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This lecture discusses the rise and development of Romanticism in American literature from the late 18th century to the mid-19th century. It covers the key characteristics of Romanticism, including an emphasis on emotion, individualism, and nature. Early American Romantic writers like William Cullen Bryant and James Fenimore Cooper introduced nature and frontier themes. The lecture also examines Transcendentalism and major figures like Emerson and Thoreau, as well as the works of later High Romantic writers including Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson.
This lecture discusses the rise and development of Romanticism in American literature from the late 18th century to the mid-19th century. It covers the key characteristics of Romanticism, including an emphasis on emotion, individualism, and nature. Early American Romantic writers like William Cullen Bryant and James Fenimore Cooper introduced nature and frontier themes. The lecture also examines Transcendentalism and major figures like Emerson and Thoreau, as well as the works of later High Romantic writers including Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson.
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This lecture discusses the rise and development of Romanticism in American literature from the late 18th century to the mid-19th century. It covers the key characteristics of Romanticism, including an emphasis on emotion, individualism, and nature. Early American Romantic writers like William Cullen Bryant and James Fenimore Cooper introduced nature and frontier themes. The lecture also examines Transcendentalism and major figures like Emerson and Thoreau, as well as the works of later High Romantic writers including Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson.
Copyright:
Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Verfügbare Formate
Als PPT, PDF, TXT herunterladen oder online auf Scribd lesen
The Focus of Study : Romanticism The Rise of American Romanticism Early Romantics Its Distinct Features Major Literary Achievements Transcendentalism High Romantics Early Romantics: the Rise of a National Literature 1. What’s your comprehension of the term “Romanticism”? 2. What are the characteristics of “Romanticism”? 3. The background of the rise of American “Romanticism” and its features ? Romanticism This literary trend occurred and developed in Europe and America at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Romantics stressed individual creative function of imagination. It placed individual at the very center of all life and all experience and at the center of art. The Characteristics of Romanticism 1. Romanticism was a rebellion against the objectivity of rationalism. 2. For romantics, the feelings, intuitions and emotions were more important than reason and common sense. 3. Romantics did not think of the world as a ticking watch made by God. They stressed the close relationship between man and nature. 4. They emphasized individualism, placing the individual against the group, against authority. They saw the individual at the very center of life and art. They emphasized personal freedom and freedom from formalism, tradition, and conformity. 5. They affirmed the inner life of the self, and wanted each person to be free to develop and express his own inner thoughts. 6. They cherished strong interest in the past, especially the medieval. 7. They were attracted by the wild, the irregular, the indefinite, the remote, the mysterious, and the strange. 8. They were interested in variety. They aspired the sublime and the wonderful, and tried to find the absolute, the ideal by transcending the actual. The Rise of American Romanticism Background: American romanticism stretched from the end of the 18th century to the Civil War. The buoyant mood of the nation called for a new literary expression, and romanticism answered the call. European influences, of course, also played an important role in forming and promoting the romantic movement in America. The ever-increasing numbers of magazines provided the playground for romantics. Distinct features American romantics tended to moralize, to edify rather than to entertain. American romanticism presented an entirely new experience alien to European culture. The exotic landscape, the frontier life, the westward expansion, the myth of a New Garden of Eden in America, and the Puritan heritage, etc. Major Literary Achievements of Early Romantics New England poets William Cullen Bryant(1794-1878) -- America' s earliest naturalist poets called "the American Wordsworth." American people appreciate him because he made American subjects worthy of celebration. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) “Fireside poet” Major Novelists James Fenimore Cooper(1789- 1851) His literary career--an answer to the challenge of his wife. In his fiction he dealt with the themes of wilderness versus civilization, freedom versus law, order versus change, aristocrat versus democrat, and natural rights versus legal rights. The Leatherstocking Tales are five novels set in the early frontier period of American history about the American wilderness: The Pioneers (1823), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827) The Pathfinder (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841). They illustrate the importance of the frontier and the wilderness for the first time in the history of American literature. The central figure Natty Bumppo is a symbol of the American desire for unity with nature. He seems to be related to the deepest meaning of the American national experience of adventure into the wilderness of the American West. Washington Irving (1783- 1859)-- "the father of American literature," as the first internationally recognized American writer and he made great contributuion to the form of short story in American literature. He was extremely popular in Europe. He is indifferent to the immediate reality and wrote for pleasure and to produce pleasure as he regards literature as a self-contained amusement. He gave an impetus both to the American humor and to the urbane wit. In his Sketch Book appeared the first modern American short stories and the first great American juvenile literature. His style reflected the shift in American literature from the rationalism of the 18th century to the sentimentalism 19th century. His essays are models of perfect English. Transcendentalism Practitioners: Ralph Waldo Emerson Henry David Thoreau Walt Whitman Emily Dickinson High Romantics American romanticism reached its peak with the appearance of the major authors of the 19th century such as Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson in poetry, and Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville in fiction. They took their departure from the earlier complacent romantic impulse and created new literary personalities. Except Whitman, other writers presented dark and brooding pictures of the country. Their literary fame has been on the rise since the 20th century and their works have been regarded as classics of American literature. They laid the foundation for a native American literary tradition of conscious art . Study Questions What is the background of Romanticism? What are the main features of Romanticism? What is the thread of the Leatherstocking Tales ? What is Washington Irving’s contribution to American literature? How do you understand high Modernism? Reference George McMichael et al., ed. Anthology of American Literature. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1980. James D. Hart, The Oxford Companion to American literature 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Perkins, et al. ed., The American Tradition in Literature. New York: Random House, 1985. Thank You Very Much for Attending This Lecture