ROMANTICICM/REALISM

The field of arts (music, art, literature) has offered us a lot over time. Even today, newer genres are created to keep those interested in the field engaged. Two such genres in these fields that exist even today include romanticism and realism. Both use similar subjects in their work, but the portrayal of these subjects varies greatly. It is therefore, important to understand the context of romanticism vs. realism and vice versa. Realism was a movement followed by the period of romanticism. As the names of these genres suggest, romanticism is marked by the supernatural, by situations and people that were perfect and seemed out of this world.
Realism, on the other hand, is grounded to reality, with characters and settings that are inspired from real life. While the basic difference between romanticism and realism have already been highlighted, there is much more to these movements than just one basic differences. Here, we provide you with an overview of the characteristics of these two genres. Take a look.
In art and literature, realism expresses a message that depicts situations realistically, whereas romanticism illustrates messages by using fiction. Romanticism focuses on plot, hyperbole, metaphor and feeling. In contrast, realism focuses on characters, details, objectivity and separation of author and narrator.
Poe and Hawthorne became key figures in the nineteenth-century flourishing of American letters and literature. They are clearly products of their time, which in terms of literature, is called the Romantic Era. These writers wrote in a Romantic vein, with a marked emphasis on subjectivity and an interest in scenes of early American life and pristine American landscapes. Yet, most of these writers in different ways also exhibited the darker tones of Romanticism when dealing with American life.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) is perhaps the best-known American Romantic who worked in the so-called Gothic mode. His poems and stories explore the darker side of the Romantic imagination, dealing with the Grotesque, the supernatural, and the horrifying. Poe also rejected the rational and the intellectual in favor of the intuitive and the emotional, a dominant characteristic of the Romantic Movement. Hence, in his critical theories and through his art, Poe emphasized that didactic and intellectual elements had no place in art. The subject matter of art should rather deal with the emotions, and the greatest art was that which had a direct effect on the emotions.
For Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64) literature also seemed to depend on the possibility of the Gothic. Hence, of particular interest to Hawthorne was the nature of evil. As his most famous works The Scarlett Letter,“Young Goodman Brown” and “ The Minister’s Black Veil” demonstrate, evil often coincides with his studies of religion, particularly Puritanism. Like his contemporary Poe, Hawthorne also made extensive use of symbols. His scarlet letter ranks alongside Poe’s pit and pendulum, and symbols generally play important roles in all of his major short stories, including the tales to be analyzed: “The Birthmark” and “The Artist of the Beautiful”. What is more, Hawthorne’s works also often hint at the supernatural, the unreal, or the uncommon.
One of Hawthorne’s and Poe’s distinctive concerns is also that of separating head and heart, intellect and soul. In his notebooks, Hawthorne, for instance, wrote that an unpardonable sin is “a want of love and reverence for the Human Soul; in consequence of which, the investigator pried into its dark depths, not with a hope or purpose of making it better, but from a cold philosophical curiosity, – content that it should be wicked in whatever kind or degree, and only desiring to study it out. Would not this, in other words, be the separation of the intellect from the heart.”[3] Hawthorne explored these Romantic ideas and the themes of obsession, loss and the impossibility of perfection extensively in his short stories “The Artist of the Beautiful” and “The Birthmark”.
Romanticism are treated in Poe’ short stories “Ligeia” and “Morella” and in Hawthorne’s “The Artist of the Beautiful” and “The Birthmark”. Both thinkers can be seen as romantic for a couple of reasons both writers feature a very non-conformist view of the social setting.in fact both writers spend much of their thematic development in trying to establish emotional frames of individuals who are apart from this conformist social setting.hawthrone conception of puritan social norms in the scarlet letter as well as his critique of social hypocrisy would help to advance this.at the same time poes exploration of the more frightening notions of self in his works and his poetry do so apart from the traditional concept of society this create a definite theme of romanticism in their work.
One of the themes of romanticism is emotion and feeling. You can see this quite a bit in both men’s work. Poes work especially, is highly emotional example the telltale heart or the raven .similarly the secret letter is very emotional as well.
Romantics are also really into the idea of dreams and visions. Again, you can see this quite clearly in Poe
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter”, and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” are chosen for this purpose. It is generally observed that Romantic heroes in these writings tend to be archetypal rather than well-rounded, realistic characters, and often meant to embody ideas rather than represent humanity. Their heavy involvement with nature helps identify them as Romantic heroes. They also reflect a relation to the past. The setting in all of them tends to be a blend of imagination and realism. Hawthorne, like Poe, makes extensive use of symbols and sometimes uses metaphors of everyday objects seen in moonlight to give a sense of romanticism. In The Custom-House section of the book, he describes the room with the moonlight falling down onto the carpet. The moonlight filtered through the window constitutes a combination of reality and imagination, which leads us to the core of the romanticism. The description of the meteor and the red letter A seen in the sky also work to help the Romantic aspect if they are real or unreal. Like the other Dark Romantics, Hawthorne, too, uses the
