American Romanticism
“. . . a glorification of yearning, striving, and becoming. . . “
~David Perkins
Romanticism, originally a European movement (began in Germany), emphasized feeling and intuition over reason. Romantics sought wisdom in natural beauty, and valued poetry above all other works of the imagination.
American Romanticism took two roads on the journey to understanding higher truths. One road led to the exploration of the past and of exotic, even supernatural, realms; the other road led to the contemplation of the natural world.
The differences between the views of the rationalists (Age of Reason) and those of the Romantics was that the rationalists viewed the city as a place to find success and self-realization, whereas the Romantics viewed the city as a place of moral ambiguity and of corruption and death.
The Romantic journey was a flight both from something and to something.
American Romanticism was a journey away from the corruption of civilization and the limits of rational thought and toward the integrity of nature and the freedom of the imagination. The Romantics associated the countryside with independence, moral clarity, and healthful living.
American novelists looked to westward expansion and the development of the frontier for inspiration, creating subject matter that broke with European traditions.
Virtue, American novelists implied, was in American innocence. Eternal truths were waiting to be discovered in the American Wilderness, not in the dusty libraries or crowded cities of Europe.
The rationalist hero was worldly, educated, sophisticated, and bent on making a place for himself in civilization. The American Romantic hero was youthful, innocent, intuitive, close to nature, and uneasy around women.
James Fenimore Cooper created the first American heroic figure: Natty Bumppo (a.k.a. Hawkeye, Deerslayer, and Leatherstocking), a heroic, virtuous, skillful frontiersman whose simple morality, love of nature, distrust of town life, and almost superhuman resourcefulness mark him as the American Romantic hero.
Characteristics of the American Romantic Hero:
- Is young, or possesses youthful qualities;
- Is innocent and pure of purpose;
- Has a sense of honor based not on society’s rules but on some higher principle;
- Loves nature and avoids town life; and
- Quests for some higher truth in the natural world.
http://www.npr.org/series/4538138/this-i-believe
http://www.yellafella.com/press/YellaWood_OldWestRidesAgain.pdf