The Age of Romanticism.docx

1、The Age of RomanticismThe Age of RomanticismAmerican RomanticismBackgrounds1 national influencesA.In politics: democracy and political equality lay the foundation of Romanticism;B.In economics: the spread of industrialism; the sudden influx of immigration and the pioneers pushing the frontier furthe

2、r west;C.In culture: the publication of Webster Dictionary marked the beginning of the American English; the appearance of many magazines and newspapers;2 international influencesA. Romantic Movement in England and Europe proved to be a decisive influence;B. Many English and European masters of poet

3、ry and prose made stimulating impact on American Romanticism.RomanticismA movement of the 18th and 19th century. It is the predominance of imagination over reason and formal rules and over the sense of fact or the actual, a psychological desire to escape from unpleasant realitiesDetailed Information

4、A. Romanticism was a movement in literature, philosophy, music and art which developed in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. B. It emphasized individual values and aspirations above those of society as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution. C. It looked to the Middle Ages and to dir

5、ect contact with nature for inspiration. D. It gave impetus to the national liberation movement in 19th-century Europe.American RomanticismThe Romantic Period, one of the most important periods in thehistory of American literature, stretches from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Ci

6、vil War.1.It started with the publication of Washington Irvings The Sketch Book（1819）and ended with Whitmans Leaves of Grass（1855）. 2.It was a rebellion against the objectivity of rationalism. For romantics, the feelings, intuitions and emotions were more important than reason and common sense. 3.Th

7、ey emphasized individualism, placing the individual against the group. They affirmed the inner life of the self, and cherished strong interest in the past, the wild, the remote, the mysterious and the strange. 4.they stressed the element “Americanness” in their works. 5.Being a period of the great f

8、lowering of American literature, it is also called the American Renaissance. 6.American Romanticism is, in a certain way, derivative.2. The American Renaissance or New England Renaissance is a period of the great flowering of American literature, from the 1830s roughly until the end of the American

9、Civil War. It came of age as an expression of a national spirit. One of the most important influences in the period was that of the Transcendentalists, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau.2.The unique characteristics of American RomanticismAlthough greatly influenced by their English

10、counterparts, the American romantic writers revealed unique characteristics of their own in their works and they grew on the native lands. For examp1e,(1) the American national experience of pioneering into the west proved to be a rich source of material for American writers to draw upon. They celeb

11、rated Americas landscape with its virgin forests, meadows, groves, endless prairies, streams, and vast oceans. The wilderness came to function almost as a dramatic character that symbolized moral 1aw. (2)The desire for an escape from society and a return to nature became a permanent convention of Am

12、erican literature. Such a desire is particularly evident in Coopers Leather Stocking Tales, in Thoreaus Walden and, later, in Mark Twains Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (3) With the growth of American national consciousness, American character types speaking local dialects appeared in poetry and fi

13、ction with increasing frequency. (4) Then the American Puritanism as a cultural heritage exerted great influences over American moral values and American Romanticism. One of the manifestations is the fact that American romantic writers tended more to moralize than their English and European counterp

14、arts. (5) Besides, a preoccupation with the Calvinistic view of origina1 sin and the mystery of evil marked the works of Hawthorne, Melville and a host of lesser writers. Distinct Feature of American Romanticism1.It was the expression of “a real new experience” 2 It tended to be didactic because of

15、Puritan influence.3 It was both imitative and independentTranscendentalism A broad, philosophical movement in New England during the Romantic era (peaking between 1835 and 1845). It stressed the role of divinity in nature and the individual s intuition, and exalted feeling over reason. New England T

16、ranscendentalism The phase of New England Transcendentalism is the summit of American Romanticism. It was, in essence, romanticism on Puritan soil. It was started in the area around Concord, Mass. by a group of intellectual and the literary men of the United States such as Emerson, Henry David Thore

17、au who were members of an informal club, i. e. the Transcendental Club in New England in the l830s. The transcendentalists reacted against the cold, rigid rationalism of Unitarianism (基督教)上帝一位论in Boston. They adhered to an idealistic system of thought based on a belief in the essential unity of all

