The Continuance of Romanticism

As literary criticism rose in the 19th century, so did greater works of romantic fiction

met the challenges of rising critics as they presented plots

-philosophically complex
-allegorical with sophisticated characterization and settings

later Romantics also sought to create a truly American literature

-both equaled the quality of the literature being produced by Europeans
-inherently distinctive from it in content and form

Looking back at our previous lessons

-discussed some of the distinguishing characteristics of the Romantics, specifically the transcendentalists

might be useful to think of Transcendentalists as the "sunny side" of romanticism

tended to see man's potential optimisticaly

For Emerson and Thoreau, nature was a source of rejuvenation and inspiration

Fiction writers in the Romantic tradition usually voiced a more somber vision than this

Poe, for example, infuses gothic elements in his short stories

-"The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Black Cat" both raise questions about the sanity of certain characters

Hawthorne, in his short story "Young Goodman Brown" and the novel The Scarlet Letter

-expresses concern that harkened back to the Puritans about the human tendency to do evil

romantic imagination in fiction is often expressed symbolically:

-Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter
-Melville's great white whale in Moby Dick
-walls in "Bartleby, the Scrivener"

In employing symbolism,

-writer makes use of a particular object or a process -suggest abstract ideas beyond what the reader might ordinarily associate with the object

ideas that are thus generated suggest some of that story's thematic concerns

Symbols, in romantic fiction especially, should be recognized as multi-layered and complex

walls in Bartleby's life...
-block his view
-actions
-progress

By the end of the story when he dies against a wall, the reader understands the symbolic weight of the image

Herman MelvillE

author of the story Moby Dick, one of the most well known American novels of all time and was not very popular

-born into a rather wealthy family
-father eventually went bankrupt and then died,
-leaving Melville as the head of the family
-ended up quitting school and worked to support his family for seven years

seeking adventure in his early twenties and he decided to join a whaling expedition

continued to experiment with the metaphysical, which is the attempt to explain the fundamentals of nature

'Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street,' where he forces his readers to ask themselves,
'What makes us human?'

-Explores individuality
-Transcendentalist Idea...People and nature were inherently good
-have time for ourselves and be our own persoN

Conclusion

Romantic period in American literature...

-gave way to the realists
-movement characterized by attention to the observable, or what they thought of as "real."

To compare romanticism to realism

"romanticists transcend the immediate to find the ideal"

realists' main critique of the romantic writers tended to be their lack of realism

Realists reacted against in new forms of literature in coming decades

Their complaint, however, is often a critique of contemporary readers of romantic literature as well

Romantic writers

-more concerned about the thematic messages at the heart of their stories
-results, characters become types and settings appear fantastical

For example,

main characters of Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter−Roger Chillingworth, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Pearl−can all be read as extensions of the novel's greater religious questioning more than as possible real-life figures

-meteor that appears one night in the sky is also improbable in any ordinary landscape
-even with its greater symbolic purpose in the novel

In spite of this common critique, romantic literature still offers depth and creative skill

establishes a strong literary tradition for America

Upcoming

• William Cullen Bryant all poems; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow all poems;John Greenleaf Whittier,The Hunters of Men,Ichabod;Edgar Allan Poe poetry pg 633-644
• Whitman,Preface to Leaves of Grass,Song of Myself,Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d;Dickinson poetry pg 1663-1685