RomanticismA Movement Across

the Arts

DefinitionRomanticism refers to a movement in

art, literature, and music during the 19th century.

Romanticism is characterized by the 5 “I”sImaginationIntuitionIdealismInspirationIndividuality

ImaginationImagination was emphasized over

“reason.”This was a backlash against the

rationalism characterized by the Neoclassical period or “Age of Reason.”

Imagination was considered necessary for creating all art.

British writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge called it “intellectual intuition.”

IntuitionRomantics placed value on

“intuition,” or feeling and instincts, over reason.

Emotions were important in Romantic art.

British Romantic William Wordsworth described poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”

IdealismIdealism is the concept that we can

make the world a better place.Idealism refers to any theory that

emphasizes the spirit, the mind, or language over matter – thought has a crucial role in making the world the way it is.

Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher, held that the mind forces the world we perceive to take the shape of space-and-time.

InspirationThe Romantic artist, musician, or

writer, is an “inspired creator” rather than a “technical master.”

What this means is “going with the moment” or being spontaneous, rather than “getting it precise.”

IndividualityRomantics celebrated the individual.During this time period, Women’s

Rights and Abolitionism were taking root as major movements.

Walt Whitman, a later Romantic writer, would write a poem entitled “Song of Myself”: it begins, “I celebrate myself…”

Characteristics of Romanticism• After the “Age of Reason” came to an After the “Age of Reason” came to an

end, the people of America were tired end, the people of America were tired of reality; they wanted to see life as of reality; they wanted to see life as more than it was. This was the Era of more than it was. This was the Era of Romantics. The main medium that Romantics. The main medium that presented itself at that time were short presented itself at that time were short stories, poems, and novels. During stories, poems, and novels. During this era, as appose to the “Age of this era, as appose to the “Age of Reason” the imagination dominated; Reason” the imagination dominated; intuition ruled over fact. intuition ruled over fact.

• Gothic literature was also introduced Gothic literature was also introduced at this time, which is a sub-genre of at this time, which is a sub-genre of Romanticism, this genre included Romanticism, this genre included stories about characters that had both stories about characters that had both good and evil traits. Gothic literature good and evil traits. Gothic literature also incorporated to use of also incorporated to use of supernatural elements.supernatural elements.

Authors of the Romanticism

Washington Irving

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Edgar Allen Poe

Herman Melville

Characteristics of Romanticism

• Genre/Style: Character Sketches, Slave Narratives, Poetry, and short stories.

• Characteristics: High regard for inner feelings, imagination over reason, optimism, hopes for a better tomorrow, love for nature.

Characteristics of Romanticism

• Historical Context: Publishing expands and industrial revolution brings new ideas.

• Expansion of US through Louisiana Purchase, Monroe Doctrine Keeps Europeans out of North and South America, Cherokee Indians forced to march the “Trail of Tears”.

Washington Irving (1789-1851)• Irving was the first “famous”

American author; he’s also known as the “Father of American Literature.” He wrote travel books, short stories, and satires. Some of his works include; Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, and Devil and Tom Walker.

Romanticism

Romanticism (1800-1860)Edgar Allan Poe

– Edgar Allan Poe was a southerner with a darkly metaphysical vision mixed with elements of realism, parody, and burlesque (caricature or parody).

– He refined the short story genre and created detective fiction.

– Many of his stories foreshadow the genres of science fiction, horror, and fantasy so popular today.

Edgar Allen PoePoe had an unpleasant childhood that made him despise the world, and his works reflected his work. He is credited for creating the modern short story, and the detective story. He also challenged two long-standing theories, one, a poem had to be long, and two, a poem had to teach you something. Some of his works include, "The Raven", "Bells", “The Fall of the House of Usher", and "Dream."

Romanticism

Edgar Allen Poe

• Poe believed that strangeness was an essential ingredient of beauty

• His stories and poems are populated with doomed, introspective aristocrats (Poe, like many other southerners, cherished an aristocratic ideal).

• These gloomy characters never seem to work or socialize; instead they bury themselves in dark, moldering castles symbolically decorated with bizarre rugs and draperies that hide the real world of sun, windows, walls, and floors.

Edgar Allen Poe

• Hidden rooms reveal ancient libraries, strange art works, and eclectic oriental objects. The aristocrats play musical instruments or read ancient books while they brood on tragedies, often the deaths of loved ones. Themes of death-in-life, especially being buried alive or returning like a vampire from the grave, appear in many of his works, including "The Premature Burial," "Ligeia," "The Cask of Amontillado," and "The Fall of the House of Usher."

• Gothic settings are not merely decorative. They reflect the over civilized yet deathly interior of his characters disturbed psyches. They are symbolic expressions of the unconscious, and thus are central to his art.

