worldly, educated,
  sophisticated, and bent on making a place for
  himself in civilization
• The typical hero of American Romantic fiction, on
  the other hand,...

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Characteristics of the American Romantic Hero

• Is young, or possesses youthful qualities
• Is innocent and pure
• Has a sense of honor based not on societys 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 and avoids town life
• Quests for some higher truth in the natural world

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Fireside Poetry

• Unlike fiction, Romantic poetry worked solidly
  within European literary traditions rather than
  creating a different and unique voice
• Fireside poets (Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes,
  Lowell, etc.) were, for their time and decades
  later, the most popular poets America had
  produced
• Often preachy and didactic
• Symbolismheavy and obvious

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Dark Romantics or, Anti-Transcendentalists

• Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville shared a
  common bond they both saw a dark side to human
  existence both sought to record this aspect of
  human nature in their works
• Dark Romantics used symbolism to great effect in
  their works

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Dark Romantics (cont.)

• In their works, the DR explored
• the conflict between good and evil
• the psychological effects of guilt and sin
• madness and derangement in the human psyche
• Behind the mask of social responsibility, the DR
  saw the blankness and the horror of evil