Influence of European Romanticism on American writers

The European Romantic movement reached America in the early 19th century.

American Romanticism was just as multifaceted and individualistic as it was in Europe. Like the Europeans, the American Romantics demonstrated a high level of moral enthusiasm, commitment to individualism and the unfolding of the self, an emphasis on intuitive perception, and the assumption that the natural world was inherently good, while human society was filled with corruption

Romanticism became popular in American politics, philosophy and art.

The movement appealed to the revolutionary spirit of America as well as to those longing to break free of the strict religious traditions of early settlement

The Romantics rejected rationalism and religious intellect

It appealed to those in opposition of Calvinism, which includes the belief that the destiny of each individual is preordained

The Romantic movement gave rise to New England Transcendentalism which portrayed a less restrictive relationship between God and Universe

The new philosophy presented the individual with a more personal relationship with God

Transcendentalism and Romanticism appealed to Americans in a similar fashion, for both privileged feeling over reason, individual freedom of expression over the restraints of tradition and custom

It often involved a rapturous response to nature

It encouraged the rejection of harsh, rigid Calvinism, and promised a new blossoming of American culture

American Romanticism embraced the individual and rebelled against the confinement of neoclassicism and religious tradition

The Romantic movement in America created a new literary genre that continues to influence American writers

Novels, short stories, and poems replaced the sermons and manifestos of yore

Romantic literature was personal, intense, and portrayed more emotion than ever seen in neoclassical literature

America's preoccupation with freedom became a great source of motivation for Romantic writers as many were delighted in free expression and emotion without so much fear of ridicule and controversy

They also put more effort into the psychological development of their characters, and the main characters typically displayed extremes of sensitivity and excitement.

The works of the Romantic Era also differed from preceding works in that they spoke to a wider audience, partly reflecting the greater distribution of books as costs came down during the period

Romantic period saw an increase in female authors and also female readers.

Poe, Emerson, and Hawthorne are near perfect representations for Romanticism

. Poe's poetry has that happy, lyrical, and metrical verse

His subjects may be gloomy, but his poems contain sentimentality and supernatural characteristics and are about exploring the human psyche

For example, "The Raven" is about a sleepless narrator who is absolutely haunted by a raven. This man is mourning the death of his lost Lenore and is very melancholy

The raven shows up and makes his perch and will not leave

The man asks questions about grief, but the raven will only answer "nevermore."

This event would never occur in real life, which makes the poem Romantic

The poem also is about exploring the depths of this man's grief

Similarly, Emerson is Romantic. Actually he is transcendental, but this can be seen as an offshoot of Romanticism

In "Self Reliance," Emerson espouses the ideas of Transcendentalism

He tells the reader things like the importance of trusting oneself and that we don't know everything by knowledge; some things are learned through experience

The philosophy makes sense but is "out there" enough for it to be hard to incorporate into everyday life. Discussing abstract ideas without translation to real life is Romantic as well

In his poem "Give All to Love," he also talks of the importance to trusting oneself and giving oneself over to the divine power of love

In Hawthorne's short stories, these abstract qualities take on a symbolic meaning

In "The Birthmark," Alymer was so involved in achieving perfection that he ended up killing his wife in the process

As virtual mentor says, "Nature in romantic literature is moral; it bears symbolic meaning, and humans who challenge it with inadequate respect for the immanent power of the divine generally learn lessons in humility" (virtual mentor).

Who are they again?

So who were these Romanticism writers?

First of all they were a diverse group of individuals varying from different backgrounds and styles, but one thing that they had in common was that they were all individualistic minded writers

Here is a list of the authors below with their major works and importance:

"Young Goodman Brown"- "The Scarlet Letter"- "The House of Green Gables"-one of the anti-romantics

Edgar Allan Poe- "Narrative of Arthur Gordon Rym", "A Tell Tale Heart", "The Raven", inventor of the American short short-1

Washington Irving-"Rip Van Winkle", "Sleepy Hollow",

Walt Whitman- the controversial "Leaves of Grass", "Franklin Evans"

Henry David Thoreau- "Civil Disobedience"

Harriet Beecher Stowe- "Uncle Tom's Cabin". the "little lady who started the Civil War"

James Fenimore Cooper- "The Last of the Mohicans"

Emily Dickinson- "is My verse...alive"

, one of the bridge poets between American Romanticism and the 20th century

American realism was an early 20th century idea in art, music and literature that showed through these different types of work, reflections of the time period

