Knowra Dark Romanticism Dark Romanticism Dark Romanticism is a nineteenth-century literary movement that explored human sin, psychological darkness, and the supernatural, challenging Transcendentalist optimism about human nature and the world.
Gothic fiction : A literary mode that uses terror, decay, mystery, and the supernatural to unsettle readers. Its haunted settings and threatening mysteries supplied Dark Romanticism with much of its atmosphere.
Edgar Allan Poe : An American writer whose tales and poems explore terror, obsession, death, and psychological collapse. His compressed tales helped define the movement's psychological and supernatural extremes.
The Tell-Tale Heart : An 1843 short story by Edgar Allan Poe narrated by a murderer who insists on his sanity. The narrator's compulsive account makes guilt and fractured perception drive the horror.
Romanticism : A broad artistic and intellectual movement that emphasized emotion, imagination, individual experience, and the sublime. Dark Romanticism belongs to Romanticism but gives its inward and supernatural possibilities a darker cast.
Transcendentalism : A nineteenth-century American movement that emphasized intuition, spiritual insight, and the inherent goodness of people and nature. Dark Romantic writers challenged its confidence in human goodness and nature's spiritual harmony.
Nathaniel Hawthorne : An American novelist and short-story writer known for works about sin, guilt, and Puritan New England. His fiction makes inherited guilt and moral ambiguity central to Dark Romantic themes.
The Scarlet Letter : An 1850 novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne about adultery, public shame, and Puritan society. Its treatment of sin and concealed guilt exemplifies Hawthorne's moral darkness.
American Transcendentalism : A nineteenth-century American movement that treated intuition, nature, and the individual as paths to spiritual truth. Its faith in spiritual self-reliance sharply contrasts with Dark Romantic doubt about human nature.
Original sin : The theological doctrine that humanity inherits a fallen condition associated with Adam and Eve's disobedience. Its account of inherited human weakness echoes the movement's suspicion of innate virtue.
Herman Melville : An American novelist and poet whose works include Moby-Dick and explore obsession, evil, and human limits. His fiction enlarges the movement's concern with obscure evil and destructive obsession.
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