American Romanticism
Prof. Bruce Harvey
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"Romanticism," as a term, derives from "romance," which
from the Medieval Period (1200-1500) and on simply meant a story (e.g. all the
chivalric, King Arthur legends) that was adventuristic and improbable.
"Romances" are distinguished from "novels," which emphasize
the mundane and realistic. The period between 1860 and 1900, for the U.S., is
often called "The Age of Realism," because of the many authors (e.g.,
Theodore Dreiser & Stephen Crane) who present their novels' subject matter
in a realistic manner (Melville's monomaniacal Ahab, chasing a monstrous,
symbolic whale, would be out of place in a realistic novel, although Moby-Dick
has many realistic details about the whaling industry).
The "Romantic Period" refers to literary and cultural movements in England, Europe, and America roughly from 1770 to 1860. Romantic writers (and artists) saw
themselves as revolting against the "Age of Reason" or
“Enlightenment” period (1700-1770) and its values. They celebrated
imagination/intuition versus reason/calculation, spontaneity versus control,
subjectivity and metaphysical musing versus objective fact, revolutionary
energy versus tradition, individualism versus social conformity, democracy versus
monarchy, and so on. The movement begins in Germany with the publication of
Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther (about a love-sick, alienated artist
type, too sensitive to live, who kills himself; after it was published a number
of young men committed suicide in imitation!) and the emergence of various
Idealist philosophers (Immanuel Kant, for example) who believed mental
processes are the ultimately reality, as opposed to Empiricists which see the
mind shaped by what it perceives. The movement then goes to England (Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, and Keats), until about 1830 (upon
which the Victorian Age begins). Romanticism does not appear in the U.S. until
Irving and Emerson are writing; so, somewhat confusingly, the Romantic Period
in the U.S. (1830-1860) overlaps with the period in which U.S. culture may also
be said to be "Victorian" (1830-1880).
One consequence of the latter: a writer such as Hawthorne is both Romantic and
Victorian (he is simultaneously fascinated by and worried about Hester's
rebelliousness and erotic liberties in The Scarlet Letter). Other works
of the period--such as Harriet Beecher Stowe's best-seller Uncle Tom's Cabin--are
not "Romantic," but are rather much closer to the realistic fiction
of Victorian Britain's George Eliot.
Keep in mind, too, that cultural-literary periods (the “Renaissance,” the
“Enlightenment,” “Romanticism,” “Modernism”) do not perfectly match up with
mass culture or middle-brow culture of the same time period: Emerson was very
famous as an inspirational essayist in his own lifetime, but he lived, himself,
a conventional life and the radicalism implied in his essays did not lead to
wholesale revolt … i.e. although Emerson was the center of the
Transcendentalist movement, the entirety of New England society was most
definitely not “transcendentalist.”
That said, in the broad trajectory from the Medieval/feudal-hierarchical
(castle) historical era, through the Renaissance and Enlightenment-scientific
to the nineteenth-century/Industrial Age (factories), and on up to
Modernity/Contemporary (mall) consumer-capitalist society, the Romantic period
does represent a very important stage in the progress of liberty as a
philosophical, political, and aesthetic idea. Karl Marx’s idealism (that work
should be a form of self-expression, not servitude to an assembly-line) draws
upon his Romantic predecessors; as does, say, Martin Luther King’s belief in
the supreme dignity of every individual.
[Warning--professor rant ahead: One of the most unfortunate ironies of
cultural-societal history is that the supreme value of Romanticism--a deep
sense of interiority (what this course calls “sublimity within”)--has become
vulgarized in democratical/consumeristic culture into the freedom of
individuals to choose fads, products, indeed lifestyles (be hip, if you only
have the right type of cell phone!): capitalism’s entrepreneurial energy
resonates with Romantic individualism (Emerson, it turns out, is one of the
favorite authors of capitalist ideologues!), but it is the void within that
causes us, in the 21st century, to seek to be fulfilled with the
euphoria of our consumer purchases.]
Very generally, without referring to any particular time period,
"Romantic" values and types of expression are distinguished from
"Classical" values and types of expression. Thus, you can come up
with a list of atemporal oppositions:
ROMANTIC |
NON-ROMANTIC or CLASSICAL |
|
Emotional |
Reasonable and Practical |
|
Individualistic |
Public Responsibility |
|
Revolutionary |
Conservative |
|
Loves Solitude & Nature |
Loves Public, Urban Life |
|
Fantasy/Introspection |
External Reality |
|
The Particular |
The Universal |
|
Subjective Perception |
Objective Science |
|
Right Brain |
Left Brain |
|
Satisfaction of Desire |
Desire Repressed |
|
Organic |
Mechanical |
|
Creative Energy-Power |
Form |
|
"Noble Savage"-Outcasts |
Bourgeois Family |
For a quick comparison of the difference between “Romanticism” and the preceding
literary-cultural period, the “Age of Reason”/”Enlightenment,” juxtapose the
Peale painting “The Artist in His Museum” (go to link Peale Painting and Franklin perfection chart), which epitomizes the Enlightenment values of
measurement, rationality, and clarity, with a typical Frederic Church painting,
a generation later, which emphasizes nature’s sublime vastness (go to link: Church).
