The Romantic Period (1828-1865)

1828 – Andrew Jackson is elected President. 1865 – The Civil War ends.

The limits of American unity were tested during this period, due to the rapid rate of westward expansion and, more importantly, the issue of slavery. During this turbulent time, the first truly American literature was produced, with significant works appearing in all areas except drama, thereby giving rise to the name American Renaissance.

The Fireside Poets

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Oliver Wendell Holmes

John Greenleaf Whittier James Russell Lowell

• The Fireside Poets gained their name from the popularity of their works, which were widely read as fireside entertainment and in the schoolroom, where generations of children memorized them.

• All four poets—all New England born and bred—chose uniquely American settings and subjects.

• Their themes, meter, and imagery, however, borrowed heavily from the English tradition.

The Age of Transcendentalism

• The Romantic Period is often called the Age of Transcendentalism.

• Transcendentalism is most closely associated with the poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson.

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Romantics emphasize emotion over intellect.

the individual over society. inspiration, imagination, and

intuition over logic, discipline, and order.

the wild and natural over the tamed. American romantic novelists and poets were heavily influenced by English romanticism and yet produced the first truly

distinctive American works.

Tenets Important Figures Other notes

Each individual is innately divine. Ralph Waldo Emerson pp. 384-385

Each individual has the ability to discover higher truths.

Henry David Thoreau The Dial

Humans have near god-like powers in their creative

imaginations. Margaret Fuller New England

The natural goodness of the individual should be glorified.

Amos Bronson Alcott

Self-reliance should be praised.

• Gothicism first developed in England during the late eighteenth century.

• It first appeared in American literature in the works of Early National writer Charles Brockden Brown.

• Gothic literature emphasizes horror, suspense, doom, mystery, passion, and the grotesque and supernatural.

Edgar Allan Poe (obsession, madness, horror)

Nathaniel Hawthorne (evil, guilt, moral despair)

Herman Melville (philosophical quests, truths about human nature and the universe)

• Edgar Allan Poe pioneered detective fiction through works like “Murders in the Rue Morgue.”

• Edgar Allan Poe is credited with being America’s first literary critic. The “American Renaissance”: American Literature reaches its first significant maturity…

• It is thought that the “American Renaissance” began with the works of Emerson in the 1830s and reached its height in the 1850s with Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851), Emerson’s Representative Men (1850), Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) and Pierre (1852), Thoreau’s Walden

(1854), and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855).

• Emily Dickinson – Emily Dickinson packet

• Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) is not only credited as America’s first sociological

novel, but it is also said to have instigated the Civil War by its depiction of slavery.

• Louisa May Alcott, who sold her first story in 1852 and published her first book in 1854, became world-

famous for her novel Little Women (1868). • Slave narratives and autobiographies also increased in number and became increasingly popular in the North,

even as they were banned in the South. Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,

an American Slave (1845) and Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) are two of the

most well-known examples of the slave narrative genre. “The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 272; 275

“Old Ironsides” Oliver Wendell Holmes 272; 281

from “Nature” Ralph Waldo Emerson 388; 390

from “Self-Reliance” Ralph Waldo Emerson 393

from Walden Henry David Thoreau 402; 404; 407

from “Civil Disobedience” Henry David Thoreau 416

“The Raven” Edgar Allan Poe 310; 330

“The Cask of Amontillado” Edgar Allan Poe packet

“America” Walt Whitman handout; notes

from “Song of Myself” Walt Whitman 442

“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” Walt Whitman 446

“I Hear America Singing” Walt Whitman 448

“Success is counted sweetest” Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson packet

“Faith is a fine invention” Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson packet

“I know that He exists” Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson packet

“I never saw a Moor—” Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson packet

“Apparently with no surprise” Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson packet

The Gothic

Other Important Authors and Developments during the Romantic Period

Quiz – The Romantic Period/Bryant, Longfellow, & Holmes Test – Transcendentalism & Gothicism Test – Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson

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