Let’s ReadThe Romantics

Reaction to Age of Reason• To a large degree, Romanticism was a reaction

against the Enlightenment (Age of Reason), which emphasized form, classical style, decorum

• Read first two stanzas of “Rape of the Lock” http://poetry.eserver.org/rape-of-the-lock.html

• Romanticism emphasized feeling and used the less formal, more conversational blank verse

• Read “Thanatopsis”http://www.bartleby.com/102/16.html

Focus: Idealism• Included many women and former slaves• Stressed a development of political rights for

those previously excluded (Rights of Man)• Marked by political action• Involved radical assault on virtually all social

institutions• Read “Civil Disobedience”

http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil.html

Focus: Mid-20th C. Idealism• Youth culture• Marked by political action• Stressed peace and love• Involved radical criticism of all social institutions

created by previous generation• Read “Woodstock”

http://www.answers.com/topic/woodstock-song

Focus: Innocence• Basic goodness of all people• Bit of the divine in all people • Links all into one and to God• Read information about Harriet Beecher Stowe

and Uncle Tom’s Cabin http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/utc/

• Read passage from Uncle Tom’s Cabin http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/stowe/stowe.html

Intuitive Romantic Hero• Young / youthful qualities• Innocent and pure of purpose• Honor based on higher purpose (not on society’s rules)• Knowledge of people and life based on deep, intuitive

understanding (not on formal learning)– Dreams– Psyche– Mystery/inspired understanding

• Love of nature and avoidance of town life• Seeks higher truth in the natural world (a quest)

– Medieval / Gothic– Exotic places

• Read “Prometheus” http://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=129

Focus: Idyllic Inspiration• Poet/artist assumes role prophet and moral leader • Poet/artist divinely by Nature and the common man

(especially those in rural settings)• Read “A Psalm of Life”

http://www.potw.org/archive/potw232.html• Read “Niagara”

http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/63763-Lydia-Howard-Huntley-Sigourney-Niagara

• See Niagarahttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae1RqLvO4a8&feature=related

Focus: Individual’s Experience

• Initiated the importance of individual person’s thoughts and insights

• Believed inner spark of divinity resides in all people, linking all together and to the to the larger Truth

• Articulated personal experience as though representative of all experience

• Read “Higher Laws” from Walden http://thoreau.eserver.org/walden11.html

Focus: Imagination• Source of artistic vision/creativity

(during the neo-classical age, imagination was linked to “fancy,” which implied the fantastic, fictive, and even false)

• Read “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” http://www.online-literature.com/irving/geoffrey_crayon/32/

• Read “The Prairies” http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/Bryant/prairies.html

• Browse Poe site http://www.online-literature.com/poe/

Visual Artists: Hudson River School

• First integrated movement in American art, Hudson River School created a unique mythos about the American wilderness

• Thomas Cole (1801-1848) • Asher B. Durand (1796-1886) • Frederick Church (1826-1900)• Albert Bierstadt

(1830-1902)http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5297.John_Muir

Thomas Cole,

“The Falls of Kaaterskill”

(1826)

Thomas Cole, The Oxbow (View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a

Thunderstorm, 1836)

Asher Durand, “Kindred Spirits” (1848)

Frederic Edwin Church,

“The Natural Bridge” (1852)

Alfred Bierstadt, “Emigrants Crossing the Plains” (1867)

Alfred Bierstadt, “Looking Up the Yosemite Valley” (ca. 1865-67)

Painting Transcendent Messages

• A vehicle for the universal mind (God, Truth) to teach mankind

There is but one Reason. The mind that made the world is not one mind, but the mind. Every man is an inlet to the same, and to all of the same. And every work of art is more or less pure manifestation of the same. Therefore we arrive at this conclusion, which I offer as a confirmation of the whole view: That the delight, which a work of art affords, seems to arise from our recognizing in it the mind that formed Nature again in active operation.

It differs from the works of Nature in this, that they are organically reproductive. This is not: but spiritually it is prolific by its powerful action on the intellects of men.

In confirmation of this view, let me refer to the fact, that a study of admirable works of art always sharpens the perceptions of the beauty of Nature; that a certain analogy reigns throughout the wonders of both; that the contemplations of a work of great art draws us into a state of mind which may be called religious. It conspires with all exalted sentiments.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Thought on Art” (1841)

Dominant Writers

• 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

What you need to know• Features of American Romanticism

– How literature read exemplifies these features• How American Romanticism was affected by social,

political, and geographic matters, and how works we have read illustrate this– The frontier, the wilderness, expansion– Slavery, racism, sectionalism, class conflict,

industrialization, gender inequality, Indian removal, etc. – Representative events (social, political, and geographic)

• Links between American Romanticism and the cultural identity of the United States, and how works we have read illustrate this

• Accurate, thoughtful interpretation of closely read texts we have studied