American Renaissance & American Romanticism:

"Romanticism"

"Romanticism" refers to a style of literature, music, and other arts or cultural aspects that rose in Europe in the late 1700s and thrives even now in popular forms.

Historically, the Romantic era may be called "The Age of Revolution" from the French Revolution (1789-99) and the American Revolution (1775-83) but also from social and cultural changes that more broadly revolutionized society as well as the arts.

Romanticism as literary, artistic, or personal style

Romanticism involves many diverse, even contradictory elements, gestures, and meanings.

In American literature, Romantic styles or possibilities range

• from the florid adventures of the Leatherstocking Tales to Emerson's and Thoreau's austere Transcendentalism,
• from the over-the-top gothic of Poe to the Puritan gothic of Hawthorne
• from Whitman's raw verse to the abolitionist or feminist quests of Stowe, Douglass, and Fuller.

But these diverse authors, genres, and styles have one characteristic in common:

Instead of the here-and-now or the drab reality of the status quo, Romanticism almost always values something beyond or something lost, another reality to challenge or transform the everyday.

A nostalgic past or dramatic future, a distant star or a whisper deep inside, a dream desired, denied, but not forgotten . . . .

Modern audiences are conversant with such Romantic themes or images, whether or not we know the terms. use of "Romantic" is commonly limited to love (just as "romances" now mean love stories), but some subtler uses reveal how the wider meaning of Romanticism endures:

"How romantic!"

"S/he's a romantic."

Such expressions do not exclude love, but their wider reference may not involve personal relationships. For example, "How romantic!" may describe a memory or a dream involving a far-away beach in the moonlight.

"She or he's a romantic" implies a contrast with "s/he's a realist," confirming the disassociation of Romanticism from reality or realism.

Surrounding Literary Periods:

"I read a lot of romances--you know, love stories."

Romanticism in historical context

Literature (with other arts) has at least three theoretical relationships with human history:

1. Literature records or reflects the actual society or world.

2. Literature directs, guides, leads, or stimulates historical change or reaction.

3. There is no history separate from what we write, or if there is, we can't imagine it.

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (1944) described the co-emergence of market economies and nation-states

Thematically, a big, complicated concept, full of contradictions.

A movement, a style . . .

Can't be easily or quickly defined, but can be described and defended

Concept is still alive in our language and culture, but has become more specific than historical and academic usage

Popular uses: 

"How romantic!"

"S/he's a romantic."

"I read a lot of romances--you know, love stories."