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Romanticism
The period from 1820 to 1865 is generally considered the Romantic period in American letters, mirroring what was happening in literature and the arts in Europe. Romanticism held art, spirituality, and nature at its center, and the Romantics valued the individual and intuition over society’s rules and logic. In Romantic writing, the literary imagination was freed to include dreams and the supernatural, often in highly expressive language. For some, this journey into the unknown led to a darker side of Romantic writing, classified today as Gothic literature. Elements of Gothic writing include the dangers of the natural world, a terror and fear of the unknown, decaying and isolated landscapes, and an individual’s potential for evil.
Edgar Allan Poe, one of the original American Gothic writers, believed that a short story was the link between poetry and longer prose and so should be full of “poetic suggestion.” The writing of this time was highly figurative—full of symbols and metaphors—with allusions to Scripture, myths, Shakespeare, and other classics known to most readers of the day.Writers used allegories and parables,“moralistic” literary forms their readers were comfortable with from folktales and the Bible. Fictional characters were often stand-ins for ideas, not the psychologically complex characters that would come later in the century.
All the same, Hawthorne began to explore the inner life of his characters. Mining New England Puritan history, he described the hysterical atmosphere of prejudice and persecution in the Salem witchcraft trials. Much of what America knows today about the Puritans comes to us from his stories and novels. Poe derided the moral concerns of Hawthorne, firmly believing that the “job” of literature was not to provide a moral lesson. Nevertheless, Hawthorne’s obsession with human arrogance, death, and depravity were themes that had much in common with his fellow mid-century writers. Melville considered Hawthorne the first American writer to truly represent the American spirit, finding a soul mate in his pessimistic predecessor.
The literature forms—short story, poetry, and essay—included here represent some of the finest writing examples of Romanticism and Transcendentalism.
Finding an American Voice Unit One 5