Supernatural and the mysterious. His symbols, like the scarlet letter A, the scaffold, the comet, Hester’s house, the forest, the rosebush in the front gate of the prison, which is believed that Anne Hutchinson stepped on and it was grown, and Pearl, are the hints of the supernatural, the unreal or the uncommon. These symbols are also Hawthorne’s concern, as a dark romantic, of the human conflict between heart and head, soul and intellect, human nature and Puritanism, and the past and the present. He writes that an unpardonable sin is “a want of love and reverence for the Human Soul;
Allan Poe and Nathaniel their stories are considered romantic because they are affected by the environment of the transcendentalists because they valued intuition over logic and reason. Both groups also saw signs and symbols in human events.in fact; the dark romantics employ the literary technique of symbolism and great effect. For instance ,Hawthorne’s the scarlet letter is replete with profound symbols ,such as the letter is a replete with profound symbols such as the letter and little pearl and Poe used cats ravens houses, the red death, and many other forces as symbolic
They also use features of romantic writing such as very descriptive writing, a focus on the supernatural or unexplained events, a belief in good versus evil and a focus on aspects of human nature. Both authors use supernatural elements in their stories; for example, Poe has dead men’s heartbeats ,ghost cats, glowing bugs and life after death and Hawthorne uses the events in the skies, the forest, and glowing letters in his stories. Both authors were very descriptive, and often had themes of good versus evil, and man’s struggle with morality. All these traits made Poe and Hawthorne romantic writers.
The writers are romantic for a couple of reasons. They feature a very non-conformist view of the social setting.in fact; both writers spend much of their thematic development in trying to establish emotional frames of the individuals who are apart from this conformist social setting.one of the themes of romanticism is emotional and feeling. You can see this quite a bit in both men’s work. Poe‘s work, especially, is highly emotional think about the tell –tale heart or the raven similarly the scarlet letter is very emotional as well
Romantics are also really into the idea of dreams and visions. Again you can see this quite clearly in Poe. Many of his characters seem to be experiencing these things
Hawthorne makes extensive use of symbols and sometimes uses metaphors of everyday objects seen in moonlight to give a sense of romanticism. In The Custom-House section of the book, he describes the room with the moonlight falling down onto the carpet. The moonlight filtered through the window constitutes a combination of reality and imagination, which leads us to the core of the romanticism. The description of the meteor and the red letter A seen in the sky also work to help the Romantic aspect if they are real or unreal. Like the other Dark Romantics, Hawthorne, too, uses the supernatural and the mysterious. His symbols, like the scarlet letter A, the scaffold, the comet, Hester’s house, the forest, the rosebush in the front gate of the prison, which is believed that Anne Hutchinson stepped on and it was grown, and Pearl, are the hints of the supernatural, the unreal or the uncommon. These symbols are also Hawthorne’s concern, as a dark romantic, of the human conflict between heart and head, soul and intellect, human nature and Puritanism, and the past and the present. He writes that an unpardonable sin is “a want of love and reverence for the Human Soul;
Poe includes elements of the supernatural, too. Madeline goes into a coma-like state and is buried alive. The narrator visits her where she is locked in a casket. This is highly unbelievable but it helps Poe’s story as being a Dark Romantic. Another example of the Romantic feature of supernatural elements is the destruction of the house. It is collapsed in the storm at the same time that Roderick dies. The Usher bloodline is destroyed forever with the destruction of the house. The coincidence seems unbelievable for a realistic story. “The Fall of the House” features Poe’s interest in exploring the psychology of human being, and the self-destructive and preserve nature of the conscious and subconscious mind. Dark Romantic authors like Poe believed that man was born basically evil, and that humans must struggle their whole lives to keep their evil nature from overtaking them. In this story, Roderick is in a battle against the powers of evil (psychological issues and his sister who is not in control of herself). On the other hand, the dark emotional tone, feelings of doom, fear and guilt pervade throughout the story especially on Roderick Usher, who suffers from a mental illness. It eventually leads him to bury his sister alive. For him his sister Madeline is a symbol of his fear of death, and also her name stands for madness. Another dark symbol used in the story is the painting. He paints a tunnel that stands again for death. Lastly, the narrator mentions a “fissure”, which literally means a crack or a fracture, in the foundation of the Usher house. It is symbolic of the “cracks” in the Usher family. The last Ushers, Roderick and Madeline, are flawed just like the house, and therefore neither can survive.

References
ALSEN Eberhard, The New Romanticism: A Collection o
f Critical Essays (ed. Eberhard Alsen), Garland Pub
lishing Inc., New
York 2000.

PENNELL Melissa McFarland,
Masterpieces of American Romantic Literature,
Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut &
London 2006.

SKIPP Francis E.,
American Literature
, Barron’s Educational Series, Inc., New York 1992

Pizer, D. Realism and Naturalism in Nineteenth-Century Literature (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1966)
Bercovitch, Sacvan (gen.ed.) The Cambridge History of American Literature, vol.I, II, VIII