Nathaniel Hawthorne•Born on the 4th of July in Salem, MA

•Descendent of a prominent Puritan family who traveled here from Europe to settle the new colony with John Winthrop

•His great-grandfather was Judge Hathorne of the Salem witch trials.

•He felt so guilty about his ancestors’ persecution of others that this shaped both his character and his writing.

•He changed the family name from “Hathorne” to “Hawthorne” in order to remove himself from the shame he felt about his Puritan ancestors

•He believed that evil was the dominant force in the world, and his fiction expresses a gloomy vision of human affairs.

•He chooses to examine the DARK side of human nature (Dark Rom)

The Scarlet Letter: The Custom House

1850•Hawthorne worked at the Custom House for two years.

•The Custom House is a preface to the novel that gives us author’s information, explains the history behind the novel, and tells about how Hawthorne got the idea for this romance novel

•Puritans founded a religious colony, but the religious ideals were devoured by financial greed and commercialism of the 1700s.

•Hawthorne explains that, although he has a deep connection with both his ancestors and Salem, he disapproves of the stern rigidity of their Puritan ways.

•He gives his definition of the romance novel and tells of the importance that light plays.

•In certain light, objects “seem to lose their actual substance, and become things of intellect.”

•There really is no historical evidence that the finding of this letter is true.

•This was a technique common in his day that gave stories some validity to the readers.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne, a fifth-generation American of English descent, was born in Salem, Massachusetts, a wealthy seaport north of Boston that specialized in East India trade. One of his ancestors had been a judge in an earlier century, during trials in Salem of women accused of being witches. Hawthorne used the idea of a curse on the family of an evil judge in his novel The House of the Seven Gables.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Many of Hawthorne's stories are set in Puritan New England

• The Scarlet Letter (1850), has become the classic portrayal of Puritan America. It tells of the passionate, forbidden love affair linking a sensitive, religious young man and the sensuous, beautiful townsperson, Hester Prynne.

• Set in Boston around 1650, the novel highlights the Calvinistic obsession with morality, sexual repression, guilt and confession, and spiritual salvation.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

• For its time, The Scarlet Letter was a daring and even subversive book. Hawthorne's gentle style, remote historical setting, and ambiguity softened his grim themes and contented the general public, but sophisticated writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Herman Melville recognized the book's "hellish" power. It treated issues that were usually suppressed in 19th-century America, such as the impact of the new, liberating democratic experience on individual behavior, especially on sexual and religious freedom.

• The book is superbly organized and beautifully written. Appropriately, it uses allegory, a technique the early Puritan colonists themselves practiced.

Henry Wadsworth LongfellowEnjoyed a long career as a poet

His poetry was optimistic and sentimental

He became known as one of the “Fireside Poets”

We will be reading “A Psalm of Life” and “The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls”

Romanticism

William Cullen Bryant1794 -- 1878

• Journalist and political activist, by 1829 he had become part owner and editor-in-chief of the Evening Post

• Fought to ensure industrialization did not obscure American democratic values

• He was a voice for justice – he defended women’s rights, vehemently opposed slavery, and was a human rights activist

• He practiced law for ten years to support himself while he wrote poetry in his spare time

• He wrote his most famous poem “Thanatopsis” at the age of nineteen. He began writing poetry when he was only nine.

Writers of the Romantic Period (and their works)

• William Cullen Bryant – “Thanatopsis”

• Edgar Allen Poe – “Fall of the House of Usher”

• Nathanial Hawthorne – “The Minister’s Black Veil”

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – “A Psalm of Life”

• James Russell Lowell – “The First Snowfall”

• John Greenleaf Whittier – “Snowbound”

OriginsRomanticism began to take root as a

movement following the French Revolution.

The publication of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1792 is considered the beginning of literary Romanticism.

The ArtsRomanticism was a movement across all

the arts: visual art, music, and literature.All of the arts embraced themes

prevalent in the Middle Ages: chivalry, courtly love. Literature and art from this time depicted these themes. Music (ballets and operas) illustrated these themes.

Shakespeare came back into vogue.

Visual ArtsNeoclassical art

was rigid, severe, and unemotional; it hearkened back to ancient Greece and Rome

Romantic art was emotional, deeply-felt, individualistic, and exotic. It has been described as a reaction to Neoclassicism, or “anti-Classicism.”

Visual Arts: Examples

Neoclassical Art

Romantic Art

Music“Classical”

musicians included composers like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Josef Haydn.

Romantic musicians included composers like Frederic Chopin, Franz Lizst, Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky

Music: Components1730-1820.Classical music

emphasized internal order and balance.

1800-1910.Romantic music

emphasized expression of feelings.

LiteratureIn America, Romanticism most

strongly impacted literature.Writers explored supernatural and

gothic themes. Writers wrote about nature –

Transcendentalists believed God was in nature, unlike “Age of Reason” writers like Franklin and Jefferson, who saw God as a “divine watchmaker,” who created the universe and left it to run itself.