• Enlightenment – age of reason, logic, and science
• Emotion and feeling towards ppl less fortunate
• Americans wanted an American culture – American sculptures, American art, American writers, American literature, etc.
• Americans think that they are inferior over Europe
• In America you can succeed
• During this time we started moving away from the E. Period and started believing in the idea of going with your gut feeling and start making an American culture
• Some things define logic like supporting your country
• We are moving towards emotion – it could be:
• Love
• Hate
• Fear
• Scary
• This is Romantics
• This is an Era of Reform
• Edgar Allen Poe wrote things that were very scary and this was not logical
• Transcendentalism is when you go beyond your senses – invented by Ralph Waldo Emerson – branch of Romanticism – very American idea
• Transcendentalists were very individualist; “I”, “Me”, they didn’t like to do stuff with other ppl.
• Some Transcends were Ass Holes b/c they were so selfish
• They hate the idea of slavery and are very pro reform and improvement
• Hardcore Transcend… were hardcore abolitionists
• Transcends thought they could figure things out by-themselves and don’t need a professor
• They were very connected towards emotion
• Henry David Thoreau was a transcend… writer who was against the Mexican American War
• He did not pay taxes and was jailed b/c he did not want to support a country that fought a War to expand slavery
• Famous Romantic Poets and writers:
• Poe
• Whitman - poet
• Melville – wrote Moby Dick and Billy Bud
• Hawthorne – wrote the Scarlet Letter
• Lyceum was a lecture given at a central location – church, library
• This was for adults and this was showing improvement and reform
• During this time ppl were very pro-public schooling system or common schools
• This movement was big everywhere except in the South
• Ppl in the South believed that school