Romanticism And Reasoning

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Romanticism

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A late 18th and early 19th century philosophical and aesthetic movement that posited:
1.)Rebellion against established rules and orders
2.)Nature > Civilization
3.)Individual > Community
4.)Spiritual/emotional > Cognitive/rational
Ex: Stanton's "Declaration of Sentiments" is an example of rebellion against established rules and orders in Romanticism

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Transcendentalists

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Romantics who believed in a deep inner faculty called the Reason, that goes beyond the mere understanding to discern truth, beauty, and goodness.
Ex:Emerson's "Self-Reliance"

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Separate Sphere Culture

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A society in which men and women have distinctly different rights, ideals, and responsibilities.
Ex: Women generally stayed home during this time while the men went to work.

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Suffrage

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Also known as elective franchise; the right to vote
Ex: Stanton was an extreme advocate for women's suffrage

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Civil Disobedience

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A type of disobedience where the disobedient gets hurt, it is seen in public, and the disobedience occurs for the public good or a noble purpose.
Ex: Thoreau's "Resistance to Civil Government" expresses his civil disobedience through refusing to pay his taxes.

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Reason

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Deep inner faculty that discerns truth and goodness; part of the transcendentalist ideal
Ex: Emerson's "Self-Reliance" refers to Reason often

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Blank Verse

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Unrhymed iambic pentameter
Ex:Bryant's Thanatopsis

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Thanatopsis

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A meditation on death
Ex:Bryant's "Thanatopsis"

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The Hudson River Valley School

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A group of mid-nineteenth-century artists in the United States who illustrated Romantic concepts in their landscape paintings.
Ex: "To Cole, the painter"

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Sonnet

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A formal 14-line poem

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Rural/Garden Cemetery Movement

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A mid-nineteenth-century trend toward locating cemeteries away from cities in a beautiful natural setting.

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Modernity

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A society made "better" by scientific and technological advances
Ex: "Rappaccini's Daughter"

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Mirror Symbol

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Something that stands for one thing and also its opposite
Ex: "Rappaccini's Daughter" flower

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American Renaissance

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The mid-19th century period that Americans look back to as our "Golden Age."

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Gothic

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A fictional take, often set in an old house or deserted abbey, in which events of a supernatural nature abound
Ex: "Legeia" exhibits these characteristics

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Orientalism

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The depiction of Eastern (i.e., Asian) culture as being inferior to Western (especially European and American) culture.
Ex: "Ligeia" expresses the opposite through its heroine-> Ligeia

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The True Woman

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A 19th-century ideal for women. According to scholar Barbara Welter, the True Woman must be pure, pious, domestic, and submissive
Ex: Lady Rowena in "Ligeia"

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The Angel in the House

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Another way of describing the True Woman as the selfless, highly spiritualized being who makes the home a holy place
Ex: Lady Rowena

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Fair Lady

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A fictional stereotype common to the 19th-century. The fair (i.e., blonde) lady is usually a model of virtue. She is often a True Woman or an angel in the house.
Ex: Lady Rowena

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Dark Lady

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A fictional stereotype common to the 19th-century. The dark (i.e., brunette) lady is usually wicked or at least questionable in some way.
Ex: Ligeia

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Thanatos/eros Theme

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Intertwined references to death and erotic/sexual/romantic love
Ex: the bedchamber of the narrator and Lady Rowena in "Legeia"

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Alienated Labor

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Work that destroys the harmony between the worker and his/her work, between people, and within human beings.
Ex: Bartleby

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Capitalism

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"the economic system in which all or most of the means of production and distribution, as land, factories, railroads, etc. are privately owned and operated for profit, originally under fully competitive conditions; it has been generally characterized by a tendency toward concentration of wealth, and, in its later phase, by the growth of great corporations, increased governmental control, etc.

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Wage Slave

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A person whose freedom is illusory because s/he is bound to a job that provides subsistence living only if the worker gives up all control over his/her time and choices. The job "owns" the person
Ex: Factory store, etc.

