American Renaissance/Romanticism period of American Literature - 1800-1855

Content:

• writing that can be interpreted 2 ways, on the surface for common folk or in depth for philosophical readers
• sense of idealism
• focus on the individual's inner feelings
• emphasis on the imagination over reason and intuition over facts
• urbanization versus nostalgia for nature
• burden of the Puritan past

Genre/Style:

• literary tale
• character sketch
• slave narratives,
• political novels
• poetry
• transcendentalism

Effect:

• helps instill proper gender behavior for men and women
• fuels the abolitionist movement
• allow people to re-imagine the American past

Historical Context:

• expansion of magazines, newspapers, and book publishing
• slavery debates

To find out more about a particular literature time period, click on the links below:

• American Literature through Time
• Puritan Times
• Rationalism/Age of Enlightenment
• American Renaissance/Romanticism
• Gothic
• Realism
• Naturalism
• Modernism
• Harlem Renaissance
• Postmodernism
• Contemporary