One big difference between American Romanticism and the Romanticism that developed on the other side of the pond (in Britain) is that the novel was kind of a big deal in American Romanticism. In Br...

The American Romantics were a pretty nonconformist bunch. They were individualists, after all. They were rebels with a cause.For this reason, their writing often breaks literary conventions. If we...

America is the land of epic landscapes: prairies, volcanoes, Rocky Mountains, canyons. We've got it all over here in America. Is it any wonder, then, that nature is such a huge theme in American Ro...

We've all heard this stereotype about Americans: they're individualistic, they're all wrapped up in themselves, they're all about me, me, me (and cheeseburgers). This can be a good or a bad thing,...

The American Romantics were an emotional bunch. Ok—maybe they didn't spend all day weeping into a handkerchief and eating Phish Food. But they believed deeply in the power and importance of emoti...

We've mentioned that the American Romantics were really into individualism. Well, they also happened to be really into the imagination. And that's because they believed that the imagination is an e...

Remember the American Revolution? Yeah, that was a pretty big deal. The thirteen American colonies broke away from Britain, the "mother country," because they were peeved about being taxed without...

Democracy became a huge political value in American culture and identity following the American Revolution. And it's a huge deal in American Romantic writing. The American Romantics valorized the i...

For the American Romantics, the frontier was kind of a big deal. Remember, they were living at a time when the country was expanding westward. Many Americans were moving out to those big prairies i...