Uzbekistan state university of world languages english language faculty №2 Course paper Theme: romanticism in american literature

The subject of my course paper is Romanticism in American literature.
The object of my course paper is --”The characteristics of Romanticism in American literature
The course paper includes introduction, 2 chapters, conclusion and list of references.
The main part includes …
2 chapters
Chapter 1 consists of two subjects.They are:American Romanticsm and Romantic period in American literature.

Written about the influence of Romanticism on American literature and the Romantic period:Transcentantalism,Dark/Ghotic romanticsim and Sentimentalism.In addition In Romanticsm era key author and their work is given.

Chapter 2.
It includes:Characterists of Romanticsm and Dark Romanticsm in American literature.Its characteristics are : Idealization of women,Focus on individuality,Personification and Pathetic fallacy,Interest in common Man,Celebration of Isolation and Melancholic. This characteristic is illustrated by examples of the works of the creators.

MAIN PART
1.Chapter.

1. 
   AMERICAN ROMANTICISM
   

 The 19th Century was an inconceivably wealthy timd of The Sentimental Period) was an expressions and writing development that started in Europe and in the long run made its way to the Joined together States, where it took on a life of its claim. At first, Sentimentalism started as a response to Industrialism and the prohibitive neoclassical thoughts of the going before time of Illumination. It rejected thoughts of advancement, logic, and devout inflexibility and instep centered on person feeling, the investigation of the self, and the significancio The 19th Century was an inconceivably wealthy time in American history. Within the wake of the American Insurgency and the War of 1812, the Joined together States was still at the early stages of shaping its claim character and a culture of its possess. This time period, generally recalled as the Sentimental Time, enormously affected American thought, and may well be credited as the period that gave birth to what it implies “to be an American.” Romanticism (the more common title for the period of The Sentimental Period) was an expressions and writing development that started in Europe and in the long run made its way to the Joined together States, where it took on a life of its claim. At first, Sentimentalism started as a response to Industrialism and the prohibitive neoclassical thoughts of the going before time of Illumination. It rejected thoughts of advancement, logic, and devout inflexibility and instep centered on person feeling, the investigation of the self, and the significance reason and self-expression was valued over traditional restraint.
In the grand scope of American literature, American Romanticism was the first real literary movement to ever occur within in the United States. In fact, the Romantic Era in the United States was largely known as the “American Renaissance” because it was around this time that American writers and artists began searching for a distinctly “American” voice, separate from that of their British and European counterparts.
Just a few short decades after the American Revolution and in the wake of the War of 1812, the country found itself in a place of newly acquired freedom and at the precipice of unending possibility with regards to their identity as a nation. This state of liminality led to a bursting of creativity and artistic development spanning from the early to mid 1800s.
Inspired by British romantic writers who focused on aesthetics of nature, emotion, and the self, American artists took to writing about America through these Romantic lenses. William Cullen Bryant, for example, was inspired to write poetry depicting New England outdoors as influenced by the Romantic appreciation for nature. Henry David Thoreau, a key figure in American literature was also influenced by these works, and became a leading member of the distinctly American movement of Transcendentalism.

Meanwhile, social and political events such as the inauguration of Andrew Jackson shaped democratic thought and concept, asserting the value of the individual no matter their background or social status. Influenced by this increase in democratic ideal, American culture began to lead more toward individualism, compounding the already existing romantic ideas of self-expression and independence.

Through the flurry of change and progress, American Romanticism began to thrive. Writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson – a man credited to have paved the way for American Romanticism – encouraged other artists to examine their national identity and leave European form, structure, and tradition behind. In turn, America began to develop its own voice filled with spirit and the birth of the human self.

Romanticism gave birth to some of America’s greatest writers – Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emerson, and Thoreau, and some of the masterpieces of American literature, such as Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter. Each work, though varying in genre and content, was a rebellion against formalism and an exploration of individualism, the self, and national perception. Perhaps the ideological traits of this time period provide us a glimpse into understanding why we are the way that we are.

2.ROMANTIC PERIOD IN AMERICAN LITERATURE.
The Romantic period of literature began in the 19th century. It presented a shift from logical, Lockean thinking to thinking based off of emotion. It served as a critique of the Enlightenment and Puritan ages. This philosophical movement placed an importance on imagination, emotion, nature, and individuality. This period also had three major branches: Transcendentalism, Dark/Gothic Romanticism, and Sentimentalism.
During a time when the Industrial Revolution was sweeping across America and people were being replaced by machines, Romantic literature put emphasis on individuals. Romantics believed that people were inherently good and discovery came through intuition and feeling. A defining trait of the Romantic era, and the major critique of the Enlightenment, was that creativity was more highly valued over logic. Romanticism was also inspired by an awe and respect of nature. 
Poetry was also popular during this time period. Some major poets of this time period were Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson was also a major figure in the Transcendentalist movement. Transcendentalists beliefs were very similar to that of Romantics. They believed that human senses were limited, and an individual could “transcend”, or move beyond the physical senses into another world through intuition. Transcendentalists often believed that humans, nature, and God were all connected, and that this "Oversoul" was the guiding force present in their lives.
Gothic literature was a little bit different. This branch of Romanticism is characterized by a preoccupation with gloom, mystery, and terror. It often also included supernatural elements. Gothics believed that evil manifested itself in an individual when they were isolated from other people. Notable Dark Romantic writers are Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, and Herman Melvelli._ The works of literature during The Romantic Period all contained similar themes. Common examples of these themes are nature, romanticism and self-reliance. As the idea of Manifest Destiny fueled American expansion in the western frontier, this inspired literature about the struggle between man and nature, like the story of Moby-Dick. The west was also frequently romanticized by the optimistic romantics who expected to find abundant riches, and war romanticized by those who expected to find abundant glory. Humanity was often romanticized by Transcendentalists who believed that everyone was inherently good, and dark romantics like Poe believed that evil existed in isolation.
Self-reliance was also a main theme in the literature of this time period. From the Declaration of Independence to the essays of Emerson and Thoreau, Self Reliance was woven into American culture. It was this self-reliance that caused the success of America. As the Common Core Literature textbook says, "...it was extraordinary individuals who made it happen-self-reliant men and women who thought for themselves and refused to let social, political, religious, or cultural institutions overwhelm them."__________

