American Romanticism | M.A Entrance | UGC NET

 What is American Romanticism

American Romanticism was the first full-fledged erudite movement that developed in the U.S. It was made up of a group of authors who wrote and published between about 1820 and 1860, when the U.S. was still chancing its bases as a new nation.  

These guys and ladyloves were told by the Romantic movement that had developed back in Britain. Like the British Dreamers, their work emphasized emotion, a love of nature, and imagination. You know how you feel when you see Old Faithful? Or the red jewels of Utah? Yeah. That feeling. That ohmygosh thisis crazyandamazing feeling.

American Romanticism ain't called"American"Romanticism for nothing. American Romanticism | M.A Entrance | UGC NET That is because while the pens who made up this movement had a lot in common with their European musketeers across the ocean, they also developed their own distinct brand of Romanticism.

 TheU.S.'s unique history and geography told the movement in special ways. The American Dreamers were preoccupied with questions of republic and freedom, which were embedded in the American Revolution that had led to independence from Britain back in 1776. USA! USA!

And the U.S.'s natural landscape—very different from Europe's—also influenced the writers of this movement in special ways. "The frontier," for example, is a big idea in the work of American Romantic writers. American Romanticism | M.A Entrance | UGC NET Also: bison. No, really—those things are insane-looking. Insane. A lot of the values and ideas we often associate with American culture—values like individualism and democracy and competitive eating (um, maybe not that last one)—are reflected in American Romantic writing, which played a really important role in spreading those values.

Whether you like it or not — whether your favorite vacation is the 4th of July or you can not get enough of this bald eagle fail — theU.S. is a superpower. But it's only been a country for a little over two hundred times (if we start counting with the Protestation of Independence in 1776) America is still a teenager in country- times.

 But America is kind of the Lorde-circa-2013 of teenage countries. American Romanticism | M.A Entrance | UGC NET You may love it, you may detest it, you may float conspiracy propositions about how it's actually way aged than it claims to be … but you know all about it. You presumably indeed have itsanti-Royalist station stuck in your head.

 There is no getting down from'Murica.

 But what's it, exactly, that makes America American? Is it luscious regale? Is it Celia Cruz? Is it the Hollywood subscribe? Is it Toni Morrison (um, yes please that would make our book nerd hearts veritably, veritably happy)?

.No, it's commodity further indefinable than that, right? It's the X factor of Americanism the American character.

 So what's the American character? Well, if we want to get an idea, we might have to dig into the American Romantics — way back in time to the first big American erudite movement. These pens reflect for us the values that make the American character unique. Heck, they played a big part in creating those values in the first place.

AMERICAN ROMANTICISM: 19TH CENTURY LITERATURE & IDEOLOGY

The 19th Century was an incredibly rich time in American history. In the wake of the American Revolution and the War of 1812, the United States was still at the early stages of forming its own identity and a culture of its own. This time period, historically remembered as the Romantic Period, greatly affected American study, and could be credited as the period that gave birth to what it means “ to be an American.”

 Romanticism (the more common name for the period of The Romantic Period) was an trades and literature movement that began in Europe and ultimately made its way to the United States, where it took on a life of its own. American Romanticism | M.A Entrance | UGC NET Originally, Romanticism sparked as a response to Industrialism and the restrictive neoclassical ideas of the antedating period of Enlightenment. American Romanticism | M.A Entrance | UGC NET It rejected ideas of fustiness, rationalism, and religious severity and rather concentrated on individual emotion, the disquisition of the tone, and the significance and beauty of the natural world. It was a period where feeling anteceded reason and tone- expression was valued over traditional restraint.

In the grand compass of American literature, American Romanticism was the first real erudite movement to ever do within in the United States. In fact, the Romantic Period in the United States was largely known as the “ American Renaissance” because it was around this time that American pens and artists began searching for a distinctly “ American” voice, separate from that of their British and European counterparts. Just a many short decades after the American Revolution and in the wake of the War of 1812, the country plant itself in a place of recently acquired freedom and at the cliff of everlasting possibility with respects to their identity as a nation. This state of liminality led to a detonation of creativity and cultural development gauging from the early to medial 1800s.

American Romanticism | M.A Entrance | UGC NET Inspired by British romantic pens who concentrated on aesthetics of nature, emotion, and the tone, American artists took to writing about America through these Romantic lenses. William Cullen Bryant, for illustration, was inspired to write poetry depicting New England outside as told by the Romantic appreciation for nature. Henry David Thoreau, a crucial figure in American literature was also told by these workshop, and came a leading member of the distinctly American movement of Transcendentalism.

Meanwhile, social and political events similar as the induction of Andrew Jackson shaped popular study and conception, asserting the value of the individual no matter their background or social status. Told by this increase in popular ideal, American culture began to lead further toward individualism, compounding the formerly being romantic ideas of tone- expression and independence.

 Through the flurry of change and progress, American Romanticism began to thrive. Pens similar as Ralph Waldo Emerson – a man credited to have paved the way for American Romanticism – encouraged other artists to examine their public identity and leave European form, structure, and tradition before. In turn, America began to develop its own voice filled with spirit and the birth of the mortal tone.

Romanticism gave birth to some of America’s topmost pens – Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emerson, and Thoreau, and some of the masterpieces of American literature, similar as Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter. Each work, though varying in kidney and content, was a rebellion against formalism and an disquisition of individualism, the tone, and public perception. Maybe the ideological traits of this time period give us a regard into understanding why we're the way that we are.

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