American Romanticism

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American Romanticism
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The Age of Reason or The Enlightenment

• Founded on
• Deism
• Logic
• Inalienable rights

• It also brought
• Industrialization, growth of cities, and
  factories
• American expansion (Lewis and Clark and Manifest
  Destiny)
• More encounters with Native Americans

Albert Bierstadt
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Romanticism a reaction to the Age of Reason
Romanticism
Age of Reason

• Realism
• Patrician Classicism
• Dominion over the Native American
• Logic, always facts to counter fear and doubt

• Idealism/Utopia
• Glorification of the common man
• Recognition of the nobility of the primitive
  the noble savage
• Imagination to engender faith and hope

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Characteristics of Romanticism

• Contemplating natures beauty is the path to
  spiritual and moral development.
• Values feeling and intuition over reason
• Looks backward to the wisdom of the past, shuns
  progress

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The City was a Place of . . .

• The Rationalists saw the city as a place of
  industry, success, self realization, and
  civilization.

• The Romantics saw the city as a place of poor
  work conditions, moral ambiguity, corruption, and
  death.

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The Journey

• Romanticism was often seen as a journey.
• The journey from the city to the country
• The journey from rational thought to the
  imagination

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The Fireside Poets
The Most Popular American Poets of Their Time
John Greenleaf Whittier, William Cullen Bryant,
James Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes

• Their poems were often read aloud at the fireside
  as family entertainment.
• Themes love, patriotism, nature, family, and
  religion

• It is poetry that seeks a higher truth from the
  natural world.

The Fireside poets were the first group of
American poets to rival British poets in
popularity in either country.
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Literature

• -American Novel - The Romantic Hero

• Youthful
• Pure of Purpose
• Sense of Honor not based on societys rules but
  a higher principle
• Intuitive Understanding (not formal learning)
• Loves nature and avoids town life
• Quests for higher truth in the natural world
• Modern day examples Superman, Luke Skywalker,
  Indiana Jones

-American Novelists looked to westward expansion
and the frontier for inspiration creating a break
with European tradition. Folktales by
regional writers offered glimpse of the
supernatural