American Literary History: Romanticism, Realism and

Naturalism
Romanticism |Realism | Naturalism | Definitions | Works
Cited

Romanticism
(European) Romanticism 1820-1865: A European artistic and intellectual movement
of the early 19th century, characterized by an emphasis on individual freedom from
social conventions or political restraints, on human imagination, and on nature in a
typically idealized form. Romantic literature rebelled against the formalism of 18th
century reason. Many Romantic writers had an interest in the culture of the Middle
Ages, an age noted for its faith, which stood in contrast to the age of the
Enlightenment and pure logic.
Romanticism differs significantly from Classicism, the period Romanticism rejected.
Romanticism is more concerned with emotion than rationality. It values the individual
over society, nature over city. It questions or attacks rules, conventions and social
protocol. It sees humanity living IN nature as morally superior to civilized humanity:
glorification of the "noble savage." It conceives of children, essentially innocent by
nature, as being corrupted by their surroundings. Many works emphasize the
emotional aspects excessively, moving the piece toward Dark Romanticism and the
Gothic. Romantic literature places an emphasis on the individual and on the
expression of personal emotions. Literary Romanticism should not be confused with
romance literature.
Romanticism was evident not only in literature, but also in art, music and architecture.
The American Period of Romanticism (1830-1865) was "an age of great westward
expansion, of the increasing gravity of the slavery questions, of an intensification of
the spirit of embattled sectionalism in the South, and of a powerful impulse to reform
in the North" (Harman 454). It has many of the same characteristics as European
Romanticism but had several uniquely American aspects.
Conditions that influenced American Romanticism:
Frontier promised opportunity for expansion, growth, freedom; Europe lacked this
element.
Spirit of optimism invoked by the promise of an uncharted frontier.
Immigration brought new cultures and perspectives
Growth of industry in the north that further polarized the north and the agrarian south.
Search for new spiritual roots.
Literary Themes:
Highly imaginative and subjective

Emotional intensity
Escapism
Common man as hero
Nature as refuge, source of knowledge and/or spirituality

Characteristics:

Characters and setting set apart from society; characters were not of our own
conscious kind
Static characters--no development shown
Characterization--work proves the characters are what the narrator has stated or
shown
Universe is mysterious; irrational; incomprehensible
Gaps in causality
Formal language
Good receive justice; nature can also punish or reward
Silences of the text--universals rather than learned truths
Plot arranged around crisis moments; plot is important
Plot demonstrates
o romantic love
o honor and integrity
o idealism of self
Supernatural foreshadowing (dreams, visions)
Description provides a "feeling" of the scene

Sub Genre:

Slave narrative: protest; struggle for authors self-realization/identity

Domestic (sentimental): social visits; women secondary in their circumstances to
men.
Female gothic: devilish childhood; family doom; mysterious foundling; tyrannical
father.
Women's fiction: anti-sentimental
o heroine begins poor and helpless
o heroine succeeds on her own character
o husbands less important than father
Bildungsroman: initiation
European
American Romanticists:
novel; growth from child to
Romanticists:
adult.
William Blake
James Fenimore Cooper Lord Byron (George
Gordan)
Emily Dickinson
Samuel Coleridge
Frederick Douglass
John Keats
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ann Radcliffe
Margaret Fuller
Mary Wollstonecraft
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Shelley
Washington Irving
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow
Herman Melville
Edgar Allen Poe
Henry David Thoreau
Walt Whitman

Resources on Romanticism:

American Romanticism
Early Nineteenth Century: Romanticism - A Brief Introduction
The Literary Link: Romanticism and the Nineteenth Century
Romanticism

Created by: Carol Scheidenhelm, Ph.D.

Director, Learning Technologies and Assessment
Loyola University Chicago
Last updated: August 14, 2007