The Romantic Period, 1820-1860

The Romantic Period, 1820-1860

literature depicting emotional matter in an imaginative form －－ The German poet Friedrich Schlegel liberalism in literature －－ Victor Hugo

The background 1.2.3.

The Romantic movement, which originated in Germany but quickly spread to England, France, and beyond, reached America around the year 1820, some 20 years after William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge had revolutionized English poetry by publishing Lyrical Ballads.

In America as in Europe, fresh new vision startled artistic and intellectual circles. Yet there was an important difference: Romanticism in America coincided with the period of national expansion and the discovery of a distinctive American voice. The solidification of a national identity and the surging idealism and passion of Romanticism nurtured the masterpieces of "the American Renaissance."

1. The expression of “a real new experience”2. The heritage of American Puritanism3. The “newness” of the Americans as a nation4. Both imitative and independent

The Distinct Features of The Romantic Period:

Principal Romantic Themes in A.L.

Intuition is more trustworthy than reasonTo express experiencesIndividualNature Ideal

The major writers belonging to A. R.Washington IrvingJames Fenimore CooperWilliam Cullen BryantEdgar Allan PoeNathaniel HawthorneHerman MelvilleHenry Wadsworth Longfellow

Washington Irving(1783-1859)

the first author produced in the new republic.

Washington Irving(1783-1859)

His contribution to A. L.1.The first writer of A. imaginative literature2.The beginning of short story as a genre3.The Sketch Book----the beginning of American Romanticism

Rip Van Winkle

The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow

The features of Irving’s writings

1.Avoiding moralizing

2.Developing the story in an atmosphere

3.The characters

4.His humor

5.Musical language

Washington Irving(1783-1859) Rip Van Winkle The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Rip Van Winkle

Explanation to Picture 1 I have observed that he was a simple good-

natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor, and an obedient hen-pecked husband.

The children of the village, too, would shout with joy whenever he approached. He assisted at their sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians.

Explanation to picture 1 In a word Rip was ready to attend to

anybody’s business but his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found it impossible.

Explanation to picture 2 For a long while he used to console himself,

when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village; which held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait of His Majesty George the Third. Here they used to sit in the shade through a long lazy summer’s day, talking listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless sleepy stories about nothing.

    On entering the amphitheatre, new objects of wonder presented themselves. On a level spot in the centre was a company of odd-looking personages playing at nine-pins

What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, that though these folks were evidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed. Nothing interrupted the stillness of the scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they were rolled, echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals of thunder

Rip Van Winkle The story has been seen as a symbol of

several aspects of America.

1. Rip

2. The Village The story reveals the conservative attitude

of its author.

The theme of the story The story of man who has difficulties facing his

advancing age The contradictory impulses in America toward

work- the puritan attitude as opposed to the American desire for leisure

The theme of escape from one’s responsibilities and even one’s history

The loss of identity

James Fenimore Cooper(1789-1851)

Leather-stocking Tales

The Last of the Mohicans

“Accident first made me a writer, and the same accident gave a direction to my pen. Ashamed to have fallen into the track of imitation, I endeavored to repair the wrong done to my own views, by producing a work that should be purely American, and of which love of country should be the theme.”

Sea fiction: The PilotHistorical novel: The SpyFrontier tales: Leather-stocking TalesSocial criticism: The Littlepage Manuscript

Major Works

Leatherstocking Tales is a series of novels set in the early frontier period of American history. The Deerslayer depicts Natty Bumppo's experiences as a young man. The Last of the Mohicans in set in the 1757 during the Seven Years' War between the French and the British. The Pathfinder is also set during the war, and tells a story of betrayal and love. The Pioneers is set in 1793 in Otsego County in the recently settled region of New York state. The Prairie is set in 1804. Natty Bumppo meets a wagon train and helps it to evade an Indian raiding party. The travellers endure a prairie fire, a buffalo stampede, and capture by the Sioux. In the end of the tale Bumppo peacefully dies on the prairie, surrounded by his friends.

Leather-stocking Tales

Natty Bumppo His various names: hawk-eye,the

pathfinder, the deerslayer, leatherstocking

Central American myth-the image of an independent,self-reliant, solitary man,the quintessence of individualism in the untouched , unimaginably huge, virgin forest.

D.H.Lawrance’s Comments The Leatherstocking novels …go backwards,

from old age to golden youth. That is true myth of America. She starts old, old wrinkled and writhing in an old skin. And there is a gradual sloughing of the old skin, towards a new youth. It is the myth of America.”

The Last of the Mohicans

MOHICAN Mohican is an Indian tribe,which was persecuted

and killed by the Whites. So only the leader of the tribe Chingachgook and his son Uncas left when the novel begins. They were described by Cooper as “novel Savages”.They were much more respectable than some vicious Whites.And Uncas even sacrificed his life in order to rescue the White girls.

Cooper’s contribution to AL

1. An enduring American mythic hero in his Leather-stocking novels2. Subjects: the Revolution, the frontier, the sea, and the

wilderness3. An important social critic

Irving and Cooper

Similarities: A distinctly romantic strain Be deeply concerned with the meaning of America

Differences: Subject literary achievement

William Cullen Bryant(1794-1878)The first native American poet to gain worldwide fame.

To a Waterfowl

“The most perfect brief poem in the language” -----Matthew Arnold

    Whither, 'midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler’s eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brinkOf weedy lake, or marge of river wide, Or where the rocking billows rise and sink On the chafed ocean side?

There is a Power whose careTeaches thy way along that pathless coast,-- The desert and illimitable air,-- Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fann'd At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere: Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end, Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reed shall bend Soon o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, And shall not soon depart. He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright.

1. The poem is arranged in alternating rhymed quatrains. 2. typographic feature: gliding quatrains3. Theme : A divine power is guiding the bird in its solitary flight and the divine spirit guides and protects everything in nature, including man. Man will not get lost in his lonely travel.

To a Waterfowl

Seek'st thou the plashy brinkOf weedy lake, or marge of river wide, Or where the rocking billows rise and sink On the chafed ocean side?

There is a Power whose careTeaches thy way along that pathless coast,-- The desert and illimitable air,-- Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fann'd At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere: Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end, Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reed shall bend Soon o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, And shall not soon depart. He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright.

1. The poem is arranged in alternating rhymed quatrains. 2. typographic feature: gliding quatrains3. Theme : A divine power is guiding the bird in its solitary flight and the divine spirit guides and protects everything in nature, including man. Man will not get lost in his lonely travel.

To a Waterfowl