The Romantic Period

Mid 1800s
In response to Enlightenment
and the Industrial Revolution

Consider it:
What could be peoples
problem with too much
science and new technology?
(This shouldnt be too far of a
stretch for you, the
technology generation, to
imagine)

And, if those are the

problems, what do you think
the solution is for the

Romantics?

A return to:

Nature
The Self
The Supernatural

Although romanticism tends at times to regard nature

as alien, it more often sees in nature a revelation of
Truth . . . and a more suitable subject for art than those
aspects of the world sullied by artifice. Romanticism
seeks to find the Absolute, the Ideal, by transcending
the actual" (A Handbook to Literature).

Romanticism is a
reaction to the
constraints of reality
(and it includes the
GOTHIC genre)

Famous American Romantic Writers:

Edgar Allen Poe
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Henry David Thoreau
Ralph Waldo Emerson