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Romanticism

In

general,

the

Period

of

Romanticism

was

from

the

end

of

the18th

century

to

outbreak of the Civil War. Romanticism emerged in the 1790s in Germany and Britain, and

in 1820s in France and elsewhere, it was known as the Romantic Movement or Romantic

Revival.

Its

chief

emphasis

was

upon

freedom

of

individual

self-expression:

sincerity,

spontaneity,

and

originality

became

the

new

standards

in

literature,

replacing

the

decorous

imitation

of

classical

models

favored

by

18

th

Enlightenment

as

mechanical,

impersonal

and

artificial, the

Romantics

turned

to

the

emotional

directness

of

personal

experience and to the boundlessness of individual imagination and aspiration.

Some

general

characteristics

of

American

Romanticism

were

that

：

Romanticism

celebrated the triumph of feeling and intuition over reason; Romanticism looked back to

the

Middle

Ages

with

a

nostalgic

fascination;

exulted

the

individual

over

society,

thus

showing a strong dislike for the bondage of convention and customs; Nature was believed

to be the source of goodness and the antithesis of society as society tend to be corrupt.

The

literature

movement

can

be

divided

into

two

stages,

the

beginning

was

the

pre-romanticism period and

the development

was the

New England

Transcendentalism

period.

The representatives about pre- romanticism period included Irving, Cooper and Bryant.

Washington Irving was the first great writer of American literature. He was praised as “the

father

of

American

literature”.

He

mainly

worked

on

short

stories,

The

Sketch

Book

consisted of the first modern short stories in American literature, and his fame were mainly

based on two stories in the book, that was,

Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy

Hollow.

Cooper was another famous representative about pre-romanticism period. His most

excellent

novel

was

The Leather

stocking

Tales,

which

made

him

popular

and

famous

both

in

domestic

and

abroad.

The

whole

story

was

The

Last

of

Mohicans

(1826),

The

Pathfinder (1840), The Pioneers (1823), and The Prairie (1827).

The representatives of the New England Transcendentalism period ----the summit of

American Romanticism----- included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

Ralph

Waldo

Emerson,

the

leader

of

American

Transcendentalism.

He

had

written

many famous essays. Among the best were

Nature and the American Scholar

, which had

been called “Americans Declaration of Intellectual Independence”.

Henry David Thoreau was also one of the writers of Transcendentalism period, and his

famous

essay

was

Walden,

in

which

he

revealed

the

hidden

spiritual

possibilities

in

everyone’s life and to considerate the pursuit of material things.

Romanticism was affirmative

and

appropriate for most American

poets and creative

essayists.

The

Romantic

spirit

seemed

particularly

suited

to

American

democracy:

It

stressed

individualism,

affirmed

the

value

of

the

common

person,

and

looked

to

the

inspired

imagination

for

its

aesthetic

and

ethical

values.

Certainly

the

New

England

Transcendentalists -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and their associates

--

were

inspired

to

a

new

optimistic

affirmation

by

the

Romantic

Movement.

In

New

England, Romanticism fell upon fertile soil.