Romanticism

Romanticism• Movement associated with imagination and boundlessness

• Contrasted with Rationalism which is commonly associated with reason and restriction.

• Originated In the mid 1800’s in Germany due to a strong influence of literature, music and art

• Characteristics– Sentimentalism

– Primitivism

– Cult of the noble savage

– Political liberalism

– Celebration of natural beauty and the simple life

– Introspection

– Idealization of the common man uncorrupted by society

– Interest in picturesque past

– Interest in remote places

– Individualism

– Morbid melancholy

Social Aspects• Recognizably modern, industrialized nation transformed from an

agricultural one.

• Immigrants in large numbers arriving in the states.

• Progressive decay of urban life.

• America(ns) becoming increasingly wealthy.

• Aristocratic fear displaced by enlarging working class– Middle class exasperated with the hierarchies which brought them little power– Growing emphasis of individual over social convention

• Clearer possibilities of viable democracy– Growing optimism about man’s possibilities and perfectability– Lofty ideals asserted the value of individuals regardless of class, education, etc.

Environmental Elements

• Westward Expansion effected by rationalist spirit and the rapid growth of cities

– Frontier:

• Interest in external nature…beauty for the sake of beauty– Nature as a source of knowledge of the primitive– Nature as a refuge– Nature as a revelation of God to the individual

• Journey away from the town to the world of nature

• Flight from something to something – Escape constraints of civilization (growing distrust of civilization)

Spiritual Concepts• Religion took on more pantheistic tone

– Pantheism:– More natural, purposeful, meaningful spirituality than Deism

• Growth of science brought about a psychic dislocation– Need for individual meaning– Sought truth from intuition and imagination

Romanticism– Imagination

• Quest for beauty• Use of far-away and non-normal (antique,

fanciful)• Imagination thought to discover truths

(through emotion and beauty) that reason could not reach

• Imagination emphasized over formal rules (classicism) and sense of fact (rationalism)

• Lifestyle– Optimism– Preference of youth over educated sophistication– Resurgence of instinct and desire– Rebellion against external law and intellectualism– Individual at the center of life and experience– Objectivity(external) replaced with subjectivity (self)

Technique and Style

• Setting: remote landscapes, natural, exotic and far away places

• Plots are improbable and exaggerated

• Inadequate and/or unlikely characterization

• Society as “harmful to morality”….a world of “lies”

• Organic principle of writing (from rises from content..not formal)

• Experimentation of new forms and some use of obsolete patterns

• Cultivation of individualized, subjective form of writing

• Authorial subjectivity

American Hero• Innocent• Simple Morality/Virtuous• Sense of honor based on higher principles (not society’s)• Heroic• Love of Nature• Distrust of town life• Skillful frontiersman• Superhuman resources• Quest for higher truths in natural world