american_romanticism.pptVIP

American Romanticism 1800 - 1860 Introduction The theme of journey as a declaration of independence Bryant, Homes, Whittier, Longfellow, and Lowell are Romantic poets Irving is the Father of American Literature Cooper is the Father of the American novel Poe is the inventor of the American Short Story Introduction Emerson is the Father of American Transcendentalism Thoreau is a famous practical transcendentalist Melville and Hawthorne are Anti-Romantics Dickinson and Whitman are bridge poets between American Romanticism and the 20th century Introduction The rationalistic view of urban life was replaced by the Romantic view Rationalists saw cities as a place to find success and self-realization Romantics saw the city as a place of moral corruption, poverty, and death Introduction The Romantic journey is to the countryside The Romantics associated the country with independence, moral clarity, and purity The Gothic Romantic, E.A. Poe, saw the country as a place of phantasm Irving saw the country as idyllic and as an escape The Romantic Sensibility Romanticism: valuing feeling and intuition over reason Romanticism: viewing life as we would like it to be, rather than how it really is Romanticism began in Germany and influenced literature, music, and art Romanticism is a reaction against Rationalism The Romantic Sensibility The development of slums and poverty due to the Industrial Revolution turned people from Rationalism Romantics believed that imagination, emotion, spontaneity, feelings, and nature were more important than rational thought Characteristics of Romanticism values feelings over intuition values the power of the imagination seeks the beauty of unspoiled nature values youthful innocence values individual freedom values the lessons of the past finds beauty in exotic locales, the supernatural, and in the imagination values poetry as the highest expression of the imagination values myth, legend, and folk culture Romantic Esca