1. American
Romanticism

2. content
Introduction
Historical Background
Technology
Reform and Humanitarianism
Literature Characteristics
Conclusion

3. Development of American Romanticism
England
（ in the last years of the 18th century ）
Continental Europe
America
（ early in the 19th century ）

4. The Rising Reasons of American Romanticism
 1. Fast development of the new nation
 2. Development of journalism
 3. Foreign influence

5. Historical Background
 The number of states doubled, the population raised
to more than 31,000,000.
 The belief that all white men were literally equal
 An industrial and urban society. Technology
developed and economy grew.
 Simplicity, utility and perfection.
 The risen level of education and literacy
 The published imaginative literature and the
increasing national and international fame

6. Technology
 A form of automation had come with the
construction of a one-man flour mill in Virginia;
 American had invented the cotton gin, the sewing
machine, and the telegraph;
 The principles of assembly-line mass production
had been established;
 The fire and roar of newly perfected steam engines

7. Reform and Humanitarianism
 Before 1860  In 1817
The United States had begun to The Society for the Prevention of
change into an industrial and Pauperism was formed
urban society.  In 1837
 In the first half of the 19th The first college-level institution
century for women
1 ） New York became the capital  By the 1850s
2 ） People worked in business The level of education and
and factories literacy had risen significantly
3 ） The change of the pursuit
4 ） Transcendentalists
Ralph Waldo Emerson ，
the most famous of the Transcendentalists

8. Literature Characteristics
 Transcendentalism
 Imaginative literature
 Free expression of emotion
 Nationalism

9. Transcendentalism
 A kind of feeling without or over reason
 Transcendentalists took ideas from:
a. The romantic literatures of Europe
b. Neo-Platonism
c. German idealistic philosophy
d. The revelations of Oriental mysticism

10. Transcendentalism
 Writer (Nathaniel Hawthorne in the 1860s)
Born: July 4,1804 Salem, Massachusetts
United States
Died: May 19, 1864 (aged 59) Plymouth,
New Hampshire United States
Main novels: The Scarlet Letter (1850)
The Blithedale Romance (1852)

11. Transcendentalism
 Writer (Walt Whitman, 1887)
Born: May 31, 1819 West Hills, Town of
Huntington, Long Island, New York, U.S.
Died: March 26, 1892 (aged 72) Camden,
New Jersey, U.S.
Main novels: Franklin Evans (1842)
Leaves of Grass (1855)

12. Imaginative literature
 Permanent convention of American literature
a. the desire for an escape from society
b. a return to nature

13. Imaginative literature
 Authors and their works
Ernest Hemingway
Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn
William Faulknerstocking Tales
Cooper’ Leather

14. Free expression of emotion
 The novel of terror became the profitable literary staple that it
remains today.
 Authors:
Poe Hawthorne Melville

15. Nationalism
 Writers aimed to write works which were
expressive and characteristic of their own
nationality.
 Noah Webster
An American Dictionary of the English
Language （ 1828 ）

16. Conclusion
 Romantic period stretches from the end of the 18th century through
the outbreak of the Civil War.
 Later American literature came to Transcendentalism Period which
emphasized individualism, self-reliance, and rejection of tradition
authority.
 The Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end. The Age of
Realism came into existence, which was against “the lie of
romanticism and sentimentalism”.
 The period between 1910 and 1930 is referred to as the era of
Modernism. During that period, a large number of artists and
literary movements are totally different from those of the 19th-
century’s, in style, form and content.

17. 资料：张云、任丁、董芳、李琼
通稿：黄欢欢
图片：李琼、董芳
技术：陈雨
校对：陈雨、黄欢欢、董芳、张云