American Literature and Romanticism
...n, America went through its Revolution. This stirred a plethora of social reforms. Americans strayed from Puritan ideals and began linking reason and logic to freedom independence. The result of which was Classicism. In the early 1800’s, writing began to reflect science, society, history, government, philosophy and politics instead of religion. A philosophy of classicism was Deism. It “states that God created the universe in harmony with the physical law of science.” Writers such as Jefferson, Franklin and Paine were reflecting the idea of blind faith and urging for logic and freedom. In Henry’s Speech to the Virginia Convention he logically argues how After a strenuous war and a period of intellectual growth, American literature reflected the hopeful feel of the nation between the War of 1813 and the Mexican War, the growing country was moving away from “restrained ideas of God and Science” and beginning to encourage the expansion of imagination and individualism. As the country grew, Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, value of nature and the spiritual world expanded as well. With new land came new hope and new ideas. Everything was possible in the new world and creativity flowed. Writers such as Wordsworth, Coleridge and Key presented this feeling with creations such as Key’s Star Spangled Banner. This period of self exploration also allotted the idea of personal rights. With the Enlightenment changing assumptions about government and society, female writers such as Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft wrote provocative works such as A Serious Proposal to the Ladies and A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Within Romanticism there’s transcendentalism. It’s a trend that connects man with nature. It’s a utopian philosophy that “refers to the idea that in determining the ultimate reality of God, the universe, the self…or other matters, one must transcend everyday human experience in the physical world...