American RomanticismRomantic Period is one of the most important periods in the history of American literature. When Americans were constructing their country, they also began to realize their differences from their European counterparts. They began to hope to see an entirely different literature model which expressed American cultures. Great writers of that period captured on their pages the enthusiasm and the optimism of that dream.Romanticism refers to an artistic and intellectual movement originating in Europe in the late 18th century and characterized by a heightened interest in nature, emphasis on the individual’s experience of emotion and imagination, departure from the attitudes and forms of classicism, and rebellion against established social rules and conventions. The romantic period of American literature stretches from the end of the 18th century to the outbreak of the Civil War. It was an age of westward expansion, of the increasing gravity of the slavery question, of an intensification of the spirit of embattled sectionalism in the South, and of a powerful impulse to reform in the North. In literature it was America’s first great creative period, a full flowering of the romantic impulse on American soil.1. The unique characteristics of American RomanticismAlthough greatly influenced by their English coun terparts, the American romantic writers revealed unique characteristics of their own in their works and they grew on the native lands. For examp1e，(1) the American national experience of "pioneering into the west" proved to be a rich source of material for Amer ican writers to draw upon. They celebrated America's landscape with its virgin forests, meadows, groves, endless prairies, streams, and vast oceans. The wilderness came to function almost as a dramatic character that symbolized moral 1aw. (2) The desire for an esca pe from society and a return to nature became a permanent convention of American literature. Such a desire is particularly evident in Cooper’s Leather Stocking Tales, in Thoreau's Walden and，later, in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (3) With the growth of American national consciousness, American character types speaking local dialects appeared in poetry and fiction with increasing frequency. (4)Then the American Puritanism as a cultural heritage exerted great influences over American moral values and American Romanticism. One of the manifestations is the fact that American romantic writers tended more to moralize than their English and European counterparts. (5) Besides, a preoccupation with the Calvinistic view of origina1 sin and the mystery of evil marked the works of Hawthorne, Melville and a host of lesser writers.2. Representative writers and their worksWashington Irving(1783-1859) was the first American storyteller to beinternationally recognized as a man of letters and the first great prose stylist of American romanticism, and his familiar style was destined to provide a model for the prevailing prose narrative of the future. His first book A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (1809), written under the name of Diedrich Knickerbocker, was a great success and won him wide popularity. He is best known for his The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent (1819-1820), especially in which two short stories Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow have become American classics. Later he wrote works of history and biographies, such as The History of Life and V oyages of Christobra Columbus (1828), A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada and The Alhambra (1832). After that, he spent the rest of his life living a life of leisure and comfort, and writing. The Life of Goldsmith (1840) and a five-volume Life of Washington (1855-1859). He died in 1859.James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) is respectfully remembered as a master of adventurous narrative and as the creator of an American hero-myth. According to a charming legend, Cooper’s first novel Precaution (1820) was a response to his wife’s challenge to improve on the current British society fiction, and the failure of this work turned him to historical novels. Later, The Spy, a tale of the Revolution he wrote, became a great success in America and Europe. In 1823, Cooper published The Pioneers (1823), which together with other 4 novels The Deer slayer (1841), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Pathfinder (1840) and The Prairie (1827) became his well-known Leather-stocking Tales. Cooper went on to write over thirty novels, including exciting adventures of the sea like The Pilot. Cooper created the American historical novel using authentic American subject.In general, American Romanticism was a kind of imitation as well as innovation because it appeared under the Western Europe Romanticism and finally it created a unique style of fiction and poetry. American Romanticism embraced the individual and rebelled against the confinement of neoclassicism and religious tradition. American Romanticism created a new literary genre that continued to influence American writers.。