Whether it was a cultural portrayal, or a scenic view of downtown New York City, these images and works of literature, music and painting depicted a contemporary view of what was happening; an attempt at defining what was real

In American literature, the term "realism" encompasses the period of time from the Civil War to the turn of the century during which William Dean Howells, Rebecca Harding Davis, Henry James, Mark Twain, and others wrote fiction devoted to accurate representation and an exploration of American lives in various contexts

As the United States grew rapidly after the Civil War, the increasing rates of democracy and literacy, the rapid growth in industrialism and urbanization, an expanding population base due to immigration, and a relative rise in middle-class affluence provided a fertile literary environment for readers interested in understanding these rapid shifts in culture

In drawing attention to this connection, Amy Kaplan has called realism a "strategy for imagining and managing the threats of social change" (Social Construction of American Realism ix)

Realism was a movement that encompassed the entire country, or at least the Midwest and South, although many of the writers and critics associated with realism (notably W. D. Howells) were based in New England. Among the Midwestern writers considered realists would be Joseph Kirkland, E. W. Howe, and Hamlin Garland; the Southern writer John W. DeForest's Miss Ravenal's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty is often considered a realist novel, too.

Like all the terms relating to literary movements, the term is loose and somewhat equivocal

American Realism began as a reaction to and a rejection of Romanticism, with its emphasis on emotion, imagination, and the individual

The movement began as early as the 1830's but reached prominence and held sway from the end of the Civil War to around the end of the nineteenth century

The movement was centered in fiction, particularly the novel

It attempted fidelity to real life, or "actuality," in its representation

The realist concerns himself with the here and now, centering his work in his own time, dealing with common-place everyday events and people, and with the socio-political climate of his day

5- George Washington Cable, fiction 9The Grandissimes , Old Creole Days)

American literary naturalism is a literary movement that became popular in late-nineteenth-century America and is often associated with literary realism

The term naturalism was initially coined by Emile Zola, the renowned French author who is also credited as a key figure in the development of French literary naturalism

In the late nineteenth century, the literary movement became popular all over Europe, from England to Russia

American writers were particularly influenced by the British and French models and began to adapt the form to reflect American social, economic, and cultural conditions

Viewed as a combination of realism and romanticism, critics contend that the American form is heavily influenced by the concept of determinism—the theory that heredity and environment influence determine human behavior

Although naturalism is often associated with realism, which also seeks to accurately represent human existence, the two movements are differentiated by the fact that naturalism is connected to the doctrine of biological, economic, and social determinism

In their short fiction, naturalist writers strive to depict life accurately through an exploration of the causal factors that have shaped a character's life as well as a deterministic approach to the character's thoughts and actions

Therefore, instead of free will, a naturalist depicts a character's actions as determined by environmental forces

American literary naturalism came to the forefront of popular literature during a time of tremendous cultural and economic upheaval in the United States

in the late nineteenth century, industrialization, urbanization, mechanization, and an influx of immigrants from all over the world resulted in extreme changes on the American landscape

The short fiction of American literary naturalism depicts the experiences of impoverished and uneducated people living in squalor and struggling to survive in a harsh, indifferent world

Major thematic concerns of the form include the fight for survival—man against nature and man against society; violence; the consequences of sex and sex as a commodity; the waste of individual potential because of the conditioning forces of life; and man's struggle with his animalistic

base instincts. As a result, the short stories of this literary movement are often regarded as depressing, slice-of-life documentations of sad, unfulfilled lives

A handful of significant American authors, such as Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, and Frank Norris, utilized the form, which noticeably declined in popularity by the early twentieth century

Critics note, however, the literary movement's continuing influence on contemporary American authors.

Don't confuse the Modernists movement with the standard dictionary definition of modern

Modernism in Literature is not a chronological designation; rather it consists of literary work possessing certain loosely defined characteristics.

Marked by a strong and intentional break with tradition

This break includes a strong reaction against established religious, political, and social views.

Belief that the world is created in the act of perceiving it; that is, the world is what we say it is.

. There is no such thing as absolute truth. All things are relative.

No connection with history or institutions. Their experience is that of alienation, loss, and despair.

Championship of the individual and celebration of inner strength.

Life is unordered.

Concerned with the sub-conscious.

Known as "The Lost Generation" American writers of the 1920s Brought Modernism to the United States.

Like their British contemporaries, American Modernists rejected traditional institutions and forms.

Ernest Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises chronicles the meaningless lives of the Lost Generation. Farewell to Arms narrates the tale of an ambulance driver searching for meaning in WWI.

