AMERICAN ROMANTICISM:

INTRODUCTION
 ROMANTICISM: THE
MOVEMENT
- dominated cultural thought from the last decade of the
18th century well into the first decades of the 20th
century
- First appearance in Germany in the 1770s (“Sturm
und Drang”); flowering in England in the 1790s;
importation to America from the 1820s onward
• To a large degree, Romanticism was a reaction
against the Enlightenment or Age of Reason,
especially its emphasis on formal propriety*, classical
style, and decorum
*decency; courtesy
 ROMANTICISM: THE
MOVEMENT
• Question: What comes to mind or what do
you associate with the term
“Romanticism”?
 ROMANTICISM: THE
MOVEMENT
• Although we usually associate a quaint or
exaggerated effusion of emotion with
Romanticism (hence, the shift in meaning
of the word “Romantic” to everything
relating love…), the Romantic age brought
about concepts of the individual and
his/her relationship to the world/society
that we still largely subscribe to, even
champion today.
 ROMANTICISM: Idealism
•
•
(Common
We can make the world a better place.Man)
Romantics believed in the natural goodness of humans which is
hindered by the urban life of civilization.
• Concern for the common man: came from both the democratic
changes of the age of Revolution, as well as an interest in folk
culture
• Believed savage is noble, childhood is good and emotions inspired
by both beliefs causes the heart to soar
• In part, the search to preserve the stories, songs, legends, and
verse of the common people came from a nationalistic impulse
– E.g. in Germany, the Grimm brothers collected the fairy tales
(“Rapunzel”, “Hansel and Gretel” and “Cinderella”, to name a few) of
their region and country while assembling a comprehensive dictionary of
the German language (the German equivalent of Webster’s in the 19th
century!)
• But: the Folk Movement also produced an international language of
human commonality, at whose center stood the images of home
and the heart.
 ROMANTICISM: Intuition
• Romantics placed value on “intuition,” or feeling and
instincts, over reason
– STRONG SENSES, EMOTIONS AND FEELINGS!!
• The artist (especially, the poet): takes on quasi-religious
status not only as prophet and moral leader
• Inspired creator vs. technical master; being spontaneous
vs. getting it precise
• The poet/artist as a divinely inspired vehicle through
which Nature and the common man find their voices
• Wordsworth said it best: “all good poetry is the
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”
ROMANTICISM: Individuality
• aesthetic changes: individuality translated into the
revolution of feeling against form
• Poets, painters, and musicians no longer trying to make
their expression fit conventional forms, but carving out
new forms to capture their feelings and thoughts
• Women’s Rights and Abolitionism were taking root as
major movements of this time period
• Romantics elevated the achievements of the
misunderstood, heroic individual outcast
• Walt Whitman, a later Romantic writer, would later write
a poem entitled “Song of Myself:” it begins, “I celebrate
myself…”
 ROMANTICISM: Nature
• For the Romantic, nature was a constant
companion and teacher--both benign and
tyrannical
• Nature became
– the stage on which the human drama was played
– the context in which man came to understand his
place in the universe
– the transforming agent which harmonized the
individual soul with what the Transcendentalists would
call the Over-Soul (to be discussed later).
ROMANTICISM: More Nature
• Throughout all of Romantic literature, music, and
art, Nature is a dynamic presence, a character
who speaks in a language of symbols at once
mysterious and anthropomorphic (i.e. speaking
with a voice similar to human voice, i.e. sharing
human qualities and characteristics, especially in
personification of natural objects, phenomena,
etc.)
• allows man to come into dialogue with the life-
force
 ROMANTICISM: Imagination
• Imagination was emphasized over
“reason.”
• Imagination was considered necessary for
creating all art. British writer Samuel
Taylor Coleridge called it “intellectual
intuition.”
• Romantics legitimized the individual
imagination as a critical authority.
 ROMANTICISM: THE
Characters
• Quintessential Romantic figures: the hero, the wanderer, and the genius:
– all journey to new lands (literally and figuratively), defy limitations, and overcome
obstacles
– SHREK, anybody???
– Hero/wanderer fascination also came from the Romantic
identification and exploration of everything Medieval (the
Middle Ages were thought to be characterized by mystery
and irrationality)
• Typical Romantic motifs:
– Exotic lands (Melville, especially his South Sea novels and Moby Dick)
– Amorphous world of dreams (Coleridge, “Kubla Khan”) – written after
experiencing opium-influenced dream; never finished
– Dark terrors of the psyche (E. A. Poe!)
– Dizzying heights—in both nature and human creativity (Frankenstein…)
– Sublime vistas in nature reflecting the divine and potentially terrifying powers of
the human mind, spirit, and soul
 ROMANTICISM: MAJOR
FIGURES
• Germany:
– Authors: Goethe (esp. The Sorrows of Young
Werther and Faust), Schiller (esp. William
Tell); Novalis, Eichendorff, Schlegel, and the
Grimm brothers
– Painters: Caspar David Friedrich
– Composers: Beethoven, Schubert (songs),
Mendelssohn (wedding march from
Midsummer Night’s Dream), Richard Wagner
 ROMANTICISM: MAJOR
FIGURES
• Great Britain:
– Authors: Robert Burns, William Blake, William
Wordsworth, Sir Walter Scott, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary
Shelley.
– Painters: William Blake, John Constable,
Joseph Turner
 AMERICAN ROMANTICISM
• Often associated with the terms “American
Renaissance” and “Transcendentalism”
• Poets: William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Walt
Whitman, Emily Dickinson
• Prose Writers: Washington Irving, James
Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar
Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David
Thoreau, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herman
Melville.
Statements that Embody or Suggest
Romanticism
1. The answers to life’s most puzzling questions
can be found through discussions with a
simple person who lives in the country close to
nature- not with a sophisticated, well-educated
person from the city.
2. The answer to life’s most puzzling questions
can be found through a connection with nature.
3. The use of one’s imagination is more important
than rational thought.
4. Subjectivity is more important than objectivity.
5. Knowledge is gained through gut reactions and
subject hunches rather than level-headed,
objective, deductive thought.
Statements that Embody or Suggest
Romanticism
6. Nature is more important than art.
7. Experimental trial and error is a better
process than the conventional scientific
method.
8. Poetry should be spontaneous and full of
emotion, not planned an straightforward.
9. Sensitivity, feelings, and spontaneity are
more important than intellectualism.
10. “Dare to be” is a better battle-cry than
“dare to know.”
 Works Cited
• Information from: ReadWriteThink,
Copyright 2008.