American Romantics

Catalog description

This course studies the key writers and texts of the 19th-century American Romantics. Unlike European Romanticism, which often leaves its heroes empowered but alienated, the American Romantics celebrate how the sublime-a transformational moment of discovery-frees the individual from a variety of confining orthodoxies. The course draws on the philosophical work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller, as well as the creative writing of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson. These writers explore the terms of a different kind of American revolution, one that begins in nature and culminates with both a new understanding of the self and a renewed commitment to the ideals of American freedom. The American Romantics, also known as transcendentalists, contend with the irony that they live in a country dedicated to principles of equality, while also enslaving and oppressing its own citizens. In addition to studying the philosophical writings of these authors and poets, we'll also discuss their history of activism in the abolitionist movement and the cause of women's rights.