American Romanticism
& Transcendentalism
The American Renaissance
1800-1860
"Romanticism is beauty without bounds-the beautiful infinite."
- Jean Paul, German Romantic Author
school of thought that values feeling and intuition over reason.
Romanticism
Intuition: the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning
The 5 I's of Romanticism
- Imagination
- Individuality
- Intuition
- Inspiration
- Idealism
1. Imagination and Escapism
Industrial Revolution --> progress ---> optimism
People wanted to escape from the vile and overcrowded cities.
2. Individuality
- immigration --> melting pot
- personal identity and identity as a country
- distance ourselves from Europe; characters that live on the outskirts of society
3. Nature as a source of spirituality
- Getting back to the spiritual ideals of the Puritans but in a new way
- Where the Puritans saw nature as savage, with the Devil hiding behind every tree, the Romantics really are finding God in nature
Thanatopsis" by William Cullen Bryant
4. Looking to the past for wisdom
- Using old legends poetic forms and techniques are the same; content is different (love, patriotism, nature, family, God, and religion
- "Fireside Poets" because their work was read aloud at the fireside as family entertainment
5. Seeing the common man as a hero
The Romantic Hero Archetype
Archetype:
a recurrent pattern of a character type, situation, or symbol, repeated in stories across time and various cultures.
- Related to the Byronic Hero
- Innocent, pure of purpose
- Virtuous, simple morality, has a sense of honor based on higher principles than societies
- youthful
- intuitive, emotionally intelligent, not based on formal education
- love of nature; distrust of "town life"--has broken from social restraint
- skillful frontiersman; almost superhuman resourcefulness
- adventurous & danger-seeking
- folksy & down-to-earth
The First Romantic Hero
Nathaniel (Natty) Bumppo
is the protagonist of James Fenimore Cooper's pentalogy of novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales.
He's young, he's innocent and awkward with the ladies, but he has a solid moral code, even if he doesn't always follow society's rules. He has intuition about people, he loves nature, and he's questing for a higher truth.
How do these images exemplify romantic ideals?
View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow
Artist: Thomas Cole (American, Lancashire 1801–1848 Catskill, New York)
Date: 1836
Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog
Artist: Casper David Friedrich
Date: 1818
Italian Title: Il bacio
Artist: Francesco Hayez
Year: 1859
Dark Romanticism
Like the Romantics, they valued emotion over reason. However, their common belief that humans gravitate to evil and self destruction result in a much darker perspective.
"It was night, and the rain fell; and falling, but having fallen, it was blood."
-Edgar Allan Poe from "Silence- A fable"
Characteristics
- Dark Romantics present individuals as prone to sin and self destruction, not as inherently possessing divinity and wisdom.
- The natural world is dark, decaying, and mysterious; when it does reveal truth to man, its revelations are evil and hellish.
- Individuals failing in their attempts to make changes for the better.
Gothic Motifs
- a castle, preferably haunted
- ruined buildings
- dungeons, underground passages, crypts, and catacombs
- labyrinths, dark corridors, and winding stairs,
- shadows, a beam of moonlight in the blackness, a flickering candle
- extreme landscapes, rugged mountains, thick forests
- omens and ancestral curses,
- magic, supernatural, or the suggestion of the supernatural,
- a passion-driven, willful villain-hero or villain,
- a curious heroine with a tendency to faint
- a hero whose true identity is revealed by the end of the novel,
- horrifying (or terrifying) events or the threat of such happenings.
- The Gothic creates feelings of gloom, mystery, and suspense and tends to the dramatic and the sensational, like incest, diabolism, and nameless terrors.
Themes
- The darker side of human existence:
- horror, tragedy, the macabre and the supernatural.
- Psychological effects of guilt and sin
- Dark tales of obsession, revenge, shame, madness, and derangement
Terror
Horror
feeling of dread, anticipation which precedes horror
is the feeling of revulsion that usually occurs after something frightening is seen, heard, or otherwise experienced
Edgar Allan Poe: 1809-1849
- Frailties of the human mind; madness
- the occult
- Setting = mood/atmosphere
- Wrote "The Raven," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Black Cat," and many other works
Nathaniel Hawthorne: 1804-1864
- Changed his name from Hathorne to separate himself from his Puritan ancestors; ashamed
- Explored the guilt/shame of the Puritan lifestyle
- reclusive tendencies
- Wrote The Scarlett Letter, and "The Minister's Black Veil"
Herman Melville: 1819-1891
- Left school to help with family finances
- Worked on whaling ships, even deserting one and was captured by cannibals in the Marquesas Islands
- Wrote the of epic of good and evil, man verses nature, and one captain's madness in pursuing a white whale in Moby Dick.
Transcendentalism
TO TRANSCEND:
to go beyond
Transcendentalism
Nature is a doorway to truth
Background
- Develops in and around Condord, Massachusetts
- Under umbrella of Romanticism Movement in literature
- Man is inately good!
- rejects idea that man is fallen and saved through divine intervention
a) created in God’s image
b) people possess rationality
c) there’s dignity to being human
"I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to put to rout all that was life and not when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived."
--Henry David Thoreau
Social Aspects
• Idealistic - belief in the perfectibility of man
• Fight for the rights of all; many reform movements
• Improve public education (Horace Mann)
• Alleviate horrible conditions of insane asylums (Dorothea Dix)
• Improve the conditions of the blind and deaf
• Abolish slavery (William Lloyd Garrison)
• Secure rights for women (Elizabeth Peabody, Margaret Fuller, Emma Willard)
Tenets of Transcendentalism
1. Believed in living close to nature. Nature is the source of truth and inspiration.
2. Taught the dignity of manual labor
3. Advocated self-trust/ confidence
4. Valued individuality/non-conformity/free thought
5. Advocated self-reliance/ simplicity
Major Ideas
- The Oversoul encompasses the life-force of all humanity and nature. It is the unity of all being. (Emerson)
- struggle/embracing personal torments in order to lead you to a better place
- openness and perfectibility of the human mind
- nonconformity
- optimistic; the glass is half full
- Transcendentalists thought: nature was a doorway to a mystical world holding important truths
Modern Day Transcendentalism
Ralph Waldo Emerson: 1803-1882
- Father of transcendentalism
- Known for individuality, independence, and appreciation for nature
- Wrote to teach others to scope out the meaning of life through nature, not from books and teaching of the past
- Most well-known works: Nature; Self-Reliance (essays)
Henry David Thoreau: 1817-1862
- disciple of Emerson
- focus on importance of keeping life simple and uncluttered: don’t work too hard to enjoy your life, don’t be dependent upon someone else for your own happiness, necessities in life are food, shelter, clothing and fuel - beyond that is luxury, and luxury makes men greedy and leads to unhappiness
- lived on edge of Walden Pond in Concord, MA for nearly two years to try and live this way; wrote Walden Pond on experience
- Also wrote Civil Disobedience: influenced by disgust with Mexican-American War and slavery - later influenced MLK and Gandhi
Walt Whitman: 1819-1892
- influenced by both Emerson and Thoreau
- wrote Leaves of Grass: book of poetry completely revolutionary in form and idea; distinctly American/focus on what is American dream
- emphasis upon the individual and their connection to nature as central to understanding
- emphasis upon childlike simplicity and understanding being connected to a “pure” self
- praises both human mind, soul, AND body - attention to senses before not seen in literature (controversial)
Louisa May Alcott: 1832- 1888