First Day of Romanticism

Today we talked about the American Romantic movement in the 18th century. The notes we took were roughly as follows:

Romantics believed that logic is never the answer, but rather human emotion is. Thus, Romanticism was in many ways a response to Neoclassicism. People involved in the movement favored the common man, nature, the individual over the group, and content over form. The movement in general was characterized by dissatisfaction and upheaval. It is not a coincidence that many of these ideas were prominent in the French Revolution. That particular movement had great influence on Romantics in the following century.

The three main groups of Romantics were Early Romantics, who were concerned with American heritage and culture, Gothics, who wanted to understand human psychology, and Transcendentalists, who were extremely idealistic and really loved nature. We started to talk about the Early Romantics in a little more detail. Romanticism in the U.S. was heavily influenced by British literature, especially Sir Walter Scott, who invented the historical novel. After reading his works, American writers gave up epic poetry and took up novels. James Fenimore Cooper is the first of those early novelists. Although he plagiarized off Scott and was an average writer, he influenced American literature is greatly. A much better Early Romantic writer was Washington Irving, who subtly tried to define a rural American heritage and culture. He influenced Mark Twain later in the century. More notes to follow tomorrow.