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. The period of romanticism represented a
revolt against classicism and its values such as reason and form. The American
variant of romanticism was different from the European one to a certain degree.
There was a great interest in Indians and their culture. The writings were less
political and religious, the topics were mostly American, and the writers
stressed imagination, nature and individualism. In America, there was no extreme reformist tendency
to introduce the kind of conspiratorial socialism that emerged in Europe.
Instead, Romanticism in America took its own particular style from the strong
legacy of 17th century rebellious Puritanism, a severe Calvinist form of
Protestantism. American Romantics developed a philosophy of individualism with
the unique American frontier. American colonists felt a sense of sacredness in
the new land. James Fenimore Cooper idealized the self-reliance of frontier
culture in historical romances like The Last of the Mohicans (1826). Moby Dick
by Herman Melville reflected a moral ambiguity in the American soul- a conflict
between pioneering free will and the “mystical blackness” of Puritan doctrine. (Boreham & Heath). American Romanticism was more about
individualism and social relevance in that everyone should have a chance to
maximize one’s own worth. With Emerson looking inward to find divine essence,
which he claims we all share in common, and Emily Dickinson not going “public”
by publishing her verse, American Romanticism is distinctly different from
European in each artist. American Romanticism evolved from a frontier that
promised opportunity for expansion, growth, freedom, Europe lacked this
element. The spirit of optimism invoked by the promise of an uncharted frontier
was portrayed in many paintings of American Romanticism. Immigration to America
brought new cultures and perspectives to the American Romanticism. Growth of
industry in the north that further polarized the north and the agrarian South
and search for new spiritual roots influenced the American Romanticism and made
it distinctly different from European Romanticism. (American) Although America did not have the ruins of
a classical civilization or an intellectual heritage comparable to Europe’s, it
did have a wilderness more primeval than anywhere in Europe, or at least it did
for a while. In painting, Romantic art returned to the idealized landscape, but
not the landscape of classical civilizations. Instead, painters like Bierstadt,
Church, and Moran used their keen observations of the West to transform it into
the promised land of America. Its contract
with the European counterpart “Although foreign influences were strong, American romanticism
exhibited from the very outset distinct feature of its own”[ii] it was
different from its English and European counterpart.
1. American romanticism was in essence the
expression of “a new experience” and contained an alien quality because the
spirit of American was radically new. For instance, the American experience of
pioneering into the west proved to be a rich found of material for American
writers to drown upon.
2. Due to the impact of Puritanism, American moral
values were essentially puritan. Public opinion was overwhelmingly puritan.
3. What in
connection with American romanticism was the “newness” of the American as a
nation. American writers and critics
placed too much emphasis on this “newness”.
4. American romanticism was both imitative and independent. Writers
like Irving, especially the group of New England poets tried to model their
works upon English and European masters. (American).
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) drew upon
Enlightenment philosophy, and Coleridge’s views on imagination to define the
genre of romance fiction as a locus where the real and the imaginary intersect
and influence each other, in a unified vision. For Hawthorne, recognition of
textual history and the history of American institutions is just an integral
element of such a vision as is nature. Both Hawthorne and his friend and
admirer Herman Melville reacted, like the other American Romantics, against the
mechanism and commercialism at the core of American life. Striving to attain
the passion and originality to develop a national literature, they yet recognized
that the modern fragmented world defied the attempts of romance and imagination
to achieve a harmonious and comprehensive vision of life (High 50). Hawthorne writes about man in society
rather in nature. His characters usually have some secret guilt or problem
which keeps them at a distance from other people. They are troubled by pride,
envy or the desire for revenge. One of his works is The Minister’s Black Veil
in which a minister puts on a black veil as a symbol of the evil hiding in
every human heart. Many of Hawthorne’s stories are set in
Puritan New England, and his greatest novel, The Scarlet Letter (1850),
portrays Puritan America. It tells of the passionate, forbidden love affair
linking a sensitive, religious young man, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, and
the sensuous, beautiful townsperson, Hester Prynne. Set in Boston around 1650
during early Puritan colonization, the novel highlights the Calvinistic
obsession with morality, sexual repression, guilt and confession, and spiritual
salvation. Hester is forced to wear a red letter “A” on her dress. The novel
questions the theme of sin in the Puritan society. (High 50-51) The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
exemplifies Dark Romanticism in its themes of imposed judgment and punishment
for those who commit sin, resulting in alienation and self-destruction.
Hawthorne's most famous novel examined the human soul. He believed that for all
of our weaknesses, hypocrisy and suffering, "the truth of the human
heart" usually prevails.
Herman Melville
For Melville, life at sea is his most important
material for his books and the voyages of his heroes are always searches for
the truth. Moby-Dick or, The Whale, Melville’s masterpiece, is the epic story
of the whaling ship Pequod and its “ungodly, god-like man,” Captain Ahab, whose
obsessive quest for the white whale Moby-Dick leads the ship and its men to
destruction. This work, a realistic
adventure novel, contains a series of meditations on the human condition.
Whaling, throughout the book, is a grand metaphor for the pursuit of knowledge.
Realistic catalogues and descriptions of whales and the whaling industry
punctuate the book, but these carry symbolic connotations. Although Melville’s novel is philosophical,
it is also tragic. Despite his heroism, Ahab is doomed and perhaps damned in
the end. Nature, however beautiful, remains alien and potentially deadly. In
Moby-Dick, Melville challenges Emerson’s optimistic idea that humans can
understand nature. The novel is modern in its tendency to be self-referential,
or reflexive. In other words, the novel often is about itself. Melville
frequently comments on mental processes such as writing, reading, and
understanding (High 54).
Edgar Allan Poe
His fiction belongs more to the Southern
literary tradition than to the New England one, reflecting a preference for
mood, emotion, and aristocratic ideals rather than moral or social reform. This
is especially evident in works like The Fall of the House of Usher and The
Black Cat, where the focus is on psychological depth, strangeness, and the
supernatural. Poe believed that strangeness was an
essential ingredient of beauty, and his writing is often marked by its exotic
quality. His stories and poems frequently feature doomed, introspective
aristocrats, characters who isolate themselves from society and dwell in
decaying castles filled with symbolic elements such as bizarre rugs and dim interiors
that conceal the brightness and clarity of the outside world. These figures
rarely work or engage with others, embodying Poe's fascination with alienation
and decay. In poetry, Poe prioritized sound over
content, crafting verses that were musically rich and emotionally evocative. He
did not believe that poetry should convey truth; instead, he argued that the
goal of poetry is pleasure. However, for Poe, pleasure was not the same as
happiness a good poem should evoke a feeling of gentle sadness, touching the
reader through melancholy beauty. (High 54-55) Ultimately, Poe's work reflects a
movement of emotions and beliefs, rather than a rigid philosophical system. His
focus on mood, psychological exploration, and aesthetic form set him apart as a
unique and influential figure in American literature.
