American Literature / Unit 6 AML 0503 short lesson, about 20 seconds
American Romanticism's Four Preoccupations
Captions available
The idea
American Romantic writing returns to four subjects: the wilderness and what settlement does to it, the past invented for a country that lacked one, the isolated individual against the community, and the supernatural admitted where realism would refuse it. Each supplies a recognizable kind of story.
In practice
Wilderness, invented past, isolate, supernatural.
Where people slip
These are preoccupations, not a school's programme.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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