American Romanticism & GothicPlus Transcendentalism

Romanticism

"Romanticism" is a style or movement in literature, music, and other arts beginning in the late 1700s that thrives even now in popular forms and attitudes.

Historically, the Romantic era may be called "The Age of Revolution" from the French Revolution (1789-99) and the American Revolution (1775-83) but also from social and cultural changes that more broadly revolutionized society as well as the arts.

Romanticism

Romanticism is the name given to those schools of thought that value feeling and intuition over reason. Developed in part as a reaction against rationalism.

Romanticism almost always values something beyond or something lost, another reality to challenge or transform the everyday.

It can best be described as a journey away from the corruption of civilization and the limits of rational thought and toward the integrity of nature and the freedom of the imagination.

Romanticism

American Romanticism took two roads on the journey to understanding higher truths. One road led to the exploration of the past and the exotic, even supernatural, realms; the other road led to the contemplation of the natural world.

It involves many diverse, even contradictory elements, gestures, and meanings: individualism sentimental love of nature feeling over logic or experience ("Anything you want

you can have if you only want it enough.") nostalgia utopian thought (perfect community) escapism

The American Romantic Hero

Characteristics are: Is young, or possess youthful qualities Is innocent and pure of purpose Has a sense of honor based not on society’s rules

but on some higher principle Has a knowledge of people and of life based on

deep, intuitive understanding, not on formal learning Loves nature (adventure, even) and avoids town life Quests for some higher truth in the natural world▪ Examples: Natty Bumppo in The Last of the Mohicans, or

Indiana Jones in the that series.

The Gothic Novel

"Gothic." A term for aspects of medieval art first applied to pointed architecture in the early seventeenth century. The gothic revival [in architecture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries] in its literary aspects was closely associated with the green copses, disordered stone piles, enchanting shadows and sweet melancholy of these ruined buildings. . . . 

"The Gothic Novel." A form of novel in which magic, mystery, and chivalry are the chief characteristics.  Horrors abound: one may expect a suit of armor suddenly to come to life, while ghosts, clanking chains, and charnel houses impart an uncanny atmosphere of terror.

Elements of the Gothic

“They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night” – Poe

haunted houses / castles / woods; mazes/ labyrinths; closed doors & secret passages / rooms 

light and dark interplay with shades of gray or blood-red colors fair & dark ladies    

repressed fears & desires; memory of past crime or sin, death & decay, bad-boys 

blood as visual spectacle and genealogy / ethnicity  spectral or grotesque figures, lurid symbols           

creepy or startling sounds, screams in the night, groans from unknown rooms

the unknown, guilt of repressed crime, sin (the scary or naughty)

Examples of the Gothic

Gothic novels or romances, horror films, thrillers, mysteries, film noir 

“Goth” fashion and gothic rock or metal music 

Frequently today (and earlier) the gothic is spoofed or satirized as a formula: The Addams Family, Young Frankenstein, etc. 

The gothic has deep roots in theology, architecture, psychology, the imagination, and many literary traditions. 

Images associated with the gothic stretch back to Christian visions of hell, devils, and demons, with Lucifer as the original Byronic hero: proud, rebellious, attractive, dangerous to know. As the gothic develops, such imagery becomes secularized but may still evoke the supernatural. 

The indispensable feature of nearly any gothic narrative is a haunted space that reflects or corresponds to a haunted mind. In European literature the gothic space is typically a haunted castle or other architectural structure such as a maze or labyrinth.

“The Fall of the House of Usher” Example: Examine the language.

“During the whole of the dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher… I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of the black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled luster by the dwelling… (with) vacant and eye-like windows.”

-Edgar Allan Poe

Transcendentalism

Characteristics of how Transcendentalists see the world: Free thought (individualism) Confidence Importance of nature Self-reliance Non-conformity

Two Main Literary Groups

1. The Transcendental Club – Emerson and Thoreau Next slide…

2. The Dark Romantics – Poe, Hawthorne, Melville Focus on the conflict between good and evil;

the psychological effects of guilt and sin; madness and derangement in the human mind

3. Similarities between the two. Valued intuition over logic; like the Puritans,

they saw signs and symbols in human events

The Transcendental Club

Transcendentalism – the idea that in determining the ultimate reality of God, the universe, the self, and other important matters, one must transcend or go beyond everyday experience in the natural world.

Dates back to the Greek philosopher Plato, in the 4th century B.C.

Values intuition and human perfectibility

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

1803-1882 Appealed to intellectuals and the

public They refer to him as a poet Young rebel He left and went on a European tour Suffered from a severe loss of

memory in old age

An Aphorism

Short statements that express wise or clever observations about life. Also called ‘maxims’ or ‘adages’

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” Oscar Wilde

“Good and bad are but names.” Emerson “We are determined to be starved before

we are hungry.” Thoreau