today we're looking at the american literature movement of american romanticism that's around the early 1800s to approximately 1865. we will walk with our own feet we will work with our own hands we will speak with our own minds one of our major figures that we'll be learning about is ralph waldo emerson but before we look at romanticism is we have to think about what it is not now despite the name of the literary period romanticism does not deal with sappy love stories it's not the kind of literature that we're going to study so what is romanticism romanticism is the name for the literary period that followed the age of reason or the revolutionary period in america now due to the fact that the country was now established writers moved their focus away from political matters and revolutionary governmental ideas and began to focus on other aspects of life the possibilities that we have as an american the emotions and feelings in even downright fiction and imagination none of these were in play in the age of reason or the revolutionary war people when it comes to age of reason think of the persuasive essays think of the great speeches think of the declaration of independence and the constitution we're going to change that completely to the opposite so what are the characteristics of american romanticism well you're now going to value feeling and your intuition over the sense of logic and reason you're going to place faith in your inner experiences and your power of the imagination you're going to shun the artificiality of civilization and you're going to seek unspoiled nature now that we're actually starting to create large cities people want to go off into the nature it prefers youthful innocence to educated sophistication in our previous era of the age of reasoning most people who were writing were highly educated um and they were working very hard in order to become governmental leaders now when we look at our literature we want to respect the sense of innocence and naivete and usually when we look at who's writing or speaking it's a very youthful figure we also will champion the individual freedom and the worth of the individual we come along safe to transcendentalism and look at the works of emerson and thoreau some of their titles deal with self-reliance and going back to nature they also contemplate nature's beauty as a path to spiritual and moral development during this time period we're going to have the great awakening in which people do liken to this sense of christianity but you don't necessarily need the church if you go out into nature you are communing with god it also looks backward to the wisdom of the past and it distrusts the progress they're perfectly happy with what happened in the age of reason they're not they're not unhappy with their founding fathers they certainly appreciate everything they had in the past but they're distrusting the idea of the industrial revolution and the progress that it brings and it finds beauty and truth and exotic locales the supernatural realm and the inner world of the imagination for the first time in american literature you're going to see a prominence in fiction we also see it a bit not just in the literature but in the arts so here's the example of american romantic art note the wild landscape there is no hint of civilization no hint of ominous clouds this is a place where you can have imagination of any kind of story happening in this landscape so we'll look at the different types of literature that are prevalent in romanticism again we are going to have some essays but mostly what you're going to see is a lot of short stories novels poetry something that expresses the imagination so what are the elements that we'll find in those pieces of literature you're probably going to see a lot of talk about the frontier right now it's a vast expanse in the early 1800s we have this sense of freedom once you leave civilization behind you are on your own there are no geographic limitations you can go wherever because of that you also have this sense of optimism it's greater than in europe because of this presence of a frontier you're able to go and do what it is that you want there really isn't any controlled land you also start seeing some institutions becoming involved you start seeing lyceums being built up like people like emerson you're also going to start seeing colleges and universities really taking hold and so there's a lot of experimentation in science so the age of reasoning when you still had some scientists dabbling at home now you start seeing the science institutionalized you also start seeing the mingling of races now that we have a country that is stabilized immigrants start arriving in large numbers into the us and lastly we are our industrial evolution so you're going to see the growth of industrialization and it's going to lead to the polarization of the north and south the northern part of the united states becomes more industrialized while the south remains agricultural now the subject matter of romanticism the quest for beauty does not tell people how to live their lives so what you might find is beautiful somebody else might not but they'll tell you what they find beautiful and everything is accepted because we're also looking a bit at fiction you might also find escapist literature and escapism is coming away from american problems so the use of something that is far away maybe perhaps far away in nature or far away in the sense of emotions it's not going to feel normal but there is also a lot of interest in external nature for itself and for its beauty such as nature as a source for the knowledge of the primitive nature as a refuge from society or nature as a revelation of god and the individual now some of the techniques that you'll notice in romantic literature are the absolute remoteness of settings in time and space you're going to have some improbable plots some sort of very youthful naive person could lead us into some sort of battle or some sort of exploration or you're going to be seeing some bad guy from europe coming in and trying to take over and our small community farming town is going to win the day pretty improbable fictitious type plots you're also going to see inadequate