ROMANTICISM

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ROMANTICISM
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Historical Context

• 1800-1870 time of growth and expansion westward
• Growth expansion new technologies
• Railroads
• Factories and advanced farming equipment
• Telegraph and Morse code
• spurred troublesome changes
• Factories brought fierce competition child
  labor and unsafe working conditions
• Womens rights gaining a voice
• Opposition to slavery began to grow and gain a
  voice in abolitionists

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What is Romanticism?

• A literary and artistic movement that placed an
  emphasis on imagination, emotion, nature, and
  individuality
• Elevated the imagination over reason and
  intuition over fact
• Reveled in nature

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Who are the Romantics?

• Before 1800 American writers were not widely read
  Romantics changed this
• These writers define the American voice
  personal and bold
• These writers defined one of the primary themes
  of American writing the quest of the individual
  to define himself

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Who are the Romantics?

• Fireside Poets

• Washington Irving
• William C. Bryant
• Henry W. Longfellow
• Oliver W. Holmes
• James R. Lowell
• John G. Whittier

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What are the Fireside Poets?

• First group of American poets to rival British
  poets in popularity in either country.
• Notable for their scholarship and the resilience
  of their lines and themes.
• Preferred conventional forms over
  experimentation.
• Often used American legends and scenes of
  American life as their subject matter.

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Fireside Poets Lasting Impact

• Longfellow remained the most popular American
  poet for decades.
• They took on causes in their poetry, such as the
  abolition of slavery, which brought the issues to
  the forefront in an agreeable way.
• Through their scholarship and editorial efforts,
  they paved the way for later Romantic writers
  like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau,
  and Walt Whitman.

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Who are the Romantics?

• Washington Irving
• 1st American writer to achieve international
  reputation
• Travel through Europe and a fascination with its
  folklore lead Irving to create his two most
  famous stories
• The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
• Rip Van Winkle
• Wrote The Devil and Tom Walker at the same time
  Puritan beliefs were being replaced by
  materialism and the desire for personal gain

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DARK-ROMANTICISM

• Same attributes of Romanticism but tends to
  accent the fantastic/negative aspects of human
  experience more
• Some works characterized as part of the literary
  genre known as gothic

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Gothic Style Characteristics

• Setting is in bleak or remote places
• Plot involves morbid or violent incidents
• Characters are in psychological and/or physical
  torment
• A supernatural or otherworldly element is often
  present

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Who are the Dark Romantics?

• Edgar Allan Poe
• Wrote The Raven
• Widely accepted as the inventor of the detective
  story
• Known as an eccentric writer his dark and
  dismal life probably had something to do with it

• Herman Melville
• Wrote Moby-Dick which is widely regarded as one
  of the finest novels in all of American
  Literature

• Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Believed evil was a dominant force in the world
• Wrote The Scarlet Letter and The Ministers
  Black Veil