This document summarizes the development of American Romanticism from the late 18th century to the early 19th century. It discusses the rise of American Romanticism due to factors like the nation's fast development, growth of journalism, and foreign influences. The document also outlines historical background, technological advances, reform movements, characteristics of Romantic literature including transcendentalism, imaginative works, free expression of emotion, and nationalism. It concludes with the end of the Romantic period after the Civil War and emergence of realism and modernism in American literature.

1. American
Romanticism

2. content
Introduction
Historical Background
Technology
Reform and Humanitarianism
Literature Characteristics
Conclusion

3. Development of American Romanticism
England
（ in the last years of the 18th century ）
Continental Europe
America
（ early in the 19th century ）

4. The Rising Reasons of American Romanticism
 1. Fast development of the new nation
 2. Development of journalism
 3. Foreign influence

5. Historical Background
 The number of states doubled, the population raised
to more than 31,000,000.
 The belief that all white men were literally equal
 An industrial and urban society. Technology
developed and economy grew.
 Simplicity, utility and perfection.
 The risen level of education and literacy
 The published imaginative literature and the
increasing national and international fame

6. Technology
 A form of automation had come with the
construction of a one-man flour mill in Virginia;
 American had invented the cotton gin, the sewing
machine, and the telegraph;
 The principles of assembly-line mass production
had been established;
 The fire and roar of newly perfected steam engines

7. Reform and Humanitarianism
 Before 1860  In 1817
The United States had begun to The Society for the Prevention of
change into an industrial and Pauperism was formed
urban society.  In 1837
 In the first half of the 19th The first college-level institution
century for women
1 ） New York became the capital  By the 1850s
2 ） People worked in business The level of education and
and factories literacy had risen significantly
3 ） The change of the pursuit
4 ） Transcendentalists
Ralph Waldo Emerson ，
the most famous of the Transcendentalists

8. Literature Characteristics
 Transcendentalism
 Imaginative literature
 Free expression of emotion
 Nationalism

9. Transcendentalism
 A kind of feeling without or over reason
 Transcendentalists took ideas from:
a. The romantic literatures of Europe
b. Neo-Platonism
c. German idealistic philosophy
d. The revelations of Oriental mysticism

10. Transcendentalism
 Writer (Nathaniel Hawthorne in the 1860s)
Born: July 4,1804 Salem, Massachusetts
United States
Died: May 19, 1864 (aged 59) Plymouth,
New Hampshire United States
Main novels: The Scarlet Letter (1850)
The Blithedale Romance (1852)

11. Transcendentalism
 Writer (Walt Whitman, 1887)
Born: May 31, 1819 West Hills, Town of
Huntington, Long Island, New York, U.S.
Died: March 26, 1892 (aged 72) Camden,
New Jersey, U.S.
Main novels: Franklin Evans (1842)
Leaves of Grass (1855)

12. Imaginative literature
 Permanent convention of American literature
a. the desire for an escape from society
b. a return to nature

13. Imaginative literature
 Authors and their works
Ernest Hemingway
Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn
William Faulknerstocking Tales
Cooper’ Leather

14. Free expression of emotion
 The novel of terror became the profitable literary staple that it
remains today.
 Authors:
Poe Hawthorne Melville

15. Nationalism
 Writers aimed to write works which were
expressive and characteristic of their own
nationality.
 Noah Webster
An American Dictionary of the English
Language （ 1828 ）

16. Conclusion
 Romantic period stretches from the end of the 18th century through
the outbreak of the Civil War.
 Later American literature came to Transcendentalism Period which
emphasized individualism, self-reliance, and rejection of tradition
authority.
 The Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end. The Age of
Realism came into existence, which was against “the lie of
romanticism and sentimentalism”.
 The period between 1910 and 1930 is referred to as the era of
Modernism. During that period, a large number of artists and
literary movements are totally different from those of the 19th-
century’s, in style, form and content.

17. 资料：张云、任丁、董芳、李琼
通稿：黄欢欢
图片：李琼、董芳
技术：陈雨
校对：陈雨、黄欢欢、董芳、张云