or unlikely characterization you're going to start seeing the setting up of stereotypes stereotypes aren't exactly honed in yet because we're just starting on our literature but you're going to see some inadequate characterization where you're not exactly going to have fully fleshed out 3d characters you might also see socially harmful morality and a world of lies as civilization starts getting more into city atmosphere we start seeing social problems starting to arise and how people in your in your romantic books want to get away from this world of lies there also might be organic principle in writing where the form rises out of the content and it becomes more non-formal we're still looking for our own american brand of writing how do we start writing science fiction and fantasy how do we start writing our american poetry they're going to start organically they do understand the european prose and the european sense of poetry and that's where they start but then they go off on their own organic principles who are some of the representative writers well when we start off looking perhaps at some of our earliest poetry some of your earliest romantic poets are going to be william clone bryant and henry wadsworth longfellow and we start getting into later periods your dark romantics are going to come along and those are going to be nathaniel hawthorne for his novels and short stories washington irving is writing a little bit earlier in time with his uh short stories herman melville and edgar allan poe are likely the most important figures that we have here some of the ones that are probably the most famous you'd find in most of your textbooks they write dark stories uh that are never going to have a happy ending your your people might come out alive at the end but certainly the characters have changed forever so what is the big picture what is the romantic view of man well man should focus on the individual and his inner world he should focus on his emotions and his imagination he also should focus on nature nature is beautiful but it's also mysterious it's also going to be used quite a bit as symbolism especially with your darker romantics such as hawthorne and poe a lot of times god can also be seen in nature by the lighter romantics such as emerson and thoreau they want us to go out to nature to find god you're also looking at the romantic guide to truth that sense of intuition your inner voice your gut feeling and so imagination is going to guide each individual to a better sense of understanding of yourself so back to the dark romantic writers they might also be called the american gothic writers edgar allan poe with hawthorne and melville are known as dark romantics you might also hear them being called anti-transcendentalists they do have much in common with transcendentalists they do use a lot of nature and symbolism they do talk a lot about the sense of god they do talk a lot about the sense of individuality but what makes them different is that they explore conflicts between good and evil the psychological effects of guilt and sin and madness these things don't happen with our happy lighter romantics and transcendentalists that is unique to your dark romantics or your anti-transcendentalists so then what is transcendentalism well it's an important american literary and philosophical movement some people like to call it a religion emerson throw the people who had started up transcendentalism would not want it to be called that they would want it to be a literature movement or a philosophical movement this happens in the second half of the romantic movement approximately around the 1830s up to about the time the american civil war in 1860 so what does it mean to transcend well the transcend means to go beyond a limit or a range for example maybe you're going beyond your thoughts or going beyond the natural beliefs so transcendentalism is at its core about moving beyond a common experience and understanding so we're going to base transcendentalism on this sense of optimism and intuition what your gut feeling is which is obviously based on romantic ideas but transcendentalism is the idea that in determining the ultimate reality of god the universe yourself and other important matters one must transcend or go beyond the everyday human experience in the physical world now there is a direct connection between the universe and the individual soul in transcendentalism you are part and particle with nature and with man as emerson would tell you by thinking about objects in nature people can transcend the world and discover a union with what they would call a god or an oversoul now if you follow your intuition your gut feeling and your beliefs no matter how much they differ from the social norms you should be fine because all people to transcendentalists are inherently good so again who are some of the few transcendentalists we've been talking about ralph waldo emerson he's a former unitarian minister from massachusetts who became the most well-known transcendentalist now he also has a friend and student by the name of henry david thoreau who was the son of a pencil maker and dropped out of society to try and live the solitary and transcendent life so we want to say that ralph waldo anderson emerson came up with the sense of transcendentalism and he wrote it down as an idea henry david thoreau tried to actually live the transcendentalist life and took notes on it but then why did such a an idea as transcendentalism become popular well as with romanticism americans felt that there must be more to life than logical and rational experience so the transcendentalists sought to regain spirituality that they thought was missing from their current thought and philosophy at the time well that should do it for our transcendentalist theories uh and for our sense of american romanticism if you'd like to learn more about the authors from the transcendentalists to the anti-transcendentalists maybe some of our early romantics like the poets such as longfellow and bryant please check out more of my other videos on this channel or let me know down in the comments if you'd like to learn any of their specific stories or poems and as always i'd appreciate it if you subscribed