Lecture 2 The Romantic Period Irving and Copper.ppt

Chapter Three American Romanticism General Review Romanticism: Simply speaking, Romanticism is a literary movement flourished as a cultural force throughout the 19th Century and it can be divided into the early period and the late period. Also it remains powerful in contemporary literature and art. The term, Romanticism, is associated with imagination and boundlessness, as contrasted with classicism, which is commonly associated with reason and restriction. The most profound and comprehensive idea of romanticism is the vision of a greater personal freedom for the individual. The representatives of the early period includes: Washington Irving and James Fennimore Cooper, and those of the late period contain Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe. I. Historical Background 1. Internal Background The Romantic period stretches from the end of the 18th century through the outbreak of the Civil War. (1820-1865) Politically: Democracy and political equality became the ideal of the nation; and the two-party political system was in the making. Economically: The spread of industrialism, the sudden influx of immigrants, and the pioneers pushing the frontier further west lead to an economic boom. Literarily: The new nation cried for newer literary expressions. 2. Foreign Influence The British romantic writers such as William Wordsworth, Taylor Coleridge, Byron, Robert Burns, Shelley and Sir Walter Scott exerted a great influence upon their American brothers. The British Romantic literary pieces such as Lyrical Ballads (1798) by Wordsworth and Coleridge and Walter Scott’s border tales were esp. prevalent in America. (Scott’s Ivanhoe, Rob Roy) II. Features of American Romanticism: (1). Appeals to imagination:remoteness of settings in time and space. improbable plots. (2). Stress on emotion rather than reason; optimism, (3). Authorial subjectivity: in form and meaning. Major Themes: Primiti