The Romantic movement, which originated in Germany but quickly spread to England, France, and beyond, reached

America around the year 1820. 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 the masterpieces of "the American Renaissance."

Romanticism is a movement in art and Literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in revolt against Neoclassicism
of the previous centuries. There is a reason to believe that romanticism may be either the most meaningful or the most
confusing word in any lexicon of literary terms. The English critic F.L. Lucas unearths and counted 11,396 definition of
romanticism.

No other period in English literature displays more variety in style, theme, and content than the Romantic Movement of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Furthermore, no period has been the topic of so much disagreement and confusion over
its defining principles and aesthetics. Romanticism, then, can best be described as a large network of sometimes competing
philosophies, agendas, and points of interest. In England, Romanticism had its greatest influence from the end of the
eighteenth century up through about 1870. Its primary vehicle of expression was in poetry, although novelists adopted
many of the same themes. In America, the Romantic Movement was slightly delayed and modulated, holding sway over
arts and letters from roughly 1830 up to the Civil War. Contrary to the English example, American literature championed
the novel as the most fitting genre for Romanticism’s exposition. In a broader sense, Romanticism can be conceived as an
adjective which is applicable to the literature of virtually any time period. With that in mind, anything from the Homeric
epics to modern dime novels can be said to bear the stamp of Romanticism. In spite of such general disagreements over
usage, there are some definitive and universal statements one can make regarding the nature of the Romantic Movement in
both England and America.

On the formal level, Romanticism witnessed a steady loosening of the rules of artistic expression that were pervasive during
earlier times. The Neoclassical Period of the eighteenth century included very strict expectations regarding the structure and
content of poetry. By the dawn of the nineteenth century, experimentation with new styles and subjects became much more
acceptable. The high-flown language of the previous generation’s poets was replaced with more natural cadences and
verbiage. In terms of poetic form, rhymed stanzas were slowly giving way to blank verse, an unrhymed but still rhythmic
style of poetry. The purpose of blank verse was to heighten conversational speech to the level of austere beauty. Some
criticized the new style as mundane, yet the innovation soon became the preferred style. One of the most popular themes of
Romantic poetry was country life, otherwise known as pastoral poetry. Mythological and fantastic settings were also
employed to great effect by many of the Romantic poets.

In the United State, Romanticism found its voice in the poets and novelists of the American Renaissance. The beginnings of
American Romanticism went back to the New England Transcendental Movement. The concentration on the individual
mind gradually shifted from an optimistic brand of spiritualism into a more modern, cynical study of the underside of
humanity. The political unrest in mid-nineteenth century America undoubtedly played a role in the development of a darker
aesthetic. At the same time, strongly individualist religious traditions played a large part in the development of artistic
creations. The Protestant work ethic, along with the popularity and fervor of American religious leaders, fed a literary
output that was undergird with fire and brimstone.

The middle of the nineteenth century has only in retrospect earned the label of the American Renaissance in literature. No
one alive in the 1850s quite realized the flowering of creativity that was underway. In fact, the novelists who today are
regarded as classic were virtually unknown during their lifetimes. The novelists working during this period, particularly
Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, were crafting densely symbolic and original pieces of literature that
nonetheless relied heavily upon the example of English Romanticism. However, there work was in other respects a clean
break with any permutation of Romanticism that had come before. There was a darkness to American Romanticism that
was clearly distinct from the English examples of earlier in the century.

Herman Melville died penniless and unknown, a failed writer who recognized his own brilliance even when others did not.
It would take the Modernists and their reappraisal of American arts and letters to resuscitate Melville’s literary corpus. In
novels like Benito Cereno and Moby Dick, Melville employed a dense fabric of hinted meanings and symbols that required
close reading and patience. Being well-read himself, Melville’s writing betrays a deep understanding of history, mythology,
and religion. With Moby Dick, Melville displays his research acumen, as in the course of the novel the reader learns more
than they thought possible about whales and whaling. The novel itself is dark, mysterious, and hints at the supernatural.
Superficially, the novel is a revenge tale, but over and above the narrative are meditations of madness, power, and the
nature of being human. Interestingly, the narrator in the first few chapters of the novel more or less disappears for most of
the book. He is in a sense swallowed up by the mania of Captain Ahab and the crew.

