American Romanticism :

        Talk about the American Romantic movement in literature (1800-1850), and in particular Dark American Romantic poetry, has to start with a brief exploration of what Romanticism in general is about. It is considered by many literary scholars and historians that literary Romanticism started in modern-day Germany. An archetypal German Romantic is the author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), the writer of the Gothic (Dark Romantic) tragedy of Faust (1808). From there it moved to the British Isles, thereby making its glorious entry into the English-speaking world.

       The British Romantics penned several masterpieces ranging from poems to novels and defined and epitomized what being a Romantic entails. Arguably, the first British Romantic writer was William Blake (1757-1827), a painter, engraver, printer, and poet. He wrote some of the most awe-inspiring and famous poems in the English language. A modern reader can get a taste of the style and depth of his poetry by dipping into his masterpiece Songs of innocence and Experience , which is a collection of poems that explored innocent and optimistic themes (the innocence part) and dark , pessimistic , and disturbing themes (the experience part) .

          From Britain it traveled to America in the early decades of the 19^th century .The Romantic Period of American Literature featured a wide array of literary styles and sub-movements. Two towering and opposing branches of the movement in question where Dark Romanticism (The Gothic) and Transcendentalism. On the one hand, the Dark Romantics or the anti-transcendentalists like Edgar Allan Poe (1809-‘49) and Emily Dickinson (1830-‘86) emphasized the dark aspect of nature, reality, and human nature and psychology. They were and wrote gloomy, depressing, and pessimistic pieces that explored big themes like death, depression, the nature of reality, and the meaning of human life or lack thereof.

              On the other hand, we have the Transcendentalists , who highlighted and explored in depth the bright and positive side of everything that the Dark Romantics demonized and uglified. Writers like Henry David Thoreau (1817-‘62) , Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-‘82) , and Walt Whitman (1819-‘92) authored autobiographical works , philosophical/theological essays , and poems , respectively ,  in which they expounded their views about nature , humanity’s relationship with nature , and the divine and benevolent essence of Mother Nature .

          To wrap up , Romanticism is a rather extensive subject to study . The movement shaped and informed  the way  people have looked and still look at the world they live in and their place in it .The literary scholar , critic , and author Peter Ackroyd (born 1949) defined it as , “the story of Man’s escape from the shackles of commerce and industry to the freedom of nature .In a time when the world was becoming increasingly mechanized , the Romantics sought an intense relationship with the natural world. In so doing , they would revolutionize our perception of life itself.”