F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby shows through its protagonist, Jay Gatsby, the corruption of the American Dream.

John Dos Passos, Hart Crane, and Sherwood Anderson are other prominent writers of the period

Modernism was a cultural wave that originated in Europe and swept the United States during the early 20th century. Modernism impacted music, art and literature by radically undoing traditional forms, expressing a sense of modern life as a sharp break from the past and its rigid conventions. In literature, the elements of modernism are thematic, formal and stylistic.

During the First World War, the world witnessed the chaos and destruction of which modern man was capable. The modernist American literature produced during the time reflects such themes of destruction and chaos. But chaos and destruction are embraced, as they signal a collapse of Western civilization's classical traditions. Literary modernists celebrated the collapse of conventional forms. Modernist novels destroy conventions by reversing traditional norms, such as gender and racial roles, notable in F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," for example. They also destroy conventional forms of language by deliberately breaking rules of syntax and structure. William Faulkner's novel "The Sound and the Fury," for instance, boldly rejects the rules of language, as Faulkner invents new words and adopts a first-person narrative method, interior monologue.

Related to the theme of destruction is the theme of fragmentation. Fragmentation in modernist literature is thematic, as well as formal. Plot, characters, theme, images, and narrative form itself are broken. Take, for instance, T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," which depicts a modern waste land of crumbled cities. The poem itself is fragmented, consisting of broken stanzas and sentences that resemble the cultural debris and detritus through which the speaker (modern man) wades. William Faulkner's novels, such as "The Sound and the Fury" are also fragmented in form, consisting of disjointed and nonlinear narratives. Modernist literature embraces fragmentation as a literary form, since it reinforces the fragmentation of reality and contradicts Hegelian notions of totality and wholeness.

Modernist literature is concerned with representing modernity, which, by its very definition, supersedes itself. Modernity must, in order to emerge, annihilate the past. Problematically, modernity must annihilate itself the very moment it is actualized, as the moment it emerges, it becomes a part of the past. Modernist literature represents the paradox of modernity through themes of cycle and rejuvenation. Eliot's speaker in "The Waste Land" famously declares "these fragments I have shored against my ruins" (line 430). The speaker must reconstruct meaning by reassembling the pieces of history. Importantly, there is rebirth and rejuvenation in ruin, and modernist literature celebrates the endless cycle of destruction, as it ever gives rise to new forms and creations.

Modernist literature is also marked by themes of loss and exile. Modernism rejected conventional truths and figures of authority, and modernists moved away from religion. In modernist literature, man is assured that his own sense of morality trumps. But individualism results in feelings of isolation and loss. Themes of loss, isolation and exile from society are particularly apparent in Ernest Hemingway's novels, the protagonists of which adopt rather nihilistic outlooks of the world because they have become so disenfranchised from the human community.

Another element of modernist literature is the prevalent use of personal pronouns. Authority becomes a matter of perspective. There is no longer an anonymous, omniscient third-person narrator, as there is no universal truth, according to the modernists. In fact, many modernist novels (Faulkner's, for instance) feature multiple narrators, as many modernist poems ("The Waste Land", for instance) feature multiple speakers. The conflicting perspectives of various narrators and speakers reflect the multiplicities of truth and the diversities of reality that modernism celebrates.

Modernist novels did not treat lightly topics about social woes, war and poverty. John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" frankly depicts families plagued by economic hardship and strife, contradicting idyllic depictions of American life represented elsewhere in literature. Modernist novels also reflect a frank awareness of societal ills and of man's capacity for cruelty. Ernest Hemingway's anti-heroic war tales depicted the bloodiness of the battlefields, as he dealt frankly with the horrors of war. Faulkner, particularly in his most famous novel, "The Sound and the Fury," also shows how incomprehensibly cruel man can be, especially with regard to racial and class differences

The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke

Though it was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, many French-speaking black writers from African and Caribbean colonies who lived in Paris were also influenced by the Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance is unofficially recognized to have spanned from about 1919 until the early or mid 1930s. Many of its ideas lived on much longer

The zenith of this "flowering of Negro literature", as James Weldon Johnson preferred to call the Harlem Renaissance, was placed between 1924 (the year that Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life hosted a party for black writers where many white publishers were in attendance) and 1929 (the year of the stock market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression)

1. Harlem Renaissance (HR) is the name given to the period from the end of World War I and through the middle of the 1930s Depression, during which a group of talented African-American writers produced a sizable body of literature in the four prominent genres of poetry, fiction, drama, and essay

2. The notion of "twoness" , a divided awareness of one's identity, was introduced by W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).and the author of the influential book The Souls of Black Folks (1903): "One ever feels his two-ness - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled stirrings: two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."

