American Romanticism浪漫主义在美国American Romanticism浪漫主义在美国.docVIP

I. Historical Background: American pioneers had pushed the frontier line of settlement beyond the Mississippi to the west, which has risen as a sectional power to challenge the political dominance of the East and the South. Before 1860, the United States had begun to change into an industrial and urban society. Literary characteristics: Romanticism, Transcendentalism The rise of Nationalism II. American Romanticism The Romantic Period in the history of American literature stretches from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War, which started with the publication of Washington Irvings The Sketch Book and ended with Whitmans Leaves of Grass. In this period, a new emphasis was placed upon the imaginative and emotional qualities of literature, a liking for the picturesque, the exotic, the sensuous, the sensational, the supernatural and remote past was fostered, and an increasing attention to the psychic states of their characters was paid, and above all, the individual and the common man was exalted. Dr. F. H. Hedge, an American transcendentalist, thought the essence of romanticism was aspiration, having its origin in wonder and mystery. Among the aspects of the romantic movement in England may be listed as a) sensibility; b) primitivism; c) love of nature; d) sympathetic interest in the past, especially the medieval; e) mysticism; and f) individualism. III. Two Earlier Writers 1.Washington Irving 2.James Fenimore Cooper IV. American Transcendentalism The most clearly defined literary thought in this period is New England Transcendentalism.　 1. The definition of Transcendentalism Transcendentalism has been defined philosophically as the recognition in man of the capacity of knowing truth intuitively, or of attaining knowledge transcending the reach of the senses. The American transcendentalist movement, itself part of the broader 19th Century European Romantic movement, was inspired by the publication of Emersons essay, Nature in 1836 and S