The Romantic Movement - Essay Example

The lofty ideals of democracy asserted the value of individuals, regardless of class, and education. Of course, these values primarily applied to white males. In fact, tensions were building which cried out for creative release. Inequality, not equality was the rule for many, especially women and slaves. The clash of these realities with the idealistic rhetoric led writers to take extremes, championing individualism yet also seeing the darker sides of a fragmenting society (Woodlief). This is the important background within which all of the following writers worked.

These writers made a lasting impact that we should all be grateful for. In the course of this essay I will briefly describe each of the following famous writers. Longfellow was one of the most famous poets of his age. He came to represent what was best about New England romanticism. One of Longfellow's main talents was romanticizing the past. He was very knowledgeable about American history and wrote poems that brought the Revolution to life. Poems about people like Paul Revere and the poor Acadian girl Evangeline quickly became famous.

He showed people the past in a way they had never seen it before, even if it was sometimes a bit sentimental. His work reached a large audience in his day. Like many Romantics, he recognized his calling from an early age, writing to his father as a boy: “I will not disguise it in the least. the fact is, I most eagerly aspire after future eminence in literature, my whole soul burns most ardently after it, and every earthly thought centres in it. I am almost confident in believing, that if I can ever rise in the world it must be by the exercise of my talents in the wide field of literature” (Arvin, 13).

Bryant had a very long career, but much of his work was derivative of European writers. Unlike Whitman, who was wholly original and American, much of Bryant's work has not lasted as it was not much better than some of the minor British poets of the period. He did however, have a fan in Edgar Allen Poe, who once wrote of his work: “The rhythmical flow, here, is even voluptuous—nothing could be more melodious. The intense melancholy which seems to well up, perforce, to the surface of all the poet's cheerful sayings about his grave, we find thrilling us to the soul—while there is the truest poetic elevation in the thrill.

the impression left is one of a pleasurable sadness” (Sova, 37). Harriet Beecher Stowe was one of the most popular and best selling authors of her day. She made her name with a singular novel—Uncle Tom's Cabin—which has been considered one of the most influential books ever written. In keeping with Enlightenment ideals, which were very prominent at the time, Stowe took on the issue of slavery, presenting a fully formed and human African American man as her novel's main character. She drew many of her ideas from things she had observed first hand in the America of the day.

Douglass was one of the first African American men of letters. He was an excellent chronicler of black life in America and became a prominent figure in the fight against slavery. He travelled the country giving speeches and explaining how all people should be equal, as one of the most prominent orators of his age (Gatewood). One element of romanticism especially espoused by him was to end corrupt hierarchies. He believed that by nature all people were