romantic period 1 2015

Romanticism: the gothic, the supernatural, the wild, the exotic the longing for the good old days
A History of New York of the Dutch Dynasty from the Old World to the Present (1809)
James Fenimore Cooper (1789 – 1851)
Cooper as a Mythic Writer of the American Western Frontier
His fiction as a myth about -- the formative period of the American nation; --- the American national experience of adventure into the West; --- modern civilization advancing on the receding wilderness
1810 to 1865
The Romantic Period 浪漫主义时期文学
I. Early Fiction 1. Washington Irving 2. James Fenimore Cooper
II . Transcendentalists 1. Ralph Waldo Emerson 2. Henry David Thoreau
Natty Bumppo
--- The ideal American, free and virtuous (innocence, simplicity, honesty and generosity, with a sense of good and evil) in God’s world; “Noble Savage”
---- Chang Yaoxin, 61
Standing on the bare ground, --- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, --- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.
Reputation of the Book
1. A Demonstration of Emersonian Transcendental Philosophy Emerson: “Trust thyself!” “Make thyself!” “Go back to nature!” “Sink thyself in nature!”
Civil Disobedience (1849)
“disobedience”: a biblical flavor “I” as the moral arbiter. “Trust Thyself.”
vs God as the moral arbiter in the Bible.
Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854)
• Native or American:
American Uniqueness and Concerns
Pioneering into the West Puritan Consciousness of Morality Ideals of individualism and political
• transcendere (latin); transcend v.: go beyond (a sort of limit)
“[Transcendentalism emphasizes] the recognition in man of the or of attaining knowledge transcending the reach of the senses.”
(1789 – 1851) The American Scott
Washington Irving (1783 - 1859)
• The first to gain international fame; • The father of American literature, esp.,
the short story; • Marking the beginning of American
implications: Spontaneous, intuitive faculties of man Infinitude or Divinity of man Self-reliance
Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
• Civil Disobedience (1849) • Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854)
2. Life in Walden, a metaphor for self-sufficiency an "experiment in living"
3. Life in Walden as a Quest
Thoreau's Convictions
➢ We should live a simple material but rich spiritual life. "Simplicity!" "Simplify!"
Natty Bumppo The Leather-stocking Tales:
The Pioneers (1823); in the 70s The Last of the Mohicans (1826);
in the 40s The Prairie (1827); in the 90s The Pathfinder (1840); in the 40s The Deer-slayer (1841); in the 20s
------J.A. Saxton in The Dial
...when the soul has gone beyond the physical limits of the body to share the omniscience of the Oversoul. ... The soul has completely transcended the limits of individuality and become part of the Oversoul.
➢ Living close to nature is personally liberating and ethically rejuvenating/regenerating.
➢ An individual's conscience should take precedence over the demands, even the laws of society.
III. Power of Imagination 1. Edgar Allan Poe 2. Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter 3. Herman Melville: Moby Dick
IV. New Visions of America 1.Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass 2. Emily Dickinson
--- A representation of a nation struggling to be born from old age to rebirth and youth
New England Transcendentalism
1830s - 1840s
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882)
Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
Transcendental Movement
Essential facts: • from the 1830s to the 1840s • a local phenomenon, in Concord, Mass. • The Transcendental Club • Nature as the manifesto of this movement. • The Dial, a magazine 《日晷》
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819-1820)
Rip Van Winkle 20-year sleep in the mountains
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Ichabod Crane, from Connecticut, met Headless Horseman on the way back from a county party during the night through the dark woods.
Practice of their Ideas
• The Utopian Community living: Brook Farm, Fruitland and etc..
• Individual perfection • Social reformation
anti-slavery, abolitionist movement, pro-feminist ideas, education
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882)
Emerson's Individual Essays
Nature (1836) The American Scholar (1837) Self-Reliance (1941) The Over-soul (1841) The Poet (1844)
---- Ralph Waldo Emerson
from Nature
Important Principles of New England Transcendentalism
The Spirit or the Over-soul Primacy of the Individual Man Nature as symbolic of the Spirit
American Romantic Writing
• Imitative or Derivative:
European Romanticism the intuitive response the imaginative and the emotional qualities the individual and the common people the external and the psychic nature the past, the medieval and the exotic
equality, the New Garden of Eden Transcendentalism
Early Fiction and Early American Writers
Washington Irving (1783 - 1859)
The American Goldsmith James Fenimore Cooper