19th Century American Romanticism

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The 19th Century was classified as a time of momentous change, political empires broke up, nationalism arose, the power of the middle class replaced that of the aristocracy, and colonialism flourished. It was during this time that some of the most renowned works were published such as Frankenstein by Mary Shelly and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Writers grew board with the common techniques of writing from the previous era, and began to branch out to new styles of writing such as “realism” and “romanticism.” While realism was meant to express mundane life as it actually was, romanticism focused more on expression like imaginations and emotions. Although popular with some writers, the public mocked these philosophies of writing. Knowing …show more content…

The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban, not seeing his own face in a glass" (Wilde). This quote is an allusion to Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In the play, Caliban is a sub-human monster, capable of reasoning and language, but also physically ugly and immoral and corrupt in his actions. Yet for that, he is at least partly a sympathetic character, at the mercy of his nature—we fear him in his rage and his plotting to overthrow the hero and rape his daughter, yet also we pity him in his deformity and his impotence. He is described as being to a man as man is to an angel, and he is in fact what man is when man compares himself to angels, or two any other ideal of what man can be. He is what we do not like about ourselves when we examine ourselves. From this, the reader can conclude that 19th century society’s dislike of realism is because it shows them uncomfortable truths about themselves, both as individuals and as a society. In contrast, just as readers cannot handle what shows them in reality, so too they cannot handle what does not. In more simplistic terms, an artist who reflects life will be rejected for doing so, and the artist who does not reflect life will be rejected for not doing so. Artists are very fickle creatures, which is part of the reason Oscar had this book revolve around artists and their art (Philosophy

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