American Romanticism: Figures, Tensions, Contexts 4219-SC119

The course presents an extended overview of American romanticism as a cultural episode rooted both in the international context of English-language literature, and in the local context of the theological tradition of New England. On the one hand, then, romanticism in the United States is shown to develop in response to the inspirations of Coleridge and Wordsworth, on the other, it is discussed as an aspect of a theological debate among the Congregationalist Trinitarians, Unitarians, and Transcendentalists. Moreover, social aspects of the Transcendentalists movement are considered: the abolitionist engagement of R.W. Emerson, H.D. Thoreau, and T. Parker, and the proto-feminist initiatives of M. Fuller and E. Peabody.
The beginnings of romanticism in America are associated with the critical essays published in the first decade of the 19th century in the Monthly Anthology and Boston Review (E.T. Dana, B. Welles). The early, abortive romantic strain was continued by R.H. Dana, Sr. as a critic for the North American Review and the poetry of W. Allston and W.C. Bryant, influenced respectively by Coleridge and Wordsworth. Coleridge’s influence persisted in the aesthetic theory and poetical practice of E.A. Poe, and the theological reflection of J. Marsh. Poe is presented as the main American propagator of romanticism in its “dark,” gothic kind, while Marsh is viewed as an unwilling precursor of the transcendentalist pantheism. The discussion of the specific US version of “dark” romanticism covers also the gothic fiction of R.H. Dana, Sr. and W. Allston.
Transcendentalism, with R.W. Emerson as its proper founder, is presented primarily as a product of the local New England theological debate, in which the Unitarian intellectual mainstream was challenged by the dissidents who gathered in the Transcendental Club in the fall of 1836. The philosophical and theological contexts of Transcendentalism are discussed in detail, including the inspirations of E. Swedenborg through S. Reed and the role of J. Marsh as the American editor and commentator of Coleridge. The main early texts of Emerson – Nature, “The American Scholar,” and the “Divinity School Address” – are analyzed as romantic manifestoes. Different attitudes to the idea of tradition are exemplified by the essays of Emerson (“History,” “Circles”) and R.H. Dana, Sr. (“The Past and the Present”). A “conservative” variety of romanticism is also identified in the selected tales by N. Hawthorne and selected essays by H. Bushnell.
Another significant romantic author is H.D. Thoreau. Fragments of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Walden, and “Ktaadn,” an essay included in the Maine Woods, are discussed as major examples of nature writing, while “Civil Disobedience” and “Walking” illustrate Thoreau’s political concerns and his philosophy of “wildness.” Finally, the activities of E. Peabody and M. Fuller are presented as contributions of women to the romantic movement. Fragments of Fuller’s Summer on the Lakes, Woman in the 19th Century and critical essays published in the New-York Tribune are considered as canonical romantic texts placed right next to the major achievements of Emerson, Poe, and Thoreau.
Finally, the early poetry of W. Whitman (the 1855 version of Leaves of Grass) is approached as a specific “illustration” of the Emersonian nationalist idea od poetry.