American Romanticism

1
AmericanRomanticism

• 1800 - 1860

2
Historical Background

• Optimism
• Successful revolt against English rule
• Room to grow
• Frontier
• Vast expanse
• Freedom
• No geographic limitations

3
Historical Background

• Experimentation
• Science
• Social institutions
• Immigration
• Industrialization
• Differences between North and South grow
  (agricultural v. industrial economies)

4
Characteristics

• The Five Is
• Imagination
• Intuition
• Idealism
• Inspiration
• Individuality

5
Subject Matter

• Quest for beauty
• Escape from daily troubles
• Journey to freedom, represented in nature as
  opposed to the oppressive city
• Use of far-away, imaginative settings
• Supernatural, myth, legend folklore

6
Literary Techniques

• Remote settings
• Improbable plots
• Experimentation in new forms of writing

7
Romantic Authors

• Washington Irving
• Rip Van Winkle
• Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Scarlet Letter

8
Sub-Movements of Romanticism

• Gothicism
• Edgar Allan Poe
• The Fall of the House of Usher
• The Raven
• Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Ministers Black Veil

9
Sub-Movements of Romanticism

• Transcendentalism
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Nature
• Self-Reliance
• Henry David Thoreau
• Walden
• Resistance to Civil Government

10
Romantic Poets

• William Cullen Bryant
• Thanatopsis
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls
• The Cross of Snow
• Oliver Wendell Holmes
• The Chambered Nautilus

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Romantic Poets

• Emily Dickinson
• Heart! We will forget him!
• Some keep the Sabbath going to Church
• Tell all the Truth but tell it slant
• Walt Whitman
• I Hear America Singing
• Song of Myself

12
The Arts

• Romanticism was a movement across all the arts
  visual art, music, and literature.
• All of the arts embraced themes prevalent in the
  Middle Ages chivalry, courtly love.
• Shakespeare came back into vogue.

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Visual Arts Examples
Romantic Art
Neoclassical Art