4. Are there moments when
you feel small or
insignificant in the
world? When? Compared
to what?
Think about nature. Describe
it and your feelings toward it.
•Are there calming aspects of
nature?
•Are there violent and
threatening ones?
5. • Is the price of
progress ever too
high? Name
negative instances
of progress?
– expansion made
people feel soulless
6. • Is it patriotic to protest one's
government? What role do
you think activism plays in
democracy? When is it
ok/not ok to protest?
– Problems: slavery, women's
rights, mistreatment of workers
– Protests bring awareness and
change
7. • Does everyone have a dark side? Describe a
situation in which a person might struggle to
keep his or her dark side under control
(personal or film).
8. • Where/why do
people look for
truth?
– escape from
materialism and
industrialism to
nature and the idea
of the self =
simplicity, truth,
beauty
9. • Page 296: List contradictory pairs of words in
the text.
– patriotic/individualistic, urban/untamed,
wealthy/enslaved
– Society is complex and inconsistent - causes
people to search for the truth inside and to
escape civilization.
10. • Romanticism: individual
spirit, beauty of nature,
possibilities of the
imagination
• response to the country's
growth and to the
Industrial Revolution
12. I. The Spirit of Exploration -
"manifest destiny"
• Louisiana Purchase doubled the country's size
• Moved west for money and land
• land taken from Native Americans – brutality
• Mexican American war- immoral, expanded
slavery
13. II. Growth of Industry
• War of 1812 forces USA to produce many goods
they previously imported
• Industrial Revolution: from farm to industry
• factory system: long hours, low wages, harsh
conditions
• people left their farms for the cities
• hectic pace, lack of conscience - writers turn to
nature, self, truth and beauty
14. III. The Tragedy of Slavery
• Cotton gin - numbers of
enslaved rise
• Life was brutal for slaves
• Romantics created
awareness of the
injustice of slavery with
their poems and writing
- supported human
rights
15. IV. Call for Social Reform
• Rise in opposition to social ills
• Abolition movement - emancipation of slaves
• Workers' rights - unions, conditions improved
• Women's rights
16. V. Nationalism vs. Sectionalism
• Nationalism - interests of the country are
placed above the interests of the individual
states
• American literature - no longer imitating
Europeans
• Sectionalism - placing of the interests of one's
own region ahead of the nation
17. VI. Romantic Literature
• Themes of nature and individualism (imitated
nature, valued imagination and emotion)
• Opposed to those that imitated Europe
• Opposed to the rationality of the Age of
Reason and the strict doctrines of Puritanism
(fear of supernatural favored over the fear of
God)
• Man is small compared to the natural world
18. VII. The Fireside
Poets
• reading poetry aloud beside a fire
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - individualism,
appreciation of nature, America's past
• Poetry to bring about social reform
• concern with the common man (farmers,
lumbermen, migrants, poor)
19. VIII. Transcendentalists – meaning
beyond reason and experience
• living a simple life, found truth in
nature/emotion/imagination
• Ideas of optimism, freedom, self-reliance
• Emerson - every individual has the intuition to
discover their own truth
• people are inherently good; should follow their
own beliefs, no matter how strange
20. • Criticized the closed minded Puritans
• Distaste for the materialistic side of American life
• spiritual being instead - close relationship to
nature
• Valued intelligence over money
• Movement faded when confronted with the
reality of slavery
21. IX. American Gothic: The "Brooding"
Romantics
• Did not believe people were naturally good,
explored the human capacity for evil
• focus on inner life of characters and character
motivations
• elements of fantasy and supernatural
• emphasized feelings, the individual and nature
22. Gothic elements
• grotesque characters - exaggerated
• bizarre situations
• violent events
• creepy - vampires, monsters, insanity, demons,
shadows
• psychology of the human soul - effect that sin and
guilt have on the mind
• mysterious and hidden aspects of humanity -
haunted by threat of disaster
