American Romanticism

Romanticism• Literary and artistic movement

• Affected literature, paintings, sculpture, and music– Internationally: 1770-1870– England: 1798-1832– America: 1830-1865

• Distrust of reason

• Reaction against Neoclassicism

Characteristics of Romanticism Excess of emotion/Emotion over reason Power of the individual and his/her imagination Power and celebration of nature as wild and mysterious;

the sublime Some emphasis on drug use to reach the edge of reason

(some English and American Romantics) or no such use to reach a “natural high” (American Transcendentalists)

Every man can learn wisdom—common man Subjective experiences: intuition, feelings, desires,

hopes, and dreams Spontaneity in thought and action Interest in the supernatural Nationalism

Contributing Factors to the Romantic Movement

• Printing presses• More leisure time• More women readers• Ideals of democracy• Lifelessness of Deism and Enlightenment thought• French Revolution• Industrialization• Puritanism, guilt, salvation, wilderness of America• Rousseau and Kant

Thomas Cole of the American Romantic “Hudson School”

The Voyage of Life: Youth

Compare this image of nature to the image of the gardens at Versailles in the Neoclassicism PowerPoint, and you will see the stark differences. Man is not in charge but is part of the mysterious natural world.

EmersonThoreau

Poe

MelvilleWhitmanHawthorne

American Romantics