Historical Background
Writers of the romantic period were witness to a period of great growth and opportunity termed:
Westward Expansion
True or False: Romantics did not find inspiration in nature.
False
True
American Gothic Writers are also called by what 2 other names:
Brooding Romantics
Anti-transcendentalists
What literary form, which came from the French word meaning ‘attempts,’ became popular at the time?
Essay
The idea that it was the destiny of the country to expand from the east coast to the Pacific Ocean
Manifest Destiny
True or False: The romantics celebrated logic and imagination.
False: emotion and imagination
Who lead a group of writers practicing transcendentalism?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Name the 3 most famous Gothic writers of the time.
Poe, Hawthorne, Melville
What is the name given to the popular group of writers which many families read for entertainment at night?
The Fireside Poets
Henry David Thoreau wrote in opposition to which war?
Mexican-American War
Romantism was a reation to what two ideologies?
Age of Reason/Enlightenment
Puritan Doctrine
What American ideas of the time were stressed by transcendentalists?
Optimism, freedom, self-reliance, individual
Why are the gothic writers considered romantics?
Emphasis on emotion, nature, the individual
Who wrote this quote:
In the world’s broad field of battle, in the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(A Psalm of Life)
How did work change for many Americans during this time?
(list at least two ways)
Industrial Revolution
Factories and cities
low pay
harsh conditions
Who is remembered for writing the first truly original American novel?
James Fenimore Cooper
Who wrote ‘Civil Disobedience’ after living alone at Walden Pond?
Henry David Thoreau
What are some gothic elements found in the writing of this time? (Name at least 2)
Grotesque characters, bizarre situations, violence, evil and human psyche, the unusual, demonic, sin, guilt, madness and insanity
What famous group of essays is this quote from:
”I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, and not when I cam to die, to discover that I had not lived.”
Walden
(Henry David Thoreau)
Tension was growing between the North and the South over what issue. Poets, such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote anti_______ poems.
Slavery
The Last of the Mohicans is a novel from what frontier series?
The Leatherstocking Tales
Explain the connection between Margaret and Miranda.
Miranda- fictional character that Margaret Fuller ‘interviewed’
What is the name of the wife in The Birthmark?
Georgiana
What poem begins with these words:
“It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea…”
‘Annabel Lee’ by Poe