TheLiteratureofRomanticism.ppt

The Literature of Romanticism from the end of the 18th century through the outbreak of the civil war Class Focuses: Characteristics of Romanticism General Features of the Writings of American Romanticism Washington Irving American Romanticism General Introduction The romantic period covers the first half of the 19th century. It started with the publication of Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book and ended with Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. It is a period of the great flowering of American literature and it is also called “American Renaissance”. general characteristics: moral enthusiasm, faith in value of individualism, and intuitive perception, and a presumption that the natural world was a source of goodness and man’s societies a source of corruption. New England Literary Renaissance or American Renaissance  It refers to the romantic period from the 1830s roughly until the end of the American Civil War in which U.S. literature came of age as an expression of a national spirit. The literary scene was dominated by Schoolroom poets, notably Longfellow, Holmes, and Lowell. Also influential were the Transcendentalists, including Emerson and Thoreau, as well as the great imaginative writers Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson, and Whitman. I. Characteristics of Romanticism Romanticism is a rebellion against the objectivity of rationalism. Romanticists affirm the inner life of the self, and want each person to be free to develop and express his own inner thoughts. They believe that the feelings, intuitions and emotions are more important than reason and common sense and that one could find truth through one’s feelings. 2. Romanticists think that the world is not a ticking watch made by God but a living, breathing being. They view nature as a source of vivid physical beauty and as a manifestation of spirit in the universe. They stress the close relationship between man and nature. 3. They emphasize individualism, placing the i