Language Arts 303 NAME ______
“American Romanticism,” pp. 138-150
1. How does the journey to Philadelphia described by Charles Brockden differ from that of Benjamin Franklin?
2. The description of these journeys shows the different views of which two groups?
3. In what year was the New York Times founded?
4. How can American Romanticism be best described?
5. Who was America’s first truly popular professional writer?
6. What years are considered those of “American Romanticism”?
7. Romanticism is known to value what over reason, logic, planning, and cultivation?
8. What is “rationalism”?
9. What did Romanticism value above all other works of the imagination?
10-11. In what two ways did the Romantics rise above “dull realities” to a realm of higher truth?
12. In what type of literature do we most easily see the first Romantic approach?
13. Through Gothic novels, what did Romantic writers explore?
14. Which American writer was attracted to the exotic, otherworldly trappings of the Gothic?
15. Instead of imitating English and European models, American writers used what as the subject matter of their literature?
16. The first American heroic figure, Natty Bumppo, was created by what author?
17. Describe the rationalist hero from the Age of Reason?
18. Describe the typical hero of American Romantic fiction?
19. What are two examples of contemporary Romantic heroes?
20. How did the American Romantic poets differ in style from the American Romantic novelists?
21-22. What were the group of poets from Boston, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell Lowell, known as and why?
23. What was the typical subject matter chosen by these poets?
24. What was the name of the maverick new poet greeted by Ralph Waldo Emerson after reading his poems?
25. Why did Whittier throw a volume of this poet’s works into the fire?