Unit 3 The Nineteenth Century: Romanticism vs Enlightenment

UNIT 3 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

ROMANTICISM

Contents

1. 1 Historical Context
2. 2 General Approach
   A. Definition
   B. Romanticism vs
   Enlightenment
   C. General Features
   D. American Peculiarities
3. 3 Washington Irving: a Transitional
   Writer [Next PPT]

ROMANTICISM

Historical Context (1800-1860)

The US between 1800 and
1860:

• Democratization
• Industrialization
• Westward expansion
  7
  +
  Slavery
  Civil War

ROMANTICISM

Historical Context (1800-1860) Democratization

Democratization:

• Debates on universal white male
  suffrage in each state: gradual abolition of
  property qualifications by the states.
  Jacksonian Democracy (https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Teaching-
  Jacksonian-Democracy-through-political-cartoons-1856337)
  Andrew Jackson's Inauguration (https://www.houstonchronicle.com/life/article/Do-you-
  know-your-inauguration-history-4206574.php)

ROMANTICISM

Historical Context (1800-1860) Industrialization

Industrialization:
......
......
........
.........

• Factories built in the North
• Perpetuation of the rural
  South
  https://www.pinterest.es/pin/465981892692236840/
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantation complexes in the Southern United State
  s#/media/File:Cotton plantation on the Mississippi, 1884 cropped.jpg
  .....
  .....

ROMANTICISM

Historical Context (1800-1860) Westward Expansion

Ceded so
Great Britain 1818
CANADA
Brithh Crdann
Oregon Terrivary 1846
(Treacy wuh Great Britain)
OREGON
WISCONSIN
NEW YORK
Louisiana Purchase
NEVADA
1803
UTAN
(from France)
Mexican Cession 1848
CALIFORNIA
KENTUCKY
TENNESSEE.NORTH CAROLINA
ARIZONA
NEWMEXICO
Caduiven Purchase
Texas Annexation 1845
(former Republic of Texas)
ALAB
THRAS
wwail Annexation
-
Spanish Cession
1819
Alaska
Westward expansion:

• The Northwest
  Ordinance
• The Louisiana Purchase
• The Florida Purchase
• The Annexation of Texas
• The Annexation of
  Oregon
• The Mexican Cession
  MEX
  West Florida
  Openinh Censier) 1813
  East Florida
  (Spenich Chodie) 1819
  PACIFIC OCEAN
  ILLINOIS
  Terrory of the Original TRisten Suaet
  (Črdid b) Grat filiale) 175s

ROMANTICISM

Historical Context (1800-1860) Manifest Destiny

Westward expansion:

• Manifest Destiny
• Slavery
  I
  John Gast: American Progress (c. 1872)
  https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-
  ushistory/chapter/conclusion-the-effects-of-
  westward-expansion/

ROMANTICISM

Historical Context Industrialization and Slavery

INDUSTRIALIZATION
+
SLAVERY (Westward expansion)
NORTH AND SOUTH TENSION
https://www.pinterest.es/pin/293648838181095570/

ROMANTICISM

Historical Context US Civil War

US Civil War
N.H.
Vt.
Minn.
Oregon
Dakota Territory
Mass
Wis.
N.Y.
Mich.
R.I.
Nebraska Terr.
lowa
Ct.
Ohio
Utah Terr.
Ind.
Calif.
Colo. Terr.
Kansas
Mo.
Ky
Va.
New Mexico Terr.
Indian
Terr.
N.C.
Tenn.
Ark.
S.C.
Union States
Ga.
Texas
Border States
La.
Fla.
Confederate States
Territories
https://www.pinterest.es/pin/859202435129755485/
Wash. Terr.
Me.
Nev.
Terr.
Pa.
W.V.
N.J.
·Del.
Md.
Miss. Ala.

ROMANTICISM

General Approach

Definition of Romanticism

A. Definition
Romanticism derives
from the development
of political and
philosophical ideas in
Europe inspiring the
"Age of Revolutions"
Movements for
freedom and
democracy in political,
social and artistic
terms
First developing in
Europe and then
exported to the
United States.
Group of German writers meeting in
Jena (1797-1800) and issuing a
manifesto to distinguish modern art
from that of the past: liberation from
past rules (=rules of Neoclassicism).

ENLIGHTENMENT &
NEOCLASSICISM

ROMANTICISM

Stress on reason, intellect, the head
Stress on feelings, intuition and the heart
Children are important because they
develop into adulthood through the
training of their savage instincts thus
eventually becoming civilized and
sophisticated.
Children are pure and holy because they
are a source of natural, spontaneous
feelings. Civilization is a corrupting
agent: they get corrupted by civilization.
Focusing on what can be logically
measured and rationally understood.
Attracted to the irrational, the mystical,
the supranatural.
Looking outwards towards society.
Looking inwards towards the individual
soul and imagination.
Christ Blessing the Little Children. William Blake (1799)

ROMANTICISM

General Approach: Romanticism vs Enlightenment

B. Romanticism vs
Enlightenment
"Christ, seated beneath a spreading tree, blesses children brought to him while he was preaching. To the left is
one of his disciples, who tries to send the children away. Christ tells the disciples:
Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God ... Whosoever
shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein".
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-christ-blessing-the-little-children-n05893

ROMANTICISM

General Approach: Romanticism vs Enlightenment Landscape

B. Romanticism vs
Enlightenment
Romantic Landscape by Thomas Cole
https://fineartamerica.com/featured/1-romantic-landscape-thomas-cole.html

ENLIGHTENMENT &
NEOCLASSICISM

ROMANTICISM

Attracted by a social order where
everyone knows his place.
Celebrating the freedom of nature and the
individual experience.
Society improves under regulation.
Criticism on society and its injustices.
Study of man in social contexts: concern
with man and manners in an artificial
society.
Concern with manly simplicity. Growing
interest and approbation of the primitive
and the wild.

