Questions of the Times• Is the price of progress ever TOO HIGH?• Is it patriotic to protest one’s GOVERNMENT?• Does everyone have a DARK SIDE?• Where do people look for TRUTH?

With a partner, write your answer to these questions. We will be sharing them.

Patriotic and individualistic, urban and untamed, wealth and enslaved—Americans in the first half of the 19th century embodied a host of contradictions. Struggling to make sense of their complex, inconsistent society, writers of the period turned inward for a sense of truth. Their movement, known as romanticism, explored the glories of the individual spirit, the beauty of nature, and the possibilities of the imagination.

EARLY ROMANTICS

FIRESIDE POETS

TRANSCENDENTALISTS

AMERICAN GOTHIC

William Cullen Bryant

Washington Irving

James Fenimore Cooper

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow James Russell Lowell

Oliver Wendell Holmes John Greenleaf Whittier

Transcendentalism

• How are you affected by nature? Do you find comfort in it? Do you reflect the moods of nature?

• What is the role of nature in your life?

• What is meant by an individual's spiritual side? How to you define it?

• Is there a connection between the individual's spirit and nature? If so, what is that connection?

• What does it mean to know something intuitively? For example, has a parent or a sibling ever known something was wrong with you without having talked with or seen you? What do we mean when we say "I just know it"?

• How do you demonstrate that you are an individual? Do you think independently of others or do you follow the crowd?