- American Romanticism believed in the importance of the individual over society. As the American landscape expanded, people moved to the country to forge a living for themselves. The American population also changed and became more diverse with a rise in immigration. These two drastic changes led early Americans to search for a deeper sense of self. With so many social groups melding together to form a unified nation, the need to define a national identity was at the forefront of much of the literature from the American Romantic era.
- Much of American Romantic literature focused on the social outsider as a protagonist who lived by their own rules on the outskirts of society. These characters often go against the social norms and customs in favor of their own feelings, intuition, and moral compass. Some typical examples include Huck Finn from Mark Twain's (1835-1910) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) and Natty Bumppo from James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneers (1823).
- For many American Romantic writers, including the purported "father of American Poetry" Walt Whitman, nature was a source of spirituality. American Romantics focused on the unknown and beautiful American landscape. The uncharted territory of the outdoors was an escape from the societal constraints many rallied against. Living in nature away from the industrialized and developed city offered the immense potential to live life freely and on one's own terms. Henry David Thoreau documented his own experience among nature in his famous work, Walden (1854).
- Many characters in American Romantic literature journey away from the city, the industrialized landscape, and into the great outdoors. Sometimes, as in the short story "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) by Washington Irving (1783-1859), the place is unrealistic, with fantastical events that take place.
- During the Industrial Revolution, a time of progress for American society and of optimism, the ideology focused on the importance of ingenuity and the ability of the average person to succeed with hard work and creativity. The Romantic writers valued the power of imagination and wrote about it to escape overpopulated, polluted cities.
- For example, this excerpt from William Wordsworth's (1770-1850) autobiographical poem "The Prelude" (1850) emphasizes the importance of imagination in life.
- Imagination—here the Power so called
- Through sad incompetence of human speech,
- That awful Power rose from the mind’s abyss
- Like an unfathered vapour that enwraps,
- At once, some lonely traveller. I was lost;
- Halted without an effort to break through;
- But to my conscious soul I now can say—
- “I recognise thy glory:” in such strength
- Of usurpation, when the light of sense
- Goes out, but with a flash that has revealed
- The invisible world….
- from "The Prelude" Book VII
- Wordsworth shows awareness of the power of imagination to reveal the unseen truths in life.
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