Transcendentalism: American Romanticism 1810 -1865

For the most part, American Romanticism is exactly that: an American philosophical, artistic and literary movement copying the ideas and ascetic of the British and European Romantics we've been studying.

In its earliest form American Romanticism finds its expression in the Transcendentalists, not only as an artistic but also a religious movement.  The most famous Transcendentalists include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman.

What made Transcendentalism more radical than European Romanticism was a "fundamental belief in the unity of the world and God. The soul of each individual was thought to be identical with the world -- a microcosm of the world itself. The doctrine of self- reliance and individualism developed through the belief in the identification of the individual soul with God." http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/oal/lit3.htm

Later American Romanticism can be found in the National Park movement and with our obsession with the American frontiersman and, even more, cowboy.

Both American Romanticism and European Romanticism valued emotion over intellect, "Truth" through beauty and spirituality (vs. reason), the divinity of Nature, and the idealization of the common man or peasant.  

A Uniquely American Ethos
Emerson, however, set out to create a more uniquely American form of art and literature, and he emphasized the unique American values of

-- Self Reliant American individualism :"We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds...A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men." -- Emerson

-- A hands-on vitality vs. the more effeminate European sensibility: from shepherds to cowboys, Indians, and frontiersmen like Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone etc.

-- American optimism (as opposed to Puritan Christian determinism/pre-destination) (In many ways this American optimism is based on Rousseau's noble savage: the concept that we are inherently good.

-- Idealized American egalitarianism (as opposed to European classism)

-- American wilderness vs. British European pastoral. 

Whitman’s Poetic Embodiment of These Ideals

-- Whitman develops his “Walt” character as a personification of American Romanticism: one man as all Americans embracing the American Experience of hard work, self reliance and contact with natural world.

-- Unbridled, uncritical American, Romantic optimism 

-- To Experience Nature is more than to understand it; he simply wants to be present in its sublime truth.

-- To celebrate the self as a celebration of all creation:  all things are unified.

-- Free verse and common language:

          -- As representations of American freedom and independence

          -- As representations of spontaneous feeling over form

          -- As a celebration of the common: common man, common language

-- As an attempt to make a new poetry that would appeal to all Americans instead of traditional “aristocracy” or intelligentsia

Whitman, Song of Myself (1900)

Contemporary American Romanticism: Bob Wrigley: "Finding A Bible..."