Romanticism in America was a movement that arose slowly, developed in many ways. It went through many phases and it was practiced by many writers that when we give a simple definition we tend to be "slippery". It started approximately in 1820 and lasted until about 1865 with the end of the civil war and the beginning of realism. The romanticism arose as new settlers were confronted with the new realities of a new life in a land that was vast and completely different. The ideas that marked romantism were humanitarianism, democracy, equality, abolition, utopian ideals, the noble savage , dignity of common man , primitivism , the nature of good or evil, conflict between spirit and body , mysticism, pantheism, transcendentalism , gothicism , abnormal psychology, exotic settings--time and place, nature as symbol of Divine , faith vs, doubt , organic unity, individual soul as as part of the greater soul of God , great chain of being , Individualism . There were many sub categories and many genres but in a nutshell I would say that two writers are very representative of this period Edgar Allan Poe who wrote mainly about fiction. His narrations and poetry were so vivid and terrifying as you can see in this quote of the the raven: " And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting on the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming, And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted—nevermore! "
Another great writer of this period was Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote the fiction novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. The importance of this novel is related to the feelings that generated in all the corners of the new nation. When uncles' Tom is described as a good, steady, sensible, pious fellow, I am pretty sure there were many self made men in America that identified with him.
American Romanticism, except precedents like William Cullen Bryant, provided a great writer and poet, Edgar Allan Poe, precursor of one of the fundamental currents of Post-Romanticism, Symbolism, renovator of the Gothic narrative and creator of the detective story, and James Fenimore Cooper (disciple of the historical novels of Scott), whose great subject is the novel of pioneers. It can be considered a post-romantic to the most original anarchist thinker Henry David Thoreau, introducer of ideas ahead of his time such as nonviolence and environmentalism, author of Walden or Life in the woods and the famous essay On Civil Disobedience. In the United States there is also talk of a group of essayists under the name of Transcendentalism that includes Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thoreau.