The problem with the attempt to define literary movements and particular
literary/cultural periods is that authors seldom fit neatly into the boxes we
construct for them. Emily Dickinson, although seemingly quintessentially
“Romantic,” in her protection of her own inwardness/solitude, in fact regularly
read newspaper items about the U.S. Civil War and other major political events
of her day and much of her poetry, while intensely idiosyncratic, also replays
genres (poems about “good” deaths) that were commonplace in mass-culture
magazines of the day. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is
about as “Victorian” as you can get (sentimental depictions, values of the
family embraced, a plot driven to make a moral point) and yet also takes us
into some dark and turmoiled psychological terrains (the sadomasochism of Uncle
Tom’s death) that are as “gothic” as what Poe imagines.
Emerson and Thoreau, along with Margaret Fuller, are Romantic,
self-consciously part of a literary/philosophical/theological movement known as
"Transcendentalism" (they had their own literary magazine, The
Dial, which Fuller edited). They privileged imagination and wanted to
resuscitate spiritual values in a era in which institutional religion dominated
(or so they felt). According to them, we are, if we only knew it, Gods in
ruin, with the power to regain our spiritual birthright by attending to the
divine within. Poe, Dickinson, Melville, and Hawthorne, however, were not
Transcendentalists, and often (implicitly or explicitly) critique Emersonian
idealism. Poe--the most Romantic of all the authors, because he obsessively
depicts sensitive, isolated individuals seeking the Beautiful or Ideal--was the
least in step with the other writers we are reading: the other male writers
celebrate democratic possibilities (and are often in love with the "common
man"), whereas Poe scorns the masses. Poe's position on slavery was less
than enlightened.
American Romantics tend to venerate Nature as a sanctum
of non-artificiality, where the Self can fulfill its potential (the earlier
Puritans tended to see nature as the fallen "wilderness," full of
"savage" Indians). American Romantics also champion spiritual
intuition or self-reliant individualism (which some intellectual historians
argue is a secularized outgrowth of Reformation Protestant radicalism). They
often, however, illustrate the egotistic, futile, and destructive aspects of
their questing heroes. Or they highlight how such self-reliance or intuitions
conflict with conventional social and religious dogma (Fuller and Dickinson).
Socially, American Romantics are usually radically egalitarian and politically
progressive (Poe is the exception) and, in the case of Melville and Whitman,
receptive to non-heterosexual relations (Whitman was definitely gay; Melville
perhaps). In terms of literary technique, American Romantics will use symbols,
myths, or fantastic elements (e.g., Walden Pond, the White Whale, the House of
Usher) as the focus and expression of the protagonist's mental processes or to
convey deeper psychological or archetypal themes. Their style is often very
original and not rule/convention oriented (only Dickinson writes like Dickinson; only Whitman, like Whitman).
The primary feature of American Romanticism--the obsession with and celebration
of individualism--takes on particular social relevance because U.S. culture has always prized individualism and egalitarianism. Democracy elevates
everyone (white males in this time period, that is) to the same status. One is
no longer part of a traditional, old-world hierarchy. Everyone has a chance
(given laisse-faire government) to maximize one's own worth (in America one is
liberated to pursue one's aspirations without interference--that's what
"liberalism" originally meant, and that is what Frederick Douglass
wants at the end of his Narrative). But independence also leads to a
sense of isolation (no traditional, supportive community; families on the move
West, etc.; see the DeTocqueville quote/e-text). Without traditional context,
insecurity about values arises, and thus, somewhat paradoxically, there emerges
a continued preoccupation with what everyone else thinks. The average
middle-class person aspires to be like everyone else (and to be seduced by the
products of capitalist-consumer culture). American Romantic writers like
democracy and see the dignity of common folk, but also--usually only
implicitly--are troubled by the loss of distinction. It is key to see that
American Romantics can both celebrate the "common man" and their own,
more spiritually/psychologically elite selves. Thus,
--Emerson worries about imitation/parroting. He looks inward to find divine
essence, which he claims we all share in common. So is he the ultimate democrat
or a narcissist?
--Thoreau isolates/purifies himself at Walden pond.
--Poe habitually portrays aristocratic, hyper-sensitive madmen in gothic
enclosures.
--Melville invests Ahab, a captain of a fishing boat, with a Homer-like or
Shakespearean grandeur.
--Emily Dickinson does not go "public" by publishing her verse.
--Whitman embraces the democratic masses, yet calls his major poem Song of
Myself.