The Gothic Romance

*Rejecting the Enlightenment ideal of balance and rationalism, readers eagerly sought out the hysterical, mystical, passionate adventures of terrified heroes and heroines in the clutches of frightening, mysterious forces. The modern horror novel and woman's romance are both descendants of the Gothic romance, as transmuted through such masterworks as Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and her sister Emily's Wuthering Heights. Another classic Gothic work, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, is often cited as a forerunner of modern science fiction. (www.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/romanticism.html)

*The Gothic featured accounts of terrifying experiences in ancient castles — experiences connected with subterranean dungeons, secret passageways, flickering lamps, screams, moans, bloody hands, ghosts, graveyards, and the rest. By extension, it came to designate the macabre, mysterious, fantastic, supernatural, and, again, the terrifying, especially the pleasurably terrifying, in literature more generally. Closer to the present, one sees the Gothic pervading Victorian literature (for example, in the novels of Dickens and the Brontës), American fiction (from Poe and Hawthorne through Faulkner), and of course the films, television, and videos of our own culture.Signs of Gothic influence show up in some of the most frequently read Romantic poems — for example, the account of the skeleton ship and the crew's reaction ("A flash of joy . . . And horror follows") in Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.(http://www.wwnorton.com/nto/romantic/topic_2/welcome.htm)

So to answer rustykeloid's question "Can we separate gothic from the romantic or is American romanticism essentially just the gothic romantic?"

*I think we can separate the Gothic from the Romantic. It appears that the Gothic Romantics showed up later in the period and had to do with dealing with wider audiences (ie: Frankenstein) rather than being written as I get the sense for the self in solitude for later reflection.
*As for "is American Romanticism essentially just Gothic Romantic"- I don't think so. At least not in regards to Henry David Thoreau (thus far). Some of the characteristics that D. Odgen mentioned that made a poem a romantic poem can be seen in Thoreau's work. For instance: micro vs macro, nature and humanity being kindred peers, solitude as the means of engaging the vital force- hate of the city etc...(I will expand on these characteristics at another blog).
* I can see how "gothic” ideas or characteristics are reflected in early Romantics (i.e. Coleridge’s Frost at Midnight) the supernatural and the terrifying ie: (L15) the ‘film’, (L10) the quiet being disturbing and frightening but I don't think this warrants a blanket term of Gothic Romanticism.