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Aphorism

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brief, pithy statements of a general truth
Ex: "envy is ignorance" Emerson's "Self-Reliance"

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Gender

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What society associates with male and female
Ex: Girls get pink; Boys get blue

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"Our age is retrospective.It builds the sepulchres of the fathers.It writes biographies, histories, and criticism.The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes.Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?Why should we not have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?"

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Emerson
Nature
Romanticism -> Rebellion against established rules and orders

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"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide"
"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."
"No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature."
"If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument."
"To be great is to be misunderstood."

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Emerson
Self-Reliance
Aphorism

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"The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self on which a universal reliance may be grounded?"

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Emerson
Self-Reliance
Transcendentalism

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"The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. There are two confessionals, in one or the other of which we must be shriven. You may fulfil your round of duties by clearing yourself in the direct, or ,in the reflex way...absolve me to myself. I have my own stern claims and perfect circle."

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Emerson
Self-Reliance
Romanticism -> Individual>Community

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"But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice as far as men understand it."

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Thoreau
"Resistance to Civil Government"
Transcendentalism

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I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right."

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Thoreau
"Resistance to Civil Government"
Romanticism -> Spiritual/Emotional>Cognitive/Rational

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"The mass of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables... there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense...A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated by it as enemies."

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Thoreau
"Resistance to Civil Government"
Romanticism -> Individual>Community

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"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front on the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary."

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Thoreau
Walden
Nature>Civilization
Importance of Reason

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"Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."

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Thoreau
Walden
Romanticism -> Individual>Community

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"Giovanni still found no better occupation than to look down into the garden beneath his window...for there was the ruin of a marble fountain in the centre, sculptured with rare art, but so woefully shattered that it was impossible to trace the original design from the chaos of remaining fragments."

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Hawthorne
"Rappaccini's Daughter"
Romanticism -> Nature>Civilization
Sometimes nature corrupts and destroys civilization

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"The aspect of one and all of them dissatisfied him; their gorgeousness seemed fierce, passionate, and even unnatural...shocked a delicate instinct by an appearance of artificialness, indicating that there had been such commixture, and, as it were, adultery of various vegetable species, that the production was no longer God's making, but the monstrous offspring of man's depraved fancy, glowing with only an evil mockery of beauty."

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Hawthorne
"Rappaccini's Daughter"
Romanticism -> Nature>Civilization
Corruption of nature by civilization

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"I examined the contour of the lofty and pale forehead --it was faultless--how cold indeed that word when applied to a majesty so divine!--the skin rivalling the purest ivory, the commanding extent and repose, the gentle prominence of the regions above the temples; and then the raven-black, the glossy, the luxuriant and naturally-curling tresses"

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Poe
Ligeia
Orientalism

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"Now and then, in the haste of business, it had been my habit to assist in comparing some brief document myself, calling Turkey or Nippers for this purpose. One object I had in placing Bartleby so handy to me behind the screen, was to avail myself of his services on such trivial occasions...I sat with my head bent over the original on my desk, my right hand sideways, and somewhat nervously extended the copy"

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Melville
Bartleby, the Scrivener
Privacy vs. Isolation/Alienated Labor

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"For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy seized me. Before, I had never experienced aught but a not-unpleasing sadness. The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistible to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam."

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Melville
Bartelby, the Scrivener
Alienated Labor/ Reason?

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"One need not be a Chamber-to be Haunted-/One need not be a House-/The Brain has Corridors-surpassing/Material Place-/Far safer,of a Midnight Meeting/External Ghost/Than it's interior Confronting-That Cooler Host.//Far safer,through an Abbey gallop,/The Stones a'chase-/Than Unarmed,one's a'self encounter-/In lonesome Place-//Ourself behind ourself, concealed-/Should startle most-/Assassin hid in our Apartment/Be Horror's least./The Body-borrows a Revolver-/He bolts the Door-/O'erlooking a superior spectre-/Or More-

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Dickinson
"One need not be a Chamber-to be Haunted"
You should fear yourself more than any material horrors.