_ Key Authors:

1. 
   Washington Irving: "The Devil and Tom Walker"
   
2. 
   William Cullen Bryant: "Thanatopsis"
   
3. 
   Nathaniel Hawthorne: "The Minister's Black Veil", The Scarlet Letter
   
4. 
   Edgar Allan Poe: "The Raven", "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Tell-Tale Heart"
   
5. 
   Herman Melville: Moby-Dick
   
6. 
   Oliver Wendell Holmes: "Old Ironsides"
   
7. 
   Amos Bronson Alcott: "The Forester" and "Thoreau"
   
8. 
   Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Nature", "Self-Reliance", "Concord Hymn"
   
9. 
   Henry David Thoreau: "Walden", "Civil Disobedience"
   
10. 
    Emily Dickinson: "Because I Could not Stop for Death", "I Heard a Fly Buzz--When I Died", "There's a Certain Slant of Light", "My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close--", " The Soul Selects Her Own Society--", "The Brain--Is Wider than the Sky", " There is a Solitude of Space"
    
11. 
    Walt Whitman: "Leaves of Grass", "Song of Myself"
    
12. 
    Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom’s Cabin
    

2 CHAPTER.

3.CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANTICISM
Romantic literature is marked by six primary characteristics: celebration of nature, focus on the individual and spirituality, celebration of isolation and melancholy, interest in the common man, idealization of women, and personification and pathetic fallacy.

Romantic writers saw nature as a teacher and a source of infinite beauty. One of the most famous works of Romanticism is John Keats’ To Autumn (1820):

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,–
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
Keats personifies the season and follows its progression from the initial arrival after summer, through the harvest season, and finally to autumn’s end as winter takes its place.

Focus on idividuality

Romantic writers turned inward, valuing the individual experience above all else. This in turn led to heightened sense of spirituality in Romantic work, and the addition of occult and supernatural elements.

The work of Edgar Allan Poe exemplifies this aspect of the movement; for example, The Raven tells the story of a man grieving for his dead love (an idealized woman in the Romantic tradition) when a seemingly sentient Raven arrives and torments him, which can be interpreted literally or seen as a manifestation of his mental instabilitity.

CELEBRATION OF ISOLATION AND MELANCHOLY

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a very influential writer in Romanticism; his books of essays explored many of the themes of the literary movement and codified them. His 1841 essay Self-Reliance is a seminal work of Romantic writing in which he exhorts the value of looking inward and determining your own path, and relying on only your own resources.

Related to the insistence on isolation, melancholy is a key feature of many works of Romanticism, usually seen as a reaction to inevitable failure—writers wished to express the pure beauty they perceived and failure to do so adequately resulted in despair like the sort expressed by Percy Bysshe Shelley in A Lament:

Interest in the Common Man

William Wordsworth was one of the first poets to embrace the concept of writing that could be read, enjoyed, and understood by anyone.

He eschewed overly stylized language and references to classical works in favor of emotional imagery conveyed in simple, elegant language, as in his most famous poem I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud:

I wandered lonely as a Cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden Daffodils;
Beside the Lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and

Idealization of Women

In works such as Poe’s The Raven, women were always presented as idealized love interests, pure and beautiful, but usually without anything else to offer. Ironically, the most notable novels of the period were written by women (Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and Mary Shelley, for example), but had to be initially published under male pseudonyms because of these attitudes. Much Romantic literature is infused with the concept of women being perfect innocent beings to be adored, mourned, and respected—but never touched or relied upon.

Personification and Pathetic Fallacy

Romantic literature’s fixation on nature is characterized by the heavy use of both personification and pathetic fallacy. Mary Shelley used these techniques to great effect in Frankenstein:

Its fair lakes reflect a blue and gentle sky; and, when troubled by the winds, their tumult is but as the play of a lively infant, when compared to the roarings of the giant ocean.
Romanticism continues to influence literature today; Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight novels are clear descendants of the movement, incorporating most of the characteristics of classic Romanticism despite being published a century and half after the end of the movement’s active life.