Download Romanticism PPT

Romanticism
1798-1837 (mostly 1800s)
It’s not love & roses…
Literary Movement
• Began in 18th Century Western
Europe
• Grew during Industrial Revolution:
reaction against cold & harsh
industrial world (reliance on
machines) & revolt against an overly
rational & scientific society (in an
attempt to stave off the loss of
humanity and remain in touch with
the sense of humanity)
• Movement in art, literature, and
music
Romanticism in the U.S.
• Spread to America in the late 1700s
• Migration from farm life to urban settings
• Population growth, urban sprawl, &
industrialization
• Rejected Rationalism and religious
intellect
– Refreshing concept
– Spontaneity
• Ready for change: independence from
Britain led to optimism about forging a
new national identity
Characteristics/Values
• Emphasis on intuition, imagination (leading
to fiction and poetry), & feeling
– Celebration of emotions rather than
rejection of them (like Rationalism)
– Passion, pathos, & personal feelings
• Nature!
– Sheer power and beauty of nature
– Vast descriptions of the natural world,
especially the untamed & disorderly
– City = corruption (rejects
industrialization)
• To “romanticize” is to idealize
– On a “quest for beauty”--even found
examining darkness
– The idealized past
• Youth & Beauty
Values, continued
• Celebration/valuing of the common person & the
marginalized
– Including women & children
– Underserved society members
– EVERYBODY has a story to tell
• Perfectibility of humankind
– All equal at birth, regardless of gender or race
– Totally unprecedented
• Individuality & self-reliance
• Form that identity (just as America was doing for
herself after the Revolutionary War)!
– Personal expression vs. group expression
Writing Conventions/Style
• Extremely ornate & even flowery
language
• Figurative language
• Elevated Language
• Lengthy description
• Language itself as a form of expression
and beauty.
• Example:
– Extremely long sentences with complex
syntax and high level language
Three Main Branches
1. Idyllic
2. Gothic/Dark
3. Transcendental
- There will be an additional
PowerPoint on this branch, as it is
sometimes seen as a separate
movement.
Idyllic Romanticism
Idyllic: serenely beautiful, untroubled, & happy,
especially with a rural charm
Idyll: short poem or piece of prose describing a scene
like the one described above (a simple, peaceful, and/or
rural scene)
Major Idyllic Romantic Writers
– Lyric poetry: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William
Cullen Bryant
– Fireside poets: John Greenleaf Whittier
- “Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyll” (poem)
– Washington Irving: “Rip Van Winkle” (short story)
– James Fenimore Cooper: The Deerslayer (novel)
– William Cullen Bryant: “Thanatopsis” (poem)
Gothic: “Dark Romanticism”
• Dark side of human existence & human nature (unlike the
optimism of the Idyllics and Transcendentalists), but like the othe
Romantics, value intuition and mysticism (melancholy &
mysticism from the Puritans) & see signs and symbols in human
events
• Fiction & poetry characterized by gloomy, sinister, & remote
settings
– Setting extremely important
– Wild, primitive nature
• Explores the conflict between good and evil & reveals darker
aspects of the human mind/humanity, such as the psychological
effects of guilt, sin, pain, & madness/derangement in the human
psyche
– Emergence of psychology as a science
– Deeply psychological: dark journey of the mind
• Grotesque or even filled with horror
– Use of the odd or unusual
– Often include monsters or demons as symbolic explorations of
the human mind or emotions
• Suspend disbelief (example: Frankenstein’s monster)
• Dark Romanticism isn’t all love and roses, unless the roses come
alive and choke you to death!
Gothic, Continued: The
Dark Romantics
• Edgar Allan Poe: “The Raven” (poem),
“The Fall of the House of Usher,”
(short story), “The Tell Tale Heart,”
(short story), “The Cask of
Amantillado” (short story)
• Nathaniel Hawthorne: “Young
Goodman Brown” (short story), The
Scarlet Letter (novel)
• Herman Melville: Moby Dick (novel)
• Washington Irving: “The Legend of
Sleepy Hollow” (short story)
– “headless horseman”
Transcendentalism
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Value nature, autonomy/individualism/self-reliance, & intuition/emotion
Typically more political than the other branches
Optimistic
Based on ideas from Europe and Asia
Rooted in Puritanism (mysticism & symbolism), the German philosophy o
Immanuel Kant (one must transcend, or go beyond, everyday human
experience in the physical world to determine the ultimate reality of God,
the universe, and the self), the Idealism (true reality involves ideas rather
than the physical world as perceived through the five senses) of Greek
philosopher Plato
Spiritual philosophy about how people derive truth
- In ourselves (using intuition) & through communion with nature (the
physical facts of the natural world are a doorway to the spiritual/ideal
world)
- All people are part of the grand cycle of nature; nature is God (we can fin
God in nature or ourselves using our intuition), and God is & is revealed
through nature (and God is good)
- we can be good/perfect, or we can be evil if we are separated from a dire
intuitive knowledge of God
- Everything in the world, including human beings, are part and a reflectio
of the Divine Soul, the source of all good
- death is a part of life
Transcendentalism
Continued…
• Major Transcendentalist writers
- Ralph Waldo Emerson: “SelfReliance” & “Nature” (essays); leader
of the utopian group called the
“Transcendental Club” who inspired
many reform movements
- Henry David Thoreau: “Resistance to
Civil Government” (essay), Walden
(novel)
- Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass
(poems)
Context: The American
Renaissance
Renaissance = “rebirth”
Based on the European Renaissance of the 14th16th centuries
American Renaissance in mid 19th century Americ
Mostly Gothic Romantics & Transcendentalists
Nathaniel Hawthorne & Herman Melville insisted
that America would produce great writing
Americans found their place in literature distinct
from European models (explosion of American
literary genius) by producing a remarkable body o
work (a national literature/national masterpieces
Context: New England’s
Social & Intellectual Life
• Intellectual & social ferment in
northeast America
• Lyceum movement = organizations
with goals to improve American
society through reform
• Social causes, i.e. improving public
education, improving living conditions
for the mentally ill, ending slavery,
increasing women’s rights, etc.
• Utopia = perfect society (goal)
Romanticism rules!
The end