18、creation, the innate goodness of man, and the supremacy of insight over logic and experience for the revelation of the deepest truths. The writings of the transcendentalists prepared the ground of their contemporaries such as Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.The main issues inv

19、olved in the debate were generally philosophical, concerning nature, man and the universe. Basically, Transcendentalism has been defined philosophical1y as the recognition in man of the capacity of knowing truth with intuition(the act or faculty of knowing or sensing without the use of rational proc

20、esses), or of attaining knowledge transcending the reach of the senses. Emerson once proclaimed in a speech, Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Other concepts that accompanied Transcendentalism inc1ude the idea that nature is ennobling and the idea that the individual is d

21、ivine and, therefore, self-re1iant. Appeared in 1830, marked the maturity of American romanticism and the first renaissance in the American literary history. The term was derived from the Latin verb transcendere: to rise above, to pass beyond the limits. Rise of Transcendentalism: the product of com

22、bination of foreign influence (German idealistic philosopher, neo-Platonism, Oriental mysticism, Confucius and Mencius) and American native Puritan tradition. Spirit or Oversoul: the universe is composed of Nature and Soul. Spirit is everywhere. Individualism: the most important element in society,

23、the divinity of individual. Nature: is a connecting link between God and man. It is a symbol of the Spirit. Community living and dignity of manual labor. Relying on Intuition and Conscience超我之心, man can transcend the limits of the senses and of logic and directly receive higher truths and greater kn

24、owledge denied to more mundane methods of knowing.Summary of TranscendentalismTranscendentalism refers to the religious and philosophical doctrines of Ralph Waldo Emerson and others in New England in the middle 1800S，which emphasized the importance of individual inspiration and intuition, the Over-s

25、oul, and nature. Other concepts than accompanied Transcendentalism include the idea that nature is ennobling and the idea that nature is ennobling and the idea that the individual is divine and, therefore, self-reliant. New England Transcendentalism is the product of a combination of native American

26、 Puritanism and European RomanticismAmerican Romanticists differed in their understanding of human nature.To the transcendentalists such as Emerson and Thoreau, man is divine in nature and therefore forever perfectible; but to Hawthorne and Melville, everybody is potentially a sinner, and great mora

27、l courage is therefore indispensab1e for the improvement of human nature, as is shown in Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter.Major writers of the romantic periodThere emerged a great host of men of letters during this period, among whom the better-known are poets such as Philip Freneau, William Cullen Bry

28、ant, Henry Wordsworth LongFellow, James Russel Lowell, John Greenleaf Whitter, Edgar Ellen Poe, and, especially, Walt Whitman, whose Leaves Of Grass established him as the most popular American poet of the 19th century. The fiction of the American Romantic period is an original and diverse body of w

29、ork. It ranges from the comic fables of Washington Irving to the The Gothic tales of Edgar Allen Poe, from the frontier adventures of James Fenimore Cooper to the narrative quests of Herman Melville, from the psycho1ogical romances of Nathaniel Hawthorne to the social realism of Rebecca Harding Davi

30、s.Washington Irving (17831895) 华盛顿.欧文His Life v Born into a wealthy New York merchant familyv Began writing from a very early agev Studied law and led for a time the life of a gentleman lawyerv Loved writing more and wrote his first book in 1809v Went to England in 1815 to take care of family busine

31、ss but failedv Had to write to support himself The Sketch Book won him international famev Went as diplomatic attache to Spain in 1826 and gathered material for writingv Secretary of U.S. Legation 公使馆in London from 18291832v Returned to Am. at about 50 after being away for 17 yearsv Lived a leisure

32、life and wrote the rest of his life except 4 years as Minister to Spainv Died in 1859 and unmarried all his lifeHis career and works1st phase: 18091832 “English phase” 主要阶段或英国阶段1.A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty 纽约外史(1809)2.The Sketch Book 见闻札记(18191820) / The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. : “Rip Wan Winkle” 瑞普.凡.温克尔 “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” 睡谷的传说 marked the beginning of short story as a genre in Am. literature marked the