ROMANTICS 1800 -1860

CHARACTERISTICS OF LITERATURE

• Emotional
• Religious
• Youthful innocence
• Personal worth

CHARACTERISTICS CONTINUED....

• Finds the good in chaos
• Poetry is highest expression
• Cultured
• Reflects past/progress

HISTORY OF THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT

• Adopted from Germany & England
• Influenced the music and painting as well as literature
• Writing was mostly poetry in Europe and transferred to the US
• The idea behind the movement was to escape from reality
• Poems and writings mostly about imagination, nature, and myth

Historical Happenings:
The French Revolution, War of 1812, spread of industrial revolution, revolutions in other countries, first railroad, telegraph, electric motor, abolition of slavery in Portugal and Britain.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

• Country boy
• At 9 years old he was writing poetry and was considered a prodigy
• Supported social reform, free speech, and the abolition of slavery
• Founder of the Republican Party
• Wrote "Thanatopsis" in 1817

THANATOPSIS

• Bryant composed first version when he was only 16 and alone in the woods
• Thantos is Greek for death, and opsis is Greek for seeing
• Poem is about a way of looking at death and a way of thinking about it
• It was a very popular poem

WASHINGTON IRVING

• Not very educated
• First international literary celebrity from America
• Invented comic narrators for most of his works
• Didn't sign real name on work until he was over fifty
• Wrote "The Sketch Book" in 1820

THE SKETCH BOOK

• "The Sketch Book" was a collection of stories based off of German Folk Tales
• Narrated by a comic voice named Geoffrey Crayon
• The book carried Irving to highest point of international success

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

• He was a physician
• He became a physician because it could teach him about humanity
• Gave anesthesia its name
• Wrote "Old Ironsides" in 1830

OLD IRONSIDES

• "Old Ironsides" was a poem Holmes sent into Boston's "Daily Adverstiser"
• The poem was sent in protesting about the scrapping of a warship
• The ship was the USS Constitution which was in the War of 1812
• His poem aroused public sentiment and saved the ship
• The ship can be seen in Boston Harbor today

QUESTIONS
Did the Romantic writers/ believers avoid the fact that reality is surrounding them?

How did the European Romantic movement begin and why before it was adopted by America?