Sometimes called the American Renaissance, Romanticism was and philosophical, artistic, and literary movement in American in the nineteenth century. Romanticism spread through out Europe in the late eighteenth century and was a reaction to Neoclassicism which was the movement that had dominated in the mid eighteenth century. Romanticism is such a broad movement that it is almost impossible to have a clear definition of the phenomena. Some aspects of romanticism included the idea that the universe is a single unified whole and that everything in the world is connected in some way. Also, that the universe is full of tendencies, values, and life and reflects human experience. Romanticism includes the idea of naturalization and humanization of the divine. And, most important, it acert "the feeling intellect" which can be summed up as a feeling or intuition that tells a person what is wrong or right and those persons feel greater truths. This belief resembles Mysticism. Other characteristics included a deepened appreciation of nature, a general belief of emotion over intellect, and an emphasis on imagination as a passageway to transcendent experience and spiritual truth (Transcendentalism). Other important features were included within the Romantic Movement. One is Primitivism which is the belief in the goodness and value of the "created" state of individuals. Another aspect of Romanticism is Nationality which emphasizes a value of ethnic groups and their contributions to the world. But just as important, the belief in Individualism, or the thought that an individual person has just as much value as that nation. Romanticism played an important role in the philosophy and literature of the nineteenth century. Romanticism can be seen mainly in the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Henry David Thoreau but also in the works of Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe and Herman Melville.
Kellie Harris Hopkins
The Three Theses of Romanticism
Romanticism
American Literary, Romanticism: Online Resources