[OUR COURSE] [FJU ENGLISH] [COURSE NOTES] [DISCUSSION]

       The "Romantic Period" refers to literary and cultural movements in England, Europe, and America roughly from 1770 to 1860.  Romantic writers (and artists) saw themselves as revolting against the "Age of Reason" and its values.  The movement begins in Germany with the publication of Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther, and then goes to England, until about 1830.  Romanticism does not appear in the U.S. until Irving and Emerson are writing; so the Romantic Period in the U.S. (1830-1860) overlaps with the period in which U.S. culture may also be said to be "Victorian" (1830-1880).  Thus, a writer such as Hawthorne is both Romantic and Victorian (he is simultaneously fascinated by and worried about Hester's rebelliousness in The Scarlet Letter), while oOther works of the period--such as Harriet Beecher Stowe's best-seller Uncle Tom's Cabin--are not "Romantic," but much closer to the realistic fiction of Victorian Britain's George Eliot.

    The primary feature of American Romanticism--the obsession with and celebration of individualism--takes on particular social relevance because U.S. culture has always prized individualism and egalitarianism.  What is more, the characteristics of this era is that  the characteristics portrayed by the authors are often in the following:

• Characters and setting set apart from society; characters were not of our own conscious kind
• Static characters--no development shown
• Characterization--work proves the characters are what the narrator has stated or shown
• Universe is mysterious; irrational; incomprehensible
• Gaps in causality
• Formal language
• Good receive justice; nature can also punish or reward
• Silences of the text--universals rather than learned truths
• Plot arranged around crisis moments; plot is important
• Plot demonstrates
  • romantic love
  • honor and integrity
  • idealism of self
• Supernatural foreshadowing (dreams, visions)
• Description provides a "feeling" of the scene

     Even so, American Romantics tend to venerate Nature as a sanctum of non-artificiality, where the Self can fulfill its potential.   Socially, American Romantics are usually radically egalitarian and politically progressive (Poe is the exception) and, in the case of Melville and Whitman, receptive to non-heterosexual relations.  In terms of literary technique, American Romantics will use symbols, myths, or fantastic elements (e.g., Walden Pond, the White Whale, the House of Usher) as the focus and expression of the protagonist's mental processes or to convey deeper psychological or archetypal themes.  Their style is often very original and not rule/convention oriented (only Dickinson writes like Dickinson; only Whitman, like Whitman).

Information taken from: Harvey, Bruce.  American Literature Webpage. http://www.westga.edu/~mmcfar/AMERICAN%20ROMANTICISM%20overview.htm