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Importance of romanticism in literature
Essay on the main aspects of romantic poetry
Importance of romanticism in literature
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Romantic poetry was part of the Romantic Movement in the European literature during the XVIII and XIX century. In part, the movement was a rebellion in response to the Enlightenment movement, which focused on the more scientific and rational thought, romantics set themselves in opposition to the order and rationality to embrace freedom. It could be said that romantic poetry is about the comeback of the men to the nature. Prominent characteristics of romantic poetry emphasized passion and emotion, there was a worship of nature and intense dislike for the urban life; most times, the subject of the romantic poetry was ordinary people. There was also a love for the medieval age.
George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) was a famous English poet of the romantic
The poem is about a person growing apart from someone he once loved, and once upon parting, the love turned into coldness. The reason of the separation of the lovers is not clear. Romanticism is showcased in this poem because it compares the feeling of depression to nature, and also because this poem is very relatable since most people experience similar feelings when they separate from their loved ones.
John Keats (1795-1821) was another English romantic poet. Along with George Gordon Byron, Keats was one of the main figures of the second generation of romantic poets. However, Keats had relatively few readers while he was alive. It was not until after his death, he became recognized as major romantic poet. Keats poetry was characterized by sensual imagery and he often associated both love and pain in his poetry.
When I Have Fears is a poem written by John Keats and it’s about a poet and his fear of mortality. You can see how his fear of death is showcased in the first few lines and how he will not fulfill himself as a writer. There is also a fear of losing his beloved ones. In the end, Keats resolves his fears by no longer giving importance to love and
Time is endlessly flowing by and its unwanted yet pending arrival of death is noted in the two poems “When I Have Fears,” by John Keats and “Mezzo Cammin,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Keats speaks with no energy; only an elegiac tone of euphoric sounds wondering if his life ends early with his never attained fame. He mentions never finding a “fair creature” (9) of his own, only experiencing unrequited love and feeling a deep loss of youth’s passion. Though melancholy, “Mezzo Cammin,” takes a more conversational tone as Longfellow faces what is commonly known as a midlife crisis. The two poems progressions contrast as Keats blames his sorrow for his lack of expression while Longfellow looks at life’s failures as passions never pursued. In spite of this contrast, both finish with similar references to death. The comparable rhyme and rhythm of both poems shows how both men safely followed a practiced path, never straying for any spontaneous chances. The ending tones evoking death ultimately reveal their indications towards it quickly advancing before accomplish...
To start with, Romanticism was the first writing movement of the nineteenth century. It originated at the close of the eighteenth century in Europe, but was popular from the 1800s to 1850s. This movement was a revolt against the political and social standards of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction to the reasoning of nature through science. Romanticism’s characteristics came from philosophical sources and, because it is a reaction against reasoning, it focuses on intuition, nature, and human emotions. The philosophical background of this movement came from an author named Jean-Jacques Rousseau who emphasized the individual and the power of inspiration. Romanticism later then broke off into another two movements called Parnassian and Realism.
Two Romanticism poets that stand out are George Gordon, known as Lord Byron, and William Blake. According to The Norton Anthology Western Literature, Lord Byron cultivated the persona of the solitary sufferer as well as the dashing adventurer. These two concepts are seen in majority of his works. He did not limit himself to only poetry. Lord Byron wrote many lyrics, oriental tales, satires, and melancholy poems. In his lifetime he was able to attract many readers as he engaged in Romantic Ideology.
Despite its name, the Romantic literary period has little to nothing to do with love and romance that often comes with love; instead it focuses on the expression of feelings and imagination. Romanticism originally started in Europe, first seen in Germany in the eighteenth century, and began influencing American writers in the 1800s. The movement lasts for sixty years and is a rejection of a rationalist period of logic and reason. Gary Arpin, author of multiple selections in Elements of Literature: Fifth Course, Literature of The United States, presents the idea that, “To the Romantic sensibility, the imagination, spontaneity, individual feelings and wild nature were of greater value than reason, logic, planning and cultivation” (143). The Romantic author rejects logic and writes wild, spontaneous stories and poems inspired by myths, folk tales, and even the supernatural. Not only do the Romantics reject logic and reasoning, they praise innocence, youthfulness and creativity as well as the beauty and refuge that they so often find in nature.
