Overview: American Romanticism (1770-1860) and Transcendentalism (1820-1860)

History of the Romantic Movement

Other notes:

The Romantic period also overlaps historically with Victorian Literature Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller—designated as Transcendentalists Poe, Dickinson, Melville, Hawthorne—designated as Romanticists (often critiqued the Emersonian ideal)

Romanticism:

>Revolt against the “Age of Reason”

>Appreciation of the beauty of nature

>Exaltation of emotion over reason

>Examination of identity, a turning to self & individualism over conformity

>Preoccupation with the hero, the solitary genius (often the common man)

>Emphasis on imagination as gateway to the transcendent

>Early writers employing romance mode: James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving

 

Comparison between Age of Enlightenment/Reason and Romantic Period

Period of Enlightenment and Revolutionary War—Age of Reason (1700-1770); **Benjamin Franklin’s The Autobiography

The American Romantic Period (1770-1860)

*American Romanticists: James F. Cooper, Melville, Poe, Dickinson, Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Hawthorne

*Versions of American Romanticism—Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Thoreau—identified themselves as part of a movement known as Transcendentalism (Dickinson, Hawthorne, and Whitman—though not transcendentalists per se—were profoundly affected by the movement)

Non-Romantic/Classical Characteristics Romantic Characteristics

Reason                                         Emotion

Public Self                                    Individualistic/PrivateSelf

Conservative                                Revolutionary

Loves Public, Urban Life              Loves Solitude/Nature

External Reality                            Fantasy/Introspection

Objectivity                                   Subjectivity

Repressed Desire                         Satisfaction of Desire

Mechanical                                  Organic

Form & Control                          Creativity & Spontaneity

Materialist/Empirical                     Idealist Philosophy

 

Transcendentalism:

A movement of writers and philosophers that believed in the essential unity of all creation (versus the Calvinistic view that perceived the material world as innately depraved and fallen), the innate goodness of humanity, and the supremacy of insight over logic for the realization of the deepest truths.

Basic Tenets of Transcendentalism:

•The spark of divinity lies within man

•Everything is a microcosm of existence

•The individual soul is identical to the OverSoul

•By meditation, communing with nature, through work and art, man can attain a true sense of beauty and goodness and truth