Romanticismand Transcendentalism

in American Literature

1800-1870http://

www.honors.uiuc.e

du/eng255/

lectures/12-13.html

Historical and Cultural Background

0Write down the essential questions:0 What is the relationship between place and literature?0 How does literature shape or reflect society?0 What makes American literature American?

Read the information on pages 210 – 221, keeping in mind the essential questions. When you finish reading, answer the essential questions on your paper. We will be adding some notes about Romanticism and Transcendentalism throughout the unit.

Romanticism as defined by the Oxford Companion to American Literature:

 

"Romanticism is a term that is associated with imagination and boundlessness, as contrasted with Classicism, which is commonly associated with reason and restriction. A romantic attitude may be detected in literature of any period, but as an historical movement it arose in the 18th and 19th centuries, in reaction to more rational literary, philosophic, artistic, religious, and economic standards. The most clearly defined romantic literary movement in the U. S. was Transcendentalism.

  

• sentimentalism

• primitivism

• the cult of the noble savage

• political liberalism • celebration of natural

beauty and the simple life

• introspection, psychology, and supernatural concepts

• idealization of the

common man

• interest in the picturesque past

• interest in remote places

• individualism

• morbid melancholy

• historical romance 

Characteristics of the Romantic movement in American literature are:

How and why?American Romanticism was influenced by European

Romanticism.

Influential European artists and writers (Rousseau, Blake, Goethe, Beethoven, Mary Shelley, and many others) broke away from formalities and rationalities of the Enlightenment/Age of Reason.

Philosophers, artists, and writers were concerned with:continuing decay of urban life possibilities for workable democracya middle class frustrated with a government which

brought them little in the way of additional power

Characteristics of American Romanticism in the first twenty-five years of the 19th century:

1. Reaction against logic and reason: There was a generalized suspicion of science and dispassionate logic, though the fervor of this anti-science sentiment varied with the author and artist. Thoreau was a good and enthusiastic naturalist; Poe, at least in his poems and horror stories, was perhaps the most phobic about science.

2. Faith in something inherently good and transcendent in the human spirit, an inward divinity in need of awakening.  

3. Faith in the spirituality and the symbolic importance of nature.

4. Anglo-French celebration of common and rural life provided a model for American writers, who sought a way to satisfy a cultural need for lore.

5. As the "Fireside Poets" (especially Bryant, Whittier, Longfellow) became enormously popular in American households, they publicized a celebration of simple living, intuitive wisdom, innocent love, and community folklore. By 1870, Longfellow in fact was out-selling every other 19th century author writing in English, including Wordsworth, Browning, Tennyson, and even Charles Dickens.

6. In the arts, Romanticism promoted a popular taste for wild landscapes, ominous skies, ancient ruins, picturesque rusticity, and other settings for intuitive inspiration.

Answer: How would you describe the Romantic movement to someone who is not familiar with its characteristics?

Read: “The Devil and Tom Walker” 228

Answer: How does the short story exemplify the characteristics of Romantic literature? Use your notes as a guide and provide specific examples from the text.

What do you know?

What can we learn about each of the following from Irving’s story?

New England attitude toward Native Americans

Irving’s feelings about slavery

Irving’s attitude toward avarice

Give specific evidence (quotes or paraphrases) from the text to support your opinion.

Retelling the StoryWrite in paragraph form, please, legibly and with correct English grammar and usage.

The story involves someone literally making a deal with the Devil for temporary gain. Think of a modern day situation in which people “sell their souls” for temporary, immediate reward. Explain. What is the situation you thought of? What are the rewards for the people who dare to make a deal? How do those people ultimately lose?

Transcendentalism

What does “Transcendentalism”

mean?0There is an ideal spiritual state which

“transcends” the physical and empirical.0A loose collection of eclectic ideas about

literature, philosophy, religion, social reform, and the general state of American culture.0Transcendentalism had different meanings

for each person involved in the movement.

Where did it come from?

0Ralph Waldo Emerson gave German philosopher Immanuel Kant credit for popularizing the term “transcendentalism.”

0It began as a reform movement in the Unitarian church.

0It is not a religion—more accurately, it is a philosophy or form of spirituality.

0It centered around Boston and Concord, MA. in the mid-1800’s.

0Emerson first expressed his philosophy of Transcendentalism in his essay Nature.

What did Transcendentalists

believe?

The intuitive faculty, instead of the rational or logical, became the means for a conscious union of the individual psyche with the world psyche, also known as the Oversoul.

Basic Premise #1 An individual is the spiritual

center of the universe, and in an individual can be found the clue to nature, history and, ultimately, the cosmos itself. It is not a rejection of the existence of God, but the idea that God exists differently in each individual.

Basic Premise #2The structure of the universe literally duplicates the structure of the individual self—all knowledge, therefore, begins with self-knowledge. This is similar to Aristotle's dictum "know thyself."

Basic Premise #3 Transcendentalists

accepted the concept of nature as a living mystery, full of signs; nature is symbolic.

Basic Premise #4 The belief that individual virtue and

happiness depend upon self-realization—this depends upon the reconciliation of two universal psychological tendencies:

1. The desire to embrace the whole world—to know and become one with the world.

2. The desire to withdraw, remain unique and separate—an egotistical existence.

Who were some of the most influential

Transcendentalists?

Ralph Waldo EmersonHenry David Thoreau

Margaret Fuller

Ralph Waldo Emerson01803-18820Unitarian minister0Poet and essayist0Founded the Transcendental Club0Popular lecturer0Banned from Harvard for 40 years

following his Divinity School address0Supporter of abolitionism

Henry David Thoreau01817-18620Schoolteacher, essayist,

poet0Most famous for Walden

and Civil Disobedience0Influenced environmental

movement0Supporter of abolitionism

Margaret Fuller01810-18500Journalist, critic, women’s

rights activist0First editor of The Dial, a

Transcendental journal0First female journalist to

work on a major newspaper—The New York Tribune

Anti-Transcendentalists - Dark Romantics

0Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville 0Unlike Emerson and Transcendentalism, their view

of the world lacked optimism. They saw a dark side to human existence and recorded this aspect of human nature in their works.

0Similarities to transcendentalism: valued intuition over reason, saw signs and symbols in events, spiritual facts lie behind physical appearances.

0Differences: spiritual facts are not necessarily good or harmless.

0Their view developed from the mystical and melancholy aspects of Puritan thought.

0Their works explored the conflict between good and evil, psychological effects of guilt and sin, and madness and derangement in human psyche.

0They saw the blankness and the horror of evil within humanity.

Melville

Where does Edgar Allen Poe fit in?

0Although often considered a Dark Romantic, Poe can be viewed more as a Gothic writer.

0Poe’s works strongly represent Gothic elements (supernatural, gloomy old houses, a mysterious recluse, damsels in distress) more so than valuing intuition over reason or examining the natural world for God and spiritual truths.

Are you able to define Romanticism and Transcendentalism?

Could you identify some notable authors of the time period?

Could you explain how historical change affected the literature of the time period?

What do you know?