American Romanticism

I. Historical Background:

 American pioneers had pushed the frontier line of settlement beyond the Mississippi to the west,
which has risen as a sectional power to challenge the political dominance of the East and the
South.
 Before 1860, the United States had begun to change into an industrial and urban society.
 Literary characteristics: Romanticism, Transcendentalism
 The rise of Nationalism

II. American Romanticism

 The Romantic Period in the history of American literature stretches from the end of the 18th
century to the outbreak of the Civil War, which started with the publication of Washington Irving's
The Sketch Book and ended with Whitman's Leaves of Grass.
 In this period, a new emphasis was placed upon the imaginative and emotional qualities of
literature, a liking for the picturesque, the exotic, the sensuous, the sensational, the supernatural
and remote past was fostered, and an increasing attention to the psychic states of their characters
was paid, and above all, the individual and the common man was exalted.
 Dr. F. H. Hedge, an American transcendentalist, thought the essence of romanticism was
aspiration, having its origin in wonder and mystery.
 Among the aspects of the "romantic" movement in England may be listed as a) sensibility; b)
primitivism; c) love of nature; d) sympathetic interest in the past, especially the medieval; e)
mysticism; and f) individualism.

III. Two Earlier Writers

1.Washington Irving

2.James Fenimore Cooper

IV. American Transcendentalism

The most clearly defined literary thought in this period is New England Transcendentalism.　

1. The definition of Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism has been defined philosophically as "the recognition in man of the capacity of
knowing truth intuitively, or of attaining knowledge transcending the reach of the senses."

The American transcendentalist movement, itself part of the broader 19th Century European Romantic
movement, was inspired by the publication of Emerson's essay, "Nature" in 1836 and "Self-Reliance" in
1841. Like other Romantics, American transcendentalists rejected the prevailing "philosophy of
empiricism" which held that all knowledge comes from experience, from information acquired by the
fives senses and the intellectual capacity to reason.
While transcendentalists agreed that knowledge of the physical environment (or "matter") was acquired
this way, they asserted that each and every individual could also learn about a higher reality, the "world of
the spirit," through an inborn power. Known as common sense or "intuition," this trans-scendental power
functioned above and beyond the five senses. The faculty of "intuition" provided every person with their
own ability to know what is absolutely true.

Transcendentalists saw nature not only as beautiful, but as a reflection of divinity--literally, the face of
God. They believed that the "macrocosm" (the universe) and the "microcosm" (the individual) were
directly connected. Both also contained the divine, as well as all other objects, animate and inanimate.
They believed that the purpose of human life was union with the so-called "over-soul" which embraced--
and was reflected in-- everything in the world. People could develop their potential by immersing
themselves in the beauty of the natural world. Beauty and truth could be experienced only through
intuition, though careful observation of nature might help to uncover its laws and provide a glimpse into
the divine.

Though transcendentalists were preoccupied with the "world of spirit," they tended to be anti-religious,
that is, they felt that organized churches obstructed the individual's relationship to God. They felt that the
authority of organized religion needed to be rejected and that people needed to find God within
themselves, through the power of "intuition." In pursuit of this divine knowledge, seekers needed to be
prepared to resist accepted social codes and customs. Truth could be found in nature and within one's self.
Self-reliance and individuality--not obedience to outside authority--were the pathways to self-
understanding and to the divine. Only by being true to one's spiritual quest, by being prepared to really
"see" nature around and within one's self and to "listen" to one's intuitive power, could one find the truth--
and God.

Principal ideas of Transcendentalism are based on doctrines of ancient and modern European
philosophers, particularly Kant. It was started by a group of members of the Transcendental Club in New
England in the 1830s, whose leaders were Emerson, who was greatly influenced by Carlyle, Coleridge
and others, and his young friend Thoreau.

As the movement developed, it sponsored two important activities: the publication of The Dial during
1840 - 1844 and Brook farm. Their main notions include: a) living close to nature; b) the dignity of
manual labor; c) the divinity in man in his own right; d) one great brotherhood among all the people; e)
self - trust and self - reliance; and f) the need to resist the "vulgar prosperity of the barbarian."

2. Two Representatives

A. Ralph Waldo Emerson( 1803-1882): leading New England Transcendentalist

Nature: In 1836 a book entitled “Nature” by Ralph Waldo Emerson came out and made a tremendous
impact on the intellectual life of America. It uttered, ”The Universe is composed of Nature and the Soul,”
and “Spirit is present everywhere.” A whole new way of thinking began to exert its influence on the
consciousness of man. Nature’s voice pushed American Romanticism into a new phase, the phase of New
England Transcendentalism, the summit of American Romanticism.

 Influences of Unitarianism on Emerson

 Emerson's influence on later writers

B. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862): Main works:

Walden, or a Life in the Woods

The Maine Woods

 Cape Cod

About Thoreau

He knew the country like a fox or a bird and passed through it as freely by paths of his own. . . . Under his
arm he carried an old music-book to press plants; in his pocket his diary and pencil, a spy-glass for birds,
microscope, jack-knife and twine. He wore straw hat, stout shoes, strong gray trousers, to brave shrub-
oaks and smilax, and to climb a tree for a hawk's or squirrel's nest. He waded into the pool for the water-
plants, and his strong legs were no insignificant part of his armor. . . . His power of observation seemed to
indicate additional senses. He saw as with microscope, heard as with ear-trumpet, and his memory was a
photographic register of all he saw and heard. . . . Every fact lay in glory in his mind, a type of the order
and beauty of the whole. His intimacy with animals suggested . . . that `either he had told the bees things,
or the bees had told him.' Snakes coiled round his leg, the fishes swam into his hand, and he took them
out of the water; he pulled the woodchuck out of its hole by the tail, and took the foxes under his
protection from the hunters.

----------From the Biographical Sketch by R.W. Emerson

Walden by Thoreau

V. Two Great Novelists

A. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

 family background: great-parent, Salem witch craft

 thematic concerns: darkness and evil.
 literary techniques: symbolism
 literary works:

1. "Young Goodman Brown"

2. The Scarlet Letter (1850)
3. The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
4. Twice-Told Tales (1837, 1851)
5. The Blithedale Romance (1852)
6. Mosses from an Old Manse (1846, 1854)
7. The Marble Faun (1860)

B. Herman Melville(1819-1891):

VI. Two Poet Walt Whitman Emily Dickinson

VII. Edgar Allan Poe(1809-1849)

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