Notes 2 Aerican Romanticism.docVIP

American Romanticism Transcendentalism Nathaniel Hawthorne Review Q 1: Who is the writer of Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America? A: Anne Bradstreet, 1st American female poet. Q: What are Benjamin Franklin’s masterpieces? A: The Autobiography, Poor Richard’s Almanac. American Romanticism Time: the end of 18th century—the outbreak of the Civil War; Factors: Political economic independence of America: The victory of American Revolution; The extension of new American territory; Burgeoning of industrialism; Great immigration; Westward expansion. Literary Background: Foreign Influences:Derivative Poetics and poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth( Emerson and Transcendentalism; Sir Walter Scott’s border tales and Waverley romances( American historical romances; romantic description of landscape; Gothic tradition and the cult of solitude and of gloom( Gothic romances Robert Burns and Byron ( the American imagination for lyrics of love and passion and despair. Distinct Features:New and Alien 1.?Fund of material: The American national experience of “pioneering” into the west; the picturesque civilization of a primitive race. Eg. Natty Bumppo in James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Hiawatha 2. Impact of American Puritanism: American Romantic authors tended more to moralize than to entertain; sex and love as taboos; 3. Influence of American Individualism: Loner on the frontier; 4. An increasing attention to the psychic states of their character. 5. A new emphasis upon the imaginative and emotional qualities of literature 6. An increasing emphasis on the free expression of emotions The Beginning of American Romanticism (1810-1840) Representatives: Washington Irving, New England Poets (William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, etc.), James Fenimore Cooper. Imitative and independent: model their works upon English and European masters and combine the foreign and native factors at work. The