西北师范大学美国文学通史课件 Chapter 3 Colonial Period.pptVIP

Chapter Three American Romanticism * Irving * Cooper I. American Romanticism 1. Intellectual 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; magazines appeared in big numbers such as The American Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, The Atlantic Monthly, and Harper’s Magazine, facilitating literary expansion in this new country. Chapter Three American Romanticism * Irving * Cooper 2. Foreign Influence (Derivative and Imitative) The Romantic movement, which had flourished earlier in the century both in England and Europe, proved to be a decisive influence without which the upsurge of American romanticism would hardly have been possible. 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, The Lady of the Lake, Waverley and The Heart of Midlothian) Chapter Three American Romanticism * Irving * Cooper 3. Native Factors (Different and Distinctive) Although the foreign influences were strong, American Romanticism exhibited from the very outset distinct features of its English and European counterpart. American romanticism was in essence the expression of “a real new experience” and “a new sensibility”: new place; new faces; new sight, smells, and sounds; new cultural factor (American Indians). American Puritanism as a cul