Essential Questions

Essential Questions for This Unit

1. The Romantics' beliefs of optimism and individualism are reflected by using emotions and also by using physical abilities. In the song, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot", it is using emotion to show the slaves feelings and their hopefulness and faith about wanting to go home. The slaves were hopeful and faithful, because they knew that God would take care of them, in either situation they are in, whether it be their time to die, or it's time for them to no longer be a slave anymore, and they be set free.

2. Romanticism is a style of writing that uses emotion, imagery, and physical abilities to bring the reader into the story. In "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", it uses imagery to explain to us exactly what he's saying. Irving says in the story "regiments of turkeys were gobbling through the farmyard." Gothic Romanticism deals more with horrid happenings, that still deals with emotion. Gothic Romanticism is based off of Romanticism, just more in depth. An example of Gothic Romanticism is "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allen Poe. Poe uses emotion to catch the reader's attention, but suddenly, something horrifying happens. Poe comes home drunk one night and removes the cat's eye from the eye socket. When Poe starts feeling bad about what he has done, he hangs the cat. When he finds a new cat and gets fed up with him, he goes to kill the cat, but kills his wife instead. When this happens, he shows that he has no remorse or sympathy towards what he has done. Southern Gothic Romanticism is a type of Gothic Romanticism that is usually based in Southern America. Southern Gothic Romanticism is more commonly known as the ironic and supernatural events that occur in the story. For example in "The Life You Save May be Your Own", it's ironic that he leaves his mother and regrets it, but ends up looking for a wife, and when he finds one, he doesn't want her to leave, because of what he had done to is mother.
All of these types of writings are all the same, but have different plots and events that happen in them. These three types of writings have one goal that is set and that is to become individual. These writers are all going against what should be written about. Each type of writing uses the same idea, it just gets more in depth.

3. Southern Gothic Romanticism is just a more in depth type of writing that preceded it. In order to become the Southern Gothic style, it must first become Romanticism that uses the reader's emotion to bring them in. It also uses the reader's emotion to discover a mood and tone for the story, it has to be individual since it's Romanticism, but it also has one of a kind. In most Southern Gothic Romanticism writings, it uses mood, love, truth, and the glory in things to get the feeling that the reader needs.

4. The American culture prompted the dark side of Romanticism by throwing in such things as slavery and the wars that were beginning to happen. The writer started using their emotions to see what was happening, and using them to write in this style.

5. The Romantic writings has made today's writings a way of having all different types of genres to choose from.Whether a person enjoys reading a Romance novel or reading a mysterious novel, it's al led back to a type of Romanticism. The mysterious novel would either fall under the category of Gothic Romanticism or Southern Gothic Romanticism, depending on where it takes place.