The romantic period of American literature took place from 1830 to 1870 and emphasized nature, symbolism, transcendentalism, and individualism. Key authors of this period include Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Walt Whitman

What is romanticism?

Origin of romanticism

Romanticism, first defined as an aesthetic in literary criticism around 1800, gained momentum as an artistic movement in France and Britain in the early decades of the nineteenth century and flourished until mid-century.

Understanding Romanticism Literature Examples

Examples:

Romanticism in literature covers books, stories and poetry. The primary concepts explored during the Romantic Period included nature, myth, emotion, symbols, and ideas about the self and individualism. 

Characteristics

Romanticism literature was characterized by the emotional sensitivity and subjectivity of its works. It was a current that rejected the precepts of order, calm and rationality of the classical and neoclassical era of the late eighteenth century.

Romanticism was characterized by:

Subjectivity. The movement exalted feelings and moods over rationalism. Fear, passion, madness and loneliness were some of the themes most present in romantic literature.

Nature. Nature was a metaphor for the inner world of the individual, not a mere context in the scene. For example, a volcano could symbolize passion, a snow-capped mountain could symbolize loneliness and melancholy.

The Sublime. The movement referred to the concept of beauty as an ideal of absolute grandeur, that which is incomparable in its magnitude and its capacity to move.

              Characters:

Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg, better known as Novalis, was an early romantic philosopher and writer who embodied the values of German idealism and mysticism. His work stands out for its expressive beauty and the search for spiritual elevation.