Introduction

Abstract

The chapter argues that American literary Romanticism developed as a direct response to pervasive conflict over democracy’s moral dimensions in the early republic and antebellum eras. The Introduction calls for a renewed attention to the tradition of political liberalism, particularly its roots in the violent aftermath of the Protestant Reformation and its modern synthesis in the work of John Rawls, not only to better comprehend the challenges and dilemmas of modern political life, but because U.S. writers frequently turned to liberal thinkers and ideas as they sought to make sense of the inherent contentiousness over democracy’s moral dimensions by interrogating the nature of moral belief itself. Those philosophical engagements sparked Romanticism’s flourishing as U.S. writers increasingly embraced Romantic literary modes emphasizing the imagination’s capacity for creative synthesis and the role it could therefore play in navigating the complexities of moral experience and in shoring up the habits of mind and feeling that are vital to a meaningful democratic culture. This Introduction explores some of the implications of this framework for Americanist literary studies and humanistic scholarship more generally.