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ENC1102--Characteristics of American Romanticism. Notes for Lecture. Handwrite in your binder. Posted on February 1, 2023. Due on February 3, 2023.


Notes for Lecture. Handwrite in your binder.

Characteristics of Light Romanticism/Transcendentalism

  1. Values feeling and intuition over reason
  2. Expresses faith in inner experience and power of the imagination
  3. Shuns artificiality of civilization and seeks solitude in unspoiled Nature
  4. Prefers youthful innocence to educated sophistication
  5. Champions individual freedom and worth of the individual 
  6. Contemplates Nature’s beauty as a path to spiritual and moral development
  7. Looks backward to wisdom of the past and distrusts progress
  8. Finds beauty and truth in exotic places, supernatural realms, and the inner world of the imagination
  9. Seeks poetry as one of the highest expressions of human imagination
  10. Finds inspiration in myth, legend, and folk culture
 
Characteristics of Dark Romanticism/Gothic Literature
  1. Has a darker vision of the human experience
  2. Is preoccupied with strange or sinister inner experience
  3. Sometimes contains "grotesque" or very strange characters--characters acting in abnormal or irrational ways
  4. Describes bizarre situations
  5. Sometimes contains violent actions
  6. Draws on the shadowy region in the imagination where the fantastic, the demonic, and the insane reside
  7. Sometimes contains elements of the dark supernatural return (elements of Puritanism revived)
  8. Creates sinister atmosphere and mood through varied elements of fiction--characterization, dialogue, setting, symbolism, and description
  9. Contains elements of horror, dread, and fear
  10. Often emphasizes family curses and mystery
  11. Often deals with past eras, using those eras as symbols of darkness and oppression
  12. Contains elements of death, decay, and grief
  13. Sometimes set in haunted or decaying locations or unusual communities
  14. Contains word choice and description that create an unsettling mood
  15. Sometimes has a love theme
  16. Often has themes of fear of the unknown or the growth of evil 

 

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