Romantic Period

Have you ever wondered what the Romantic Period is about? The Romantic Period started during the 1800s and went to around 1860s. Romanticism is the emotional, imaginative, and valued feelings over reason. They are considered rule breakers. The Romantic Period produces two different groups, gothic and transcendentalist. The gothic part of it deals with death, and it is a dark Supernatural Era. The Gothic Period also has to do with mystery. The transcendentalist regards civil disobedience, and it has to do with God in nature. Many books were written during the Romantic Period. There was “The Last of the Mohicans” written by, James Fenimore Cooper, in 1826, it had parts that resembled both Gothic and transcendentalist themes. Another book is “Walden” written by, Thoreau, in 1854. It is about how the main character built a small cabin on land owned by his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and was almost totally self-sufficient, growing his own vegetables and doing odd jobs. “The Scarlet Letter” was the first important novel written by, Nathaniel Hawthorn, written and published in 1850. It was about A young women, Hester Prynne, who is led from the town prison with her infant daughter, Pearl, in her arms and the Scarlet Letter, “A” on her breast. A man in the crowd tells an elderly onlooker that Hester is being punished for adultery. “The Raven”, a poem written by, Edgar Allen Poe, was about a knock at someone’s door and how the main character ignored. When he woke up his loved one was dead. The bird was knocking to let him know someone was making it. Another poem “Arrival in the Land of Freedom”, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, in 1853. Hawthorn wrote the short story, “The Minister in the Black Veil”, which is about Parson Hooper, the Reverend of Milford. He arrives at mass on the Sabbath with a black veil covering his eyes. The townspeople immediately started to gossip; some saying that he had gone, while others believing that covering shameful sins. Darwin’s “Origin of Species” which was written in 1859, and the Civil War was the cause to end the Romantic Period of American Literature.