ENLIGHTENMENT &
NEOCLASSICISM

ROMANTICISM

Mimetic, objective artistic theory: a work
of art is a mirror, passively mimetic or
reproductive of the existing "reality." Art
is objective and rationally planned.
Expressive, subjective theory: a work of
art is a lamp throwing out images
originating not in the world but in the
poet. Art is subjective and intuitive. MH
Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp, 1953.
Imitation of reality means not the
accidents but the underlying principles of
nature. Expression of the world as a
harmonious universe with ordered,
hierarchical political systems.
Stress on accidents, the extraordinary, the
sublime, greatness, etc.
Formal, ordered way of writing. Balance,
symmetry, adherence to convention.
Over-ornamentation.
Forms and language closer to everyday
speech and more accessible to the general
reader. Simple style: imitations of
genuinely early popular poetry (ballads).
Universalism.
Concern with the private and domestic.

ROMANTICISM

General Approach: Romanticism vs Enlightenment Shipwreck

B. Romanticism vs
Enlightenment
The Shipwreck by Joseph Vernet (1772)
https://www.pinterest.es/pin/79657487131399778/

ROMANTICISM

General Features of Romanticism

C. General Features

• Freedom: defense of individual freedom
• Individualism and the Self:
  +Defense of the dignity and uniqueness of the individual
  against the disintegrating effects of the industrial revolution
  +Condemnation of institutions and society as oppressive for
  the individual
  +The typical Romantic hero: a solitary individual, a spiritual
  outcast/rebel hostile to social imperatives or rules apart
  from truth to the artist's experience
• Remoteness:
  +rejection of contemporary society and preference for
  remote times and spaces;
  +preference for primitive societies and repudiation of
  sophisticated urban ones

ROMANTICISM

General Features: Emotions, Imagination, Nature

C. General Features

• Emotions and feelings (over Reason) as a source of
  inspiration
• Imagination:
  +Distinctive and defining human aspect
  (rather than reason)
  +Main creative force of the human beings
  +Kant (rather than Locke)
• Nature:
  +as a source of beauty and spontaneity
  +rejection (not of science but) of the scientific
  demystification of nature
• Praise of common people and simple life
  Distant View of Niagara Falls, 1830 By Thomas Cole. https://www.art.com/products/p48802135934-
  sa-i11013756/thomas-cole-distant-view-of-niagara-falls-1830.htm

ROMANTICISM

American Peculiarities of the Romantic Movement

D. American Peculiarities
Particular circumstances affecting the
Romantic Movement in the USA:
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
In the four quarters of the globe,
who reads an American book? Or goes to an
American play? Or looks at an American
picture or statue? What does the world yet
owe to American physicians or surgeons?
What new substances have their chemists
discovered? Or what old ones have they
analyzes? What new constellations have
been discovered by the telescopes of
Americans? What have they done in
mathematics ?... "
THE FRONTIER
Sidney Smith
PURITANISM
THE COLONIAL COMPLEX

ROMANTICISM

American Peculiarities: Revolution, Frontier, Puritanism

D. American Peculiarities
Particular circumstances affecting the
Romantic Movement in the USA:
The Revolution as a victory of (political) freedom and
democracy
The frontier as a safety valve for excedents of
population in the cities caused by industrialization:
opportunities and optimism.
Tendency to avoid explicit allusions (to sex, violence,
vice, etc)
In the four quarters of the globe,
who reads an American book? Or goes to an
American play? Or looks at an American
picture or statue? What does the world yet
owe to American physicians or surgeons?
What new substances have their chemists
discovered? Or what old ones have they
analyzes? What new constellations have
been discovered by the telescopes of
Americans? What have they done in
mathematics ?... "
Sidney Smith
Over-refinement

ROMANTICISM

American Peculiarities: Wilderness, Agrarian Nation, Sectional Differences

D. American Peculiarities
THE AMERICAN WILDERNESS
AMERICA: A NEW AGRARIAN
NATION
AMERICA: A NATION IN
THE MAKING
SECTIONAL DIFFERENCES:
THE NORTH, THE SOUTH,
THE WEST
PUBLISHING
https://stacker.com/stories/4000/50-photos-american-life-19th-century
https://blackthen.com/what-made-slavery-and-the-cotton-economy-so-desirable
W.H. Jackson's "Barlow Cutoff" in Oregon. Credit ... MPI/Getty Image
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/books/review/end-myth-greg-grandin.html

ROMANTICISM

American Peculiarities: National Ideals, Landscapes, Literary Sections

D. American Peculiarities
Exaltation of American
national ideals vs
European values
American landscapes
American past
Literary sections:
-The Middle States: literature as
art (+comercial interests)
-New England: literature as art
(+philosophical ideas)
-The South: plantation literature
The new-Adam
A rural society: opportunity
of realizing the pastoral ideal
of a life in harmony with
nature
Copyright laws
https://stacker.com/stories/4000/50-photos-american-life-19th-century
https://blackthen.com/what-made-slavery-and-the-cotton-economy-so-desirable
W.H. Jackson's "Barlow Cutoff" in Oregon.Credit ... MPI/Getty Image
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/books/review/end-myth-greg-grandin.html