American Literature / Unit 7 AML 0625 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Sorting a Romantic Writer: Transcendental or Dark
The idea
American Romanticism splits into two camps and the exam asks which a passage belongs to. The Transcendental side treats human nature as sound and institutions as the corruption, sets its scenes outdoors, uses light and morning as its habitual imagery, and ends by affirming. The dark side treats human nature as flawed at the root, sets its scenes in closed rooms, forests at night, houses with histories, uses shadow and decay, and ends without a rescue. The test is where the evil is located: if the passage blames custom, church, market or crowd, it is Transcendental; if it locates the trouble inside a person or inherited through a family, it is dark Romantic. Both camps are Romantic in method, valuing intuition, symbol and the individual, so the shared vocabulary decides nothing.
In practice
Corruption outside, or corruption within.
Where people slip
The two camps knew each other, and Hawthorne and Melville wrote directly against neighbours whose company they kept. A passage can borrow Transcendental language in order to reject it.
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