American Romanticism Essays

The Romantic movement in America was widely popular and influenced American writers such as James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving.

The Romantic movement in America was widely popular and influenced American writers such as James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving.Novels, short stories, and poems replaced the sermons and manifestos of earlier days.Emerson’s ideas struck a chord with a class of literate adults who also were dissatisfied with mainstream American life and searching for greater spiritual meaning.

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Herman Melville’s novel emphasized the perils of individual obsession by telling the tale of Captain Ahab’s single-minded quest to kill a white whale, Moby Dick, which had destroyed Ahab’s original ship and caused him to lose one of his legs.

Edgar Allan Poe, a popular author, critic, and poet, decried, “the so-called poetry of the so-called transcendentalists.” These American writers who questioned transcendentalism illustrate the underlying tension between individualism and conformity in American life.

The Romantics rejected rationalism and religious intellect.

It appealed especially to opponents of Calvinism, a Protestant sect that believes the destiny of each individual is preordained by God.

The mid-nineteenth century often has been considered an “American Renaissance” due to the number and quality of literary works produced.

Identify the major works of literature produced during the mid-nineteenth century “American Renaissance” During the mid-nineteenth century, many American literary masterpieces were produced.In 1836, he published “Nature,” an essay arguing that humans can find their true spirituality in nature, not in the everyday bustling working world of Jacksonian democracy and industrial transformation.In 1841, Emerson published his essay “Self-Reliance,” which urges readers to think for themselves and reject the mass conformity and mediocrity taking root in American life.Alongside the religious fervor during this time, transcendentalists advocated a more direct knowledge of the self and an emphasis on individualism.The writers and thinkers devoted to transcendentalism, as well as the reactions against it, created a trove of writings, an outpouring that became what has now been termed the “American Renaissance.” Many writers were drawn to transcendentalism, and they started to express its ideas through new stories, poems, essays, and articles.Romantic literature was personal and intense; it portrayed more emotion than ever seen in neoclassical literature.America’s preoccupation with freedom became a great source of motivation for Romantic writers, as many were delighted in free expression and emotion without fear of ridicule and controversy.The Romantic movement gave rise to New England transcendentalism, which portrayed a less restrictive relationship between God and the universe.The new philosophy presented the individual with a more personal relationship with God.Sometimes called the “American Renaissance” (a term coined by the scholar F. Matthiessen), this period encompasses (approximately) the 1820s to the dawn of the Civil War, and it has been closely identified with American romanticism and transcendentalism.Often considered a movement centered in New England, the American Renaissance was inspired in part by a new focus on humanism as a way to move from Calvinism.