The Romantic Tradition

From schmoop.com:

“American Romanticism was the first full-fledged literary movement that developed in the U.S. It was made up of a group of authors who wrote and published between about 1820 and 1860 when the U.S. was still finding its feet as a new nation. 

These guys and gals were influenced by the Romantic movement that had developed back in Britain. Like the British Romantics, their work emphasized emotion, a love of nature, and imagination. You know how you feel when you see Old Faithful? Or the red rocks of Utah? Yeah. That feeling. That ohmygoshthisiscrazyandamazing feeling.” 

Unit Syllabus

Performance Task (DCA #2) By the end of the unit, students will write a literary analysis on a short story they have not read previously.



The Wild Honey-Suckle by Philip Freneau

Fair flower, that dost so comely grow,
Hid in this silent, dull retreat,
Untouched thy honied blossoms blow,
Unseen thy little branches greet;
…No roving foot shall crush thee here,
…No busy hand provoke a tear.

By Nature’s self in white arrayed,
She bade thee shun the vulgar eye,
And planted here the gaurdian shade,
And sent soft waters murmuring by;
…Thus quietly thy summer goes,
…Thy days declinging to repose.

Smit with those charms, that must decay,
I grieve to see your future doom;
They died–nor were those flowers more gay,
The flowers that did in Eden bloom;
…Unpitying frosts, and Autumn’s power
…Shall leave no vestige of this flower.

From morning suns and evenign dews
At first thy little being came:
If nothing once, you nothing lose,
For when you die you are the same;
…The space between, is but an hour,
…The frail duration of a flower.

 Need some help understanding this poem?

Romantic Poem Assignment

The Must-Knows of American Romanticism

Symbolism in YGB

 

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