The Romantic movement, which originated in Germany but quickly spread to England, France, and beyond, reached America around the year 1820, initiated with the publication of Washington Irving’s Sketchbook and lasting until the American Civil War. In America as in Europe, fresh new vision electrified artistic and intellectual circles. Yet there was an important difference: Romanticism in America coincided with the period of national expansion and the discovery of a distinctive American voice. The solidification of a national identity and the surging idealism and passion of Romanticism nurtured a literary blossoming sometimes referred to as “the American Renaissance.”

Romantic ideas centered around art as inspiration, the spiritual and aesthetic dimension of nature, and metaphors of organic growth. Art, rather than science, Romantics argued, could best express universal truth. The Romantics underscored the importance of expressive art for the individual and society. In his essay “The Poet” (1844), Ralph Waldo Emerson, perhaps the most influential writer of the Romantic era, asserts:

For all men live by truth, and stand in need of expression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.

Like earlier periods, this period’s assumptions are rooted in its views of human nature and truth. For the Romantics, human nature was neither born bad nor blank; it was born good, though it could be swayed from its essential nature by the pernicious effects of excessive rationalism or hidebound social mores. A period’s stance on human nature also affects its beliefs about the best ways to access truth. If human nature is initially corrupt, the sources of truth must be outside of it; if human nature is neither good nor bad but is accompanied by the ability to discern the workings of the world around it, then truth comes from the interaction of human ability and outside sources. For the Romantics, the essential goodness of human nature meant that the sources of truth could be discerned from within, particularly through imagination, feelings, and intuition.

Thus the development of the self became a major theme; self-awareness a primary method. If, according to Romantic theory, self and nature were one, self-awareness was not a selfish dead end but a mode of knowledge opening up the universe. If one’s self were one with all humanity, then the individual had a moral duty to reform social inequalities and relieve human suffering. The idea of “self”—which suggested selfishness to earlier generations—was redefined. New compound words with positive meanings emerged: “self-realization,” “self-expression,” “self-reliance.”

As the unique, subjective self became important, so did the realm of psychology. Exceptional artistic effects and techniques were developed to evoke heightened psychological states. The “sublime”—an effect of beauty in grandeur (for example, a view from a mountaintop)—produced feelings of awe, reverence, vastness, and a power beyond human comprehension.

As the reputation of human nature rose, so did the belief in the primacy of the individual over the community. While seventeenth century American literature most frequently warned readers to suppress self-interest in favor of the common good and eighteenth century literature presented the two as working in tandem, American Romantic literature valorized the drama of an individual striving against a repressive society. In addition, Romanticism emphasized idealism over realism. For them, literature’s purpose was not to represent the common and probable experiences of life or to teach improving lessons. Instead, literature’s role was to flesh out otherwise abstract concepts and accurately represent human emotions, what Nathaniel Hawthorne in his preface to The House of the Seven Gables (1851) calls “the truth of the human heart.” Finally, the Romantics felt that the essential goodness of human nature had a strong link to nature itself. Unlike earlier texts that portrayed nature as, at worst, aligned with malevolent forces and, at best, raw material existing to be used by man, Romantic texts often represented nature as beneficial and congenial to the human soul. It was a place of resort when man was in need of comfort or clarity and an antidote to the negative effects of science, reason, and tradition.

Romanticism was affirmative and appropriate for most American poets and creative essayists. America’s vast mountains, deserts, and tropics embodied the sublime. The Romantic spirit seemed particularly suited to American democracy: It stressed individualism, affirmed the value of the common person, and looked to the inspired imagination for its aesthetic and ethical values. Certainly the New England Transcendentalists—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and their associates—were inspired to a new optimistic affirmation by the Romantic movement. In New England, Romanticism fell upon fertile soil.

The following video more fully explains romanticism in American literature.