Derek Vidal AMST 1130 - 3 June 9th, 2024 Professor Anand Week 1 In the 18th and 19th century romanticism swept through Europe and brought about some of the most famous authors to date, such as Mary Shelley, William Blake, and even American born Edgar Allan Poe. It even managed to break into American culture at the time and influence its politics, philosophy, and art. In this paper I would like to discuss what romanticism is, and how it impacted the early American republic. Who Edgar Allan Poe was, his impact, and my own reaction. To start off, I would like to ask the question, what is romanticism? Well, to answer this question we have to travel back to where it originated from. Originating from Western Europe during the period of change when the world was becoming …show more content…
Another important aspect of American Romanticism was its exploration of the supernatural. Many writers in this time period were fascinated by the unknown and the unexplained, and they often incorporated elements of the supernatural into their work. This can be seen in stories of writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, who explored themes of madness, death, and the supernatural in his tales of mystery and horror. Edgar Allan Poe, born in Boston, Massachusetts, was an American author in the romantic era, while a child his mother fell ill and passed away due to tuberculosis which then in turn resulted to his becoming a foster child. During his college years, Poe accumulated debt from gambling as he had no money or help from his foster father, which in turn made him join the army under a different name, Edgar A. Perry. By his 20’s Poe was able to publish poems with his funds. Another issue Poe faced were publishers, as publishers knew his conditions the publishers set the terms which gave Poe a hard time selling his stories. As for his cultural impact, Poe was profound and enduring, widely regarded as a master of horror and