American

Romanticismand time period in American Literature

American Romantic Timeframe

• Timeframe– 1828-1865– 1840-1860– 1850-1859

• British Romanticism– 1798-1832

• Closely linked to Transcendentalism– Based on Kant and Locke

American Romantic Principles

• Natural goodness of man• Nature• Individualism/Self• Perfectibility of man • Emotion

Non-Romantic Art

•George Catlin

American Romantic Art

•Thomas Cole

American Romantic Art

•Thomas Cole

American Romantic Art

•Albert Bierstadt

American Romantic Writers

• Ralph Waldo Emerson• May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882• American essayist• Philosopher• Poet• Leader of the

Transcendentalist movement

American Romantic Writers

•Ralph Waldo Emerson–America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination and it will not wait long for metres.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from THE POET

–Collections•Poems (1847) •Representative Men (1850) •English Traits (1856) •The Conduct of Life (1860) •May Day and Other Poems (1867) •Society and Solitude (1870) •Letters and Social Aims (1876)

–Essays•"Self-Reliance" •"Compensation" •"The Over-Soul" •"The Poet" •"Experience" •"Nature" •"The American Scholar"

–Poems•"Concord Hymn" •"The Rhodora"

American Romantic Authors

•"I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government“ – Civil Disobendience

–July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862•American author•Naturalist•Tax resister•Development critic•Philosopher

American Romantic Writers

•Henry David ThoreauAulus Persius Flaccus (1840) The Service (1840) A Walk to Wachusett (1842) Paradise (to be) Regained (1843) The Landlord (1843) Sir Walter Raleigh (1844) Herald of Freedom (1844) Wendell Phillips Before the Concord Lyceum (1845) Reform and the Reformers (1846-8) Thomas Carlyle and His Works (1847) A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) Resistance to Civil Government, or Civil Disobedience (1849)An Excursion to Canada (1853)Slavery in Massachusetts (1854)Walden (1854) A Plea for Captain John Brown (1859) Remarks After the Hanging of John Brown (1859) The Last Days of John Brown (1860) Walking (1861)Autumnal Tints (1862)Wild Apples: The History of the Apple Tree (1862)Excursions (1863)

Life Without Principle (1863)Night and Moonlight (1863)The Highland Light (1864)The Maine Woods (1864)Cape Cod (1865)Letters to Various Persons (1865)A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers (1866)Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881)Summer (1884)Winter (1888)Autumn (1892)Misellanies (1894)Familiar Letters of Henry David Thoreau (1894)Poems of Nature (1895)Some Unpublished Letters of Henry D. and Sophia E. Thoreau (1898) The First and Last Journeys of Thoreau (1905)Journal of Henry David Thoreau (1906)

American Romantic Writers

•Walt Whitman– May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892– American poet– Essayist– Journalist– Humanist

•Leaves of Grass (1855)

American Romantic Writers

•Nathaniel Hawthorne

–July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864–American novelist–Short story writer

•The Scarlet Letter (1850)

American Romantic Writers

•Edgar Allen Poe•January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849•American poet•Short story writer•Editor•Literary critic

Writers of the Time Period

•Emily Dickinson–December 10, 1830– May 15, 1886–Poet

Writers of the Time Period

• Ralph Waldo Emerson• Nathaniel Hawthorne• Henry David Thoreau• Walt Whitman• Emily Dickinson• Edgar Allen Poe

• Herman Melville• James Fenimore

Cooper

Romantic Literature Covered in Class

•Whitman’s Leaves of Grass

The land and sea, the animal fishes and birds, the sky of heaven and the orbs, the forests mountains and rivers, are not small themes - Preface

I celebrate myself,And what I assume you shall assume,For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

- Song of Myself

Themes• Nature• Self

Romantic Literature Covered in Class

• Emerson’s Self-Reliance

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. –Self-Reliance

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. – Self-Reliance

Themes• Individualism/Self• Nature• Perfectibility of Man

Romantic Literature Covered in Class

• Thoreau’s Resistance to Civil Government

He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist- Resistance to Civil Government

Themes • Individualism/Self• Perfectibility of man

American Romanticism

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