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Chapter 2 Literature of American Romanticism

A Brief Introduction

The American Romantic period is considered one of the most important periods, the first literary Renaissance, in the history of American literature. It stretches from the end of the eighteenth century through the outbreak of the Civil War. It started with the publication of Washington Irving's The Sketch Book and ended with Whitman's Leaves of Grass.

American romantic literature is best explained by referring to certain stirring events of American national history. Historically, it was the time of western expansion. The western boundary had reached to the Pacific by 1860; the number of states had increased from the original thirteen at the time of independence to twenty-one by the middle of the 19th century; its total population increased from four million people in 1790 to thirty million in 1860. Economically, the whole nation was experiencing an industrial transformation, which affected American people's lives. The growth of industrialization helped restructure economic life. The sudden influx of immigration gave a big push to the booming industry. Politically, democracy and political equality became the ideals of new nation, and the two-party system came into being. Literarily and culturally, the new nation needed to express its own experiences: their early Puritan settlements, their confrontations with the Indians, their frontiersmen's life, and the wild west. Besides, the ever-increasing numbers of newspapers, magazines, journals and books reviews provided a great market. All these produced a strong sense of optimism for American romanticism.

This surging romanticism also had support abroad. In Europe, the Romantic Movement which had flourished earlier in the century both in England and Europe added incentive to the growth of Romanticists in America. The American writers who traveled to Europe and kept in touch with European Romanticism were greatly influenced. Washington Irving was the most important. The greatest benefit for Irving during his travels in Europe was his contact with Sir Walter Scott, one of the most important British writers of his period. Scott introduced Irving to the Tales of German Romances, upon which Irving wrote some of his best-known short stories. In addition, Scott's border tales and Waverley romances inspired such Americans as James Fenimore Cooper. The Gothic tradition and the cult of solitude and gloom came through interest in the works of writers like Mr. Radcliffe, E. T. A. Hoffman, James Thomson and the “graveyard” poets. Robert Burns and Byron both inspired and spurred the American imagination for lyrics and passion and despair. The impact of Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads added, to some extent, to the nation's singing strength.

American Romanticism was modeled on English and European works but exhibited from the very outset distinct features of its own. For instance, the American national experience of “pioneering” into the west proved to be a rich fount of material for American write rs to draw upon. Then, there is American Puritanism as a cultural heritage to consider. American moral values were essentially Puritan, and its influence over American Romanticism was conspicuously noticeable. American romantic authors tended more to moralize than their English and European brothers, and many American romantic writers intended to edify more than they entertained. Another thing merits attention with American Romanticism--the “newness” of America as a nation. The ideals of individualism and political equality, and the dream that America was to be a new Garden of Eden for man were distinctly American.