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1.2 Main themes of American Romanticism
One big difference between American Romanticism and the Romanticism that developed on the other side of the pond (in Britain) is that the novel was kind of a big deal in American Romanticism. In British Romanticism, it wasn't.The most important British Romantic writers were poets—like William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and George Byron.And while the Americans also have their big poets, like Walt Whitman, a number of the most important American Romantic writers were novelists, most notably Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. So one thing that distinguishes American Romanticism from British Romanticism is how important the novel became in the American Romantic movement.Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is one of the most important novels to come out of American Romanticism. Check out the book's many themes—ranging from fate and free will to man and the natural world.Man's relationship to the natural world is also a big theme in Melville's epic novel Moby-Dick.SymbolismThe American Romantics have given us some of the greatest symbols in all of American literature. These include the infamous white whale in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick and the red letter "A" in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter. These symbols are still kicking around in the 21st century.The American Romantics use symbolism to hint at ideas and emotions that are beyond ordinary language, or beyond the reach of everyday expression. These guys and gals were very much into expressing the "hidden truths" that lay beneath the surface of our rational minds and thought processes. And, judging from the examples above, they were also super into color-coding.So how do American Romantic writers use symbolism? In Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, the ocean becomes a symbol for the human soul.The letter "A," or the "scarlet letter," is the central symbol in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Psst: it's not a symbol you want to be saddled with.Formal ExperimentationThe American Romantics were a pretty nonconformist bunch. They were individualists, after all. They were rebels with a cause.For this reason, their writing often breaks literary conventions. If we take Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, for instance, we'll find that it is many things all at once. It's a novel, but it's also a whaling manual (blegh—those whaling chapters are the hardest) and a philosophical tract. The book, in other words, isn't easy to classify in terms of genre… though it's usually discussed as a novel.Likewise, Walt Whitman's poetry broke many poetic conventions of the time. Walt Whitman, for example, developed "free verse," a style of writing poetry that didn't rely on meter or rhyme. For the time, this sort of poetic experimentation was pre-tty radical.Check out Walt Whitman's "free verse" in action in these quotations from his poem "Song of Myself."Delve into this analysis of genre in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick to understand how Melville mixes it all up in the novelAmerica is the land of epic landscapes: prairies, volcanoes, Rocky Mountains, canyons. We've got it all over here in America. Is it any wonder, then, that nature is such a huge theme in American Romantic literature? C'mon: just look at these red rocks. They make us want to write a few poems.The American Romantics looked to nature for inspiration, for escape from society, and as a place where their individuality could let its freak flag fly. The Romantics believed that in nature we could be free in a way that we couldn't be in society, where rules and conventions limit our individuality.The American Romantics' love of nature, of course, echoes the love of nature we'll find in Romantic literature in Europe. Like their European counterparts, the American Romantics venerated nature, wrote about it, and found lots of inspiration in it. Unlike Europe, however, America has freaky bison and nutso deserts.In Walden, Henry David Thoreau tells the story of living alone in a cabin in the woods. But he wasn't lonely out there all on his own. Why? Because he had nature to keep him company.In Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, the narrator is awestruck by the sight of whale skeletons, and other (less morbid) natural phenomenaIndividualismWe've all heard this stereotype about Americans: they're individualistic, they're all wrapped up in themselves, they're all about me, me, me (and cheeseburgers). This can be a good or a bad thing, of course (we mean individualism—cheeseburgers are always a good thing)Being all wrapped up in ourselves can mean we're selfish and egotistical. True facts.But being all wrapped up in ourselves can also be a good thing: it can mean being true to our identity and essential nature. The American Romantics valued this second sense of individualism. These writers hated the "herd mentality." They believed that we should listen really hard to our deep, inner selves, and be true to them. Everyone's going off to get jobs on Wall Street? And we want to paint pictures instead? Go for painting pictures. Everyone's settling down with their spouses and kids in the suburbs, and we want to travel around the world? Go for traveling around the world.In other words, the American Romantics were non-conformists. And in fact, the American love of individualism can be traced back to them. Their writing dwells on, and deals with, individuals who go against the grain, who think for themselves, and who stay true to themselves.