3. Common themes: alienation, marginality, the use of folk material, the use of the blues tradition, the problems of writing for an elite audience.

4. HR was more than just a literary movement: it included racial consciousness, "the back to Africa" movement led by Marcus Garvey, racial integration, the explosion of music particularly jazz, spirituals and blues, painting, dramatic revues, and others

Fauset, Jessie Redmon: There is Confusion, 1924; Plum Bun, 1928; The Chinaberry Tree; 1931; Comedy, American Style, 1933

Hughes, Langston: Not Without Laughter, 1930

In 1904 several middleclass African American families moved away from the decaying conditions of Black Bohemia of midtown into the newly-built suburb of Harlem

This initiated a move north of educated African Americans and a foothold into Harlem. In 1910 a large block along 135th and Fifth Ave was bought up by various African American realtors and a church group

These purchases caused a "white flight" and lowered realestate prices

The Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement, was a literary, artistic, cultural, intellectual movement that began in Harlem, New York after World War I and ended around 1935 during the Great Depression

The movement raised significant issues affecting the lives of African Americans through various forms of literature, art, music, drama, painting, sculpture, movies, and protests

Voices of protest and ideological promotion of civil rights for African Americans inspired and created institutions and leaders who served as mentors to aspiring writers

Although the center of the Harlem Renaissance began in Harlem, New York, its influence spread throughout the nation and beyond and included philosophers, artists, writers, musicians, sculptors, movie makers and institutions that “attempted to assert…a dissociation of sensibility from that enforced by the American culture and its institutions.”

An African-American cultural movement of the 1920s and 1930s, centered in Harlem, that celebrated black traditions, the black voice, and black ways of life. Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Jean Toomer, and Dorothy West were some of the writers associated with the movement

a cultural movement in 1920s America during which black art, literature, and music experienced renewal and growth, originating in New York City's Harlem district; also called Black Renaissance, New Negro Movement

The Harlem Renaissance was a literary and cultural movement that began with the inception of the 20th Century

It is so called because it was first noticed in Harlem, a neighborhood of New York City

The movement was an African American cultural explosion expressed through essays, songs, theatrical pieces, novels and poetry. Harlem Renaissance poetry, as written by such literary luminaries as Langston Hughes and W.E.B. DuBois, was characterized by its themes, influences, focus and intent

Intent is a primary characteristic of all Harlem Renaissance literature, including poetry

The intent of this poetry was to improve and uplift African Americans through historical awareness and a popular culture that reflected self-awareness and self-worth in black Americans

All of this intent was expressed by the phrase "The New Negro," introduced by sociologist Alain LeRoy Locke in 1925

The term describes a new wave of African-American intellectuals who used poetry and other forms of artistic and cultural expression to subvert racial stereotypes and address the racial, economic, cultural and social impediments facing black Americans at the turn of the century

Harlem Renaissance poetry is characterized by a focus on the black American experience and relevant themes

Much of the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance is characterized as an examination of the historical place of the contemporary African American with regards to history and the future

This poetry asks the question: where has the black American been and where is he/she going? Themes of migration---from Africa to the United States, from slavery and the south to industrial jobs in the urban north---were common

Poetry of the Renaissance also addressed themes of American identity and the American dream

In two famous poems, Langston Hughes wrote, "I, too, am America" and "What happens to a dream deferred?"

Much of the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance is characterized in both theme and content by the influence of traditionally "black" forms of music

The repetitive structure and recurring themes of blues music characterize the structure of many Renaissance poems

The interplay between jazz musicians and the call-and-response structure of slave songs also impacted the structure of Renaissance poetry

In its references to the black American past and experience of slavery, poetry of the era often alluded to African American spirituals

With regards to themes, much literature of the Harlem Renaissance included references the national popularity of blues and jazz

Harlem Renaissance poetry took poetic influence from disparate forms of cultural expression

On page 287 of the book "The Harlem Renaissance," author Michael Feith asserts that poetry of the period was characterized by the influenced of African American folk poetry and oral traditions and contemporary American experimentation in modernist free verse

Authors Cary D. Wintz and Paul Finkelman further declare on page 84 of their "Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, Volume 1" that Harlem Renaissance poetry from Chicago was characterized by the influence of an avant-garde style that arose in that city during the First World War

This style saw the ironic interpolation of elements of Negro spirituals into contemporary poetry