In today’s world consist of an uncultured society compared to what it was like back in the eighteenth century or the nineteenth century. Today’s society differentiates from the norm of what society used to base their aspects around and that was literature. Romanticism was the beginning of a revolutionary phenomenon over the human mind and society’s well-being. Romanticists valued imagination, individual feelings and Mother Nature rather than reasoning, logic and cultivation. Although, America was heading towards a more industrialized economy.
Romanticism had a stupendous impact during the mideighteenth century, affecting one’s thoughts and aspects about the world. Thus, sparking a new generation of writers. One aspect that romanticism brought to literature was the dramatic shift towards freedom of expression rather than from a classical theme approach, which society grown apathetic against. The characteristics of romanticism being that”… the Romantic concentration on spirit was a response to this excessive nonconformity… ” (Mansouri & Keshavarzi 14).
Romanticists began to turn away from the classical themes and conformity, but more towards a freedom of expression without guidelines, “… a reaction against that unity and conformity, the era witnessed the end of literary tradition” (Mansouri & Keshavarzi 14). The romantic writers took a new standard in valuing intuition and emotion, which is often expressed in abundance of poems; they sought to claim childhood innocence that so few could recollect from the adult mind.
Also, romantic writers placed a considerable emphasis on nature, “… he organic relationship which it posits between man and nature, or the universe, and (less often) between the individual and society” (Adams 420). Adams depicts the motives behind the Romantic Movement, he places the idealist values that romanticists rely on, “… more on imagination than on logic… more on unconscious than on conscious power” (Adams 420). To Adams that was the philosophy of all romanticists and all that drove forward to a revolution in literature. Most influential writers that fit this criteria were Herman Melville and James Fenimore Cooper.
Cooper’s novels show the subconscious battle between one’s moral, such as what is good and evil, and society’s standards. He shows that all of nature and the Indians were good, in such those who bare the same viewpoint as Cooper. Instead, those who were unintelligent did not see nature’s beauty. Melville’s books also shared the same theme as Cooper, the authors themselves questioned humanity and ethics found in their writings. Therefore, readers are influenced by the stories poems resulting with the change in their moral and values through life.
With the writer inhibiting the ability to touch the hearts and minds of readers, the causation can result in revolutions in what is wrong or right in society. Furthering, the reason of how romanticism changed society was the speculation of how pure religion really was. Pre-Romanticism focused ideally on scripture being revolved around literature works, such as the reader experiencing the spiritual fulfillment that many prioritized in life. Pre-romanticist writers were given the full capability to influence writers, but during that decade the scripture was what society idolized the most as thought, “… eems to have had a closer relationship with institutionalized religion” (Mansouri & Keshavarzi 12).
Continuing that, “… writer’s primary reason was to illuminate for the readers the kind of spirituality already established by the scripture” (12), logically society was only taught this kind of aspect of art and literature. Regarding this the only impact literature in the Pre-romanticism only expressed conformity and thinking inside the box. The assumption can resume that the shift that was about to undertake was the breaking of the religious concept in literature between the pre and post-romanticism.
The eighteenth-century underwent the introduction of scientific methods and also human sciences. This leads up to the questioning of what was really the truth behind man kinds upbringing into Earth. With the pretension of falsehood in scripture, the arrival of Romaticism has begun. Most romantic writers bared the ideology that questioned what Christianity was, thus writers begun to create a new spiritual system based on morals and individual freedom; symbolizing the truth is what gave meaning to romanticism. In Melville’s book, Typee, goes against the fundamental values of Christianity.
In Typee, Melville praises the cannibal tribe, as the tribe coexist with nature and treat it as a God, unlike civilized men who only destroy. Melville makes a comparison to the Christian Missionaries, “found less genuinely civilized than the people they came to convert” (VanSpanckeren, pars. 1). Although, Melville himself always did not define him as a religious man. Like many romantic writers, the questioning of life’s mysterious and writing about one’s place in the world seemed to be the recurrence of other writers to also speak out their mind.
With the spread the spread of Romanticism came immense shifts in the political imbalance that society soon to begin to question in what was ideal. Hence, the questioning of the truth, such as the ideal American and also one’s faith, with this also came the questioning of one’s political stance in America’s society. Society was once a rural farmland based economy, which was soon heading towards urban industrial based economy. They wanted a world that was not set in a grimy and noisy urban area, or such that the experiences of living in the arid reality that the industrial age was going to bring forth.
A society that was deprived of individualism, creativity and also originality. Furthering, with this deprivation America was seeking its own building of American culture. With the breaking of Britain and the American Revolution, Romanticism seemed to be the perfect founder of American democracy. The late eighteenth-century was the beginning of many women’s rights and abolitionist movements. Women began to see the admirable value in themselves, which women do have a voice and did not have to leave up to the stereotypical woman.
Although, women were only allowed to serve to what Puritanism or Calvinism portrayed women to be. History can date back to the beginning of the Mayflower,”… as cultural institutions became formalized in the new republic, women and minorities gradually were excluded from them” (VanSpanckeren, par. 1). A person can only go so far with being demised throughout life, in spite of the given conditions of dangers and criticism, one can risk their life for political justice. Romanticism was only the beginning of the challenging of ideals, with this time period it was an impeccable timing for women or minorities to be heard.
Lydia Child released her successful novel, Hobomok (1824), showed the need for racial and religious toleration. Also, her other works include, An Appeal in Favor of that Class Americans Called Africans (1833) and History of the Condition of Women in Various Ages and Nations (1855). Both of these novels were daring and actually ruined her financially, but was committed to show society that she has a voice. She argued for women’s equality by pointing out the historical achievement that women have done in order to prove her point. She greatly influenced Margaret Fuller and other women alike (VanSpanckeren, par. 1).
None the less, with this kind of political influence brought change and re-evolved the attitudes towards women and minorities. America was about the land of the free, and many people saw it as though, but although some standards were given. In order to banish these kinds of standards, society must break the rules and revolt for the change that America deserves. With these aspects brought many battles and wars, such as the Civil war and the American Revolution in order to claim independence. In the end we can assume the amount of change that Romanticism brought, an everlasting result on the ideals and attitudes among the American society