Romanticism was an artistic and literary movement that began in the late 18th century Europe that stressed the individual’s expression of emotion and imagination, glorification of the past and nature, and departure from forms of classicism. The movement emerged as a reaction against the ideas
Romanticism was a reaction to the Enlightenment as a cultural movement, an aesthetic style, and an attitude of mind (210). Culturally, Romanticism freed people from the limitations and rules of the Enlightenment. The music of the Enlightenment was orderly and restrained, while the music of the Romantic period was emotional. As an aesthetic style, Romanticism was very imaginative while the art of the Enlightenment was realistic and ornate. The Romanticism as an attitude of mind was characterized by transcendental idealism, where experience was obtained through the gathering and processing of information. The idealism of the Enlightenment defined experience as something that was just gathered.
The Romantic period was an expressive and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century and peaked in the 1800s-1850s. This movement was defined and given depth by an expulsion of all ideals set by the society of the particular time, in the sense that the Romantics sought something deeper, something greater than the simplistic and structured world that they lived in. They drew their inspiration from that around them. Their surroundings, especially nature and the very fabric of their minds, their imagination. This expulsion of the complexity of the simple human life their world had organised and maintained resulted in a unique revolution in history. Eradication of materialism, organisation and society and
Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, George Gordon Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were all poets in the Romantic era. They all had a love of their country and wrote about nature and revolution in some of their poems.
This opposition shows Keats highlighting the delicate correspondence between happiness, death and melancholy having humanistic traits. In order to experience true sorrow, one must feel true joy to see the beauty of melancholy. However, Keats’s poem is not all dark imagery, for interwoven into this poem is an emerging possibility of resurrection and the chance at a new life. The speaker in this poem starts by strongly advising against the actions and as the poem continues urges a person to take different actions.
Nature’s beauty can be seen all around us and has been and will always be there for us to appreciate; yet the way we experience and interpret nature is ever changing. The Romantic Era was a literary movement that gave a new attitude towards nature that was unique and spiritual. The Romantic movement, beginning around 1798, and carrying on well into the mid 1800s, expanded into almost every corner of Europe, into the United States, and Latin America. The ideology of the romantic era, of being completely humanistic, was the opposite of the new ideas of logic and reason of the Enlightenment.
While Coleridge describes the process of creating Romantic poetry and encourages poets to use the combination of nature and imagination in this process, Keats is more focused on reality and is well aware of the limitations of the Grecian urn. With the poets’ admiration of nature present in both poems …… to be completed.
“When I Have Fears” effectively demonstrates the elements of poetry, creating a poem that causes the reader to think in depth about his life. Keats describes his own reasons for fearing death in a way that causes the reader to reflect on death and its effects. He does so by using symbols, images, comparisons, and sounds to generate a thoughtful mood in his audience. The tone he uses throughout the poem also contributes to the effectiveness it has on its readers. Concentrating on fame, love, and death, Keats organizes the elements of poetry into a formal sonnet that expresses the reasons behind his fear of death and urges his audience to contemplate on that same fear.
The Romantic period has many beginnings and takes different forms; so that in a celebrated essay, On the Discrimination of Romanticism (1924), A.O. Lovejoy argued that the word “Romantic” should no longer be used, since it has come to mean so many things that by itself, it means nothing. On the derivation of the word “Romanticism” we have definite and commonly accepted information which helps us to understand its meaning. Critics and literary historians differ widely and sometimes as violently, about the answer then have differed about love truth and other concepts. Romanticism is concerned with all these concepts and with others with equal importance. It is an attitude toward life and experience older than religion, as permanent as love, and as many-sided as truth. (Watson, J.R. English Poetry of the Romantic Period, Longman Inc. New York)
Romantics believed in freedom and spontaneous creativity rather than order and imitation, they believed people should think for themselves instead of being bound to the fixed set of beliefs of the Enlightenment. Romanticism and Love Of all the emotions celebrated by the Romantics, the most popular was love. However, Romanticism should not be confused with romantic love in the sense of candle lit dinners and receiving love notes, flowers and boxes of candy. Instead, it was about a love for nature and beauty, and a sense of all human beings having a connection, empathy was heightened for others in which they brought on feeling the pains of other people in the world. To the Romantics love, which invokes compassion, was a natural God-given right.
Literature of the Romantic Era was heavily influenced by the politics, major events and social reforms of the time, the most notable being the French Revolution in 1789, which is typically marked as the beginning of this period. Many authors of the time period were attracted to the ideal of universal equality and the abandonment of monarchy in favor of democratic go...