thursday blog

Hey, it's Amy! On Thursday we continued taking notes on Romanticism. Romanticism a movement that is born in urban society that opposes urbanization and comes from the development of neoclassicism and is against neoclassicism. Confusing, I know. Anyway, the core of the movement was in the original 13 colonies, despite expansion westward, as these are the most developed urban centers. However, especially with more transportation to other areas being more accessible and pushing the frontier further back (steamboat, railroad, Erie canal), writers of Romanticism were affected by westward expansion and wrote of adventure and pioneering tales.

The first time that "writer" was considered a profession, or a skill that someone could make a living off of was during the mid-1600's in England, but was still not accepted in North America. Writers were not guaranteed a living, most got into publishing and editing to earn money and publish their own work.

Transcendentalism was unpopular in the US, less practical but more influential. It's core belief was that one could best understand oneself when he renews his connection with nature. It was a response to urbanization and industrialization, where factories decreased the influence of the individual and everyone began moving to cities to mass produce goods, rather that hand make the goods. It focused on eliminating artificial want, the idea that things tell us that we want them and we have no real need for them. Religion also played a huge part in the development of transcendentalism. Transcendentalists saw organized religion as not true faith, rather the true experience is individual experience, and the idea of organized religion portrayed God as a bully (you weren't good unless you went to church with a certain group of people and said the right prayers at the right times. Rather than congregations of organized religion, small, intimate experiences and things were thought to really reveal the grandeur of the universe. This went along with the idea that if all things are from God, then all things have a part of God in them, and what we want to find is the God in all things. To the general public, these ideas were extremely unpopular and were thought to border on paganism.

But even with the idea of appreciating the individuals and all things possessing God, in the 1840's there was a huge anti-Catholic press movement, with immigration of Catholics seen to pose a threat to the Protestant church, especially in New England. Also, most writers ignored the treatment of Indians. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 went quietly, under the mindset that it was the will of God that the stronger take from the weaker. Slaver was seen as the big issue, and books like Uncle Tom's Cabin were extremely influential, while other issues were pushed aside.

We are starting Irving on Monday and will probably be getting our outline details.