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The influence of romanticism
Goethe's faust part 1
Importance of romanticism in english literature
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Goethe’s literature argued against the shift towards radical rationalism. "Faust" is the peak of this argument. Goethe's philosophical outlook developed in Faust confined the Romanticism to a broader and more complete understanding of life. His mature view of the benefits and defects of Romanticism is best illustrated in Act III of Part Two. Familiarity with the Romantic Movement is an important factors in understanding Faust, but to fully appreciate Goethe's poem it is necessary to approach it impediment by the ideology of any particular thought. Wordsworth’s “ Tintern Abbey” twisted the tale of a personal view of his time spent at Tintern Abbey in the past, present, and future. His poetic theory has been used as the basis of Romantic poetry.
(ll. 19-24) Wordsworth’s famous and simple poem, “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” expresses the Romantic Age’s appreciation for the beauty and truth that can be found in a setting as ordinary as a field of daffodils. With this final stanza, Wordsworth writes of the mind’s ability to carry those memories of nature’s beauty into any setting, whether city or country. His belief in the power of the imagination and the effect it can have on nature, and vice a versa, is evident in most of his work. This small
At First the article Touches on the questioning of what Faust is. In summery, Faust is the protagonist of an old German story about a guy who is actually really successful, but at the same time is somewhat dissatisfied with his life life. He had a serious lust for earthly happiness, alo...
Faust originated as German folklore, and has been written into literature several times. For the purpose of this paper, the characters will be considered as they are represented in the play Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. When looking at Goethe’s representation of Faust, he bears several resemblances to Hawthorne’s Chillingworth. The first aspect of the characters to be considered lies in who they were before their stories began. The article describes how both men were scholars, devoting their lives to study and knowledge. They were considered doctors due to their rigorous study of medicine. Because of their investment in the quest for knowledge, both men were separated from humanity, but yearned to understand it just the same. As Stein says in his article, “Like all Fausts, he [Chillingworth] has found it necessary to pursue knowledge beyond ordinary limits….Scholar, alchemist, magician, and physician, he resembles the Faustian hero” (78). Hawthorne seemed to paint Chillingworth in the image of Faust, creating him as a character so consumed by his studies that he lives outside natural society. A direct allusion to Faust seems to be made in the midst of The Scarlet Letter, calling Chi...
In “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” we find the purest expression of Wordsworth’s fascination with friendship.
...ating Wordsworth: 'Tintern Abbey' and the Community with Nature" Romanticism on the Net 20 (November 2000) 4.
The Romantic Hero in Goethe's Faust Works Cited Not Included Long hailed as the watershed of Romantic literature, Goethe’s Faust uses the misadventures of its hero to parallel the challenges that pervaded European society in the dynamic years of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Faust is the prototypical Romantic hero because the transformation of his attitudes mirrors the larger transformation that was occurring in the society in which Goethe conceived the play. Faust’s odyssey transports him from adherence to the cold rationale of the Enlightenment to a passion for the pleasures that came to define the Romantic spirit. Faust not only expresses the moral contradictions and spiritual yearnings of a man in search of fulfillment, but also portrays the broader mindset of a society that was groping for meaning in a world where reason no longer sufficed as a catalyst for human cultural life. The period of German Romanticism in which Goethe wrote Faust was plagued with the same intrinsic turmoil that Faust himself felt prior to making his deal with Mephisto.
Peters, John G. “Wordsworth’s TINTERN ABBEY” The Explicator(Washington) , Winter 2003, Vol. 61, Iss. 2, pg. 77 : eLibrary. Web 05 Mar 2002
In his essay, "Structure and Style in the Greater Romantic Lyric," critic M.H.Abrams describes a paradigm for the longer Romantic lyric of which Wordsworth's "Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey" is an example. First, some of the poems are either identified as odes in the title, or, as Abrams states "approach the ode in having lyric magnitude and a serious subject, feelingfully meditated." (201) The narrator of "Tintern Abbey" expresses deep sensations as he views a landscape familiar from his youth, the emotions and memories evoked lead to wider moral and philosophical cogitations. The prototypical lyric, Abrams continues, "present a determinate speaker in a particularized, and usually a localized, outdoor setting." (201) Indeed, Wordsworth's title specifically identifies the site of which the narrator speaks, it is "a few miles above Tintern Abbey, on the banks of the Wye." The narrators of these poems, continues Abrams, speak in "a fluent vernacular which rises easily to a more formal speech, a sustained colloquy, sometimes with himself or with the outer scene, but more frequently with a silent human auditor, present or absent." (201) "Tintern Abbey" begins with an informal statement, a sudden "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings": "Five years have passed; five summers, with the length / Of five long winters! And again I hear / These waters" (1-3); then gradually builds to more studied speech appropriate for philosophical ruminations: "For I have learned / To look on nature, not as in the hour / Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes / The still, sad music of humanity; / Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power / to chasten and subdue" (89-94). The narrator is speaking to a...
In "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey," William Wordsworth explains the impact of Nature from Tintern Abbey in his every day life. "Tintern Abbey" shows the great importance of nature to Wordsworth in his writings, love for life, and religion. The memories he has of Tintern Abbey make even the darkest days full of light.
Wordsworth, William. Poetical Works. 5 vols. E. de Selincourt and Helen Darbishire, eds. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958.
Aristotle also believed that the use of simple language in the poetry will keep the ultimate meaning from becoming blurred by complicated figures of speech. Wordsworth basically rejects the ideas of “personification of abstract ideas (652)” and “poetic diction (653)” in The Preface to Lyrical Ballads, because his main goal is to imitate the language that the common men speak everyday. Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey is written in journal style, which is not known for loftiness in speech or complicated language, but for an easy flowing style which employs common everyday language and description. This allows the audience to understand and develop a picture of the image in their mind.
William Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” is an ideal example of romantic poetry. As the web page “Wordsworth Tintern Abbey” notes, this recollection was added to the end of his book Lyrical Ballads, as a spontaneous poem that formed upon revisiting Wye Valley with his sister (Wordsworth Tintern Abbey). His writing style incorporated all of the romantic perceptions, such as nature, the ordinary, the individual, the imagination, and distance, which he used to his most creative extent to create distinctive recollections of nature and emotion, centered on striking descriptions of his individual reactions to these every day, ordinary things. Tintern Abbey is just an old ruin (William). However, throughout Wordsworth’s poetry, Tintern Abbey becomes something slightly more than a ruin.
Wordsworth, William. "Tintern Abbey". Romanticism. 2nd ed. Ed. Duncan Wu. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1998.
The Romanticism period is marked by changes in societal beliefs as a rejection of the values and scientific thought pursued during the Age of Enlightenment. During this period, art, music, and literature are seen as high achievement, rather than the science and logic previously held in esteem. Nature is a profound subject in the art and literature and is viewed as a powerful force. Searching for the meaning of self becomes a noble quest to undertake. In the dramatic tragedy of “Faust” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, we find a masterpiece of Romanticism writing that includes the concepts that man is essentially good, the snare of pride, and dealing with the supernatural.
Durrant, Geoffrey. Wordsworth and the Great System, A Study of Wordsworth’s Poetic Universe. Cambridge: University Printing House, 1970.