The Transcendentalist movement was a reaction against 18th century rationalism and a manifestation of the general
humanitarian trend of 19th century thought. The movement was based on a fundamental belief in the unity of the world and
God. The soul of each individual was thought to be identical with the world – a microcosm of the world itself. The doctrine
of self-reliance and individualism developed through the belief in the identification of the individual soul with God.
Transcendentalism was intimately connected with Concord, a small New England village 32 kilometers west of Boston.
Concord was the first inland settlement of the original Massachusetts Bay Colony. Surrounded by forest, it was and remains
a peaceful town close enough to Boston's lectures, bookstores, and colleges to be intensely cultivated, but far enough away
to be serene.
Although the novel most certainly held sway, poetry was not utterly silent during the flowering of American Romanticism.
Arguably the greatest poet in American literary history was Walt Whitman, and he took his inspiration from many of the
same sources as his fellows working in the novel. His publication of Leaves of Grass in 1855 marked a critical moment in
the history of poetry. Whitman’s voice in his poetry was infused with the spirit of democracy. He attempted to include all
people in all corners of the Earth within the sweep of his poetic vision. Like Blake, Whitman’s brand of poetics was
cosmological and entirely unlike anything else being produced at the time. Like the rest of the poets in the Romantic
tradition, Whitman coined new words, and brought a diction and rhythmic style to verse that ran counter to the aesthetics of
the last century. Walt Whitman got his start as a writer in journalism, and that documentary style of seeing the world
permeated all his creative endeavors.
In somewhat of a counterpoint to Whitman’s democratic optimism stands Edgar Allen Poe, today recognized as the most
purely Romantic poet and short story writer of his generation. Poe crafted fiction and poetry that explored the strange side
of human nature. The English Romantics had a fascination with the grotesque and of “strange” beauty, and Poe adopted this
aesthetic perspective willingly. His sing-song rhythms and dreary settings earned him criticism on multiple fronts, but his
creativity earned him a place in the first rank of American artists. He is credited as the inventor of detective fiction, and was
likewise one of the original masters of horror. A sometimes overlooked contribution, Poe’s theories on literature are often
required reading for students of the art form.

The master of symbolism in American literature was Nathaniel Hawthorne. Each of his novels represents worlds imbued
with the power of suggestion and imagination. The Scarlet Letter is often placed alongside Moby Dick as one of the greatest
novels in the English language. Not a single word is out of place, and the dense symbolism opens the work up to multiple
interpretations. There are discussions of guilt, family, honor, politics, and society. There is also Hawthorne’s deep sense of
history. Modern readers often believe that The Scarlet Letter was written during the age of the Puritans, but in fact
Hawthorne wrote a story that was in the distant past even in his own time. Another trademark of the novel is its dabbling in
the supernatural, even the grotesque. One gets the sense, for example, that maybe something is not quite right with Hester’s
daughter Pearl. Nothing is what it appears to be in The Scarlet Letter, and that is the essence of Hawthorne’s particular
Romanticism.

American Romanticism embraced the individual and rebelled against the confinement of neoclassicism and religious
tradition. The Romantic Movement in America created a new literary genre that continues to influence American writers.
Novels, short stories, and poems replaced the sermons and manifestos of yore. Romantic literature was personal, intense,
and portrayed more emotion than ever seen in neoclassical literature. America's preoccupation with freedom became a great
source of motivation for Romantic writers as many were delighted in free expression and emotion without so much fear of
ridicule and controversy. They also put more effort into the psychological development of their characters, and the main
characters typically displayed extremes of sensitivity and excitement.

In conclusion we can say that many great poets and novelists of the twentieth century cite the Romantics as their greatest
inspirational voices. The Romantic poets were regarded as innovators, but a bit lost in their own imaginations. The real
problems of life in the world seemed to be pushed aside. As modernization continued unchecked, a more earthy kind of
literature was demanded, and the Romantics simply did not fit that bill. Conclusively, American Romantic Movement
encompassed what the world “should be” versus what it was, for the focus was on imagination, creativity and the overflow
of feeling and emotions. These ideas were delineated through the literature of the time, which highlighted as its major tenets
the notion of nature, travel and the concept of the individual or self as the major vehicles by which, to commune with the
Divine.