Romanticism
"In spite of its representation of potentially diabolical and satanic powers, its historical and geographic location and its satire on extreme Calvinism, James Hogg's Private Memoirs and Confessions of a
Justified Sinner proves to be a novel that a dramatises a crisis of identity, a theme which is very much a Romantic concern." Discuss.
Examination of Romantic texts provides us with only a limited and much debated degree of commonality. However despite the disparity of
Romanticism (or Romanticisms) as a movement it would be true to say that a prevalent aspect of Romantic literature that unites many different forms of the movement, is a concern with the divided self.
As the empirical Rationalism of the eighteenth century was partially subverted by the subjective metaphysical reflection in the nineteenth artists tended to examine wider issues from an introspective starting point. The idea of the divided self became a motif from Blake's
"Albion" to Byron's Manfred to Keat's musings on the disassociated nature of the Poetic Self. Some writers personified this division in distinct physical manifestations, usually a hero and his inverse doppelganger. Most famously in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the various "selves" in De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater and in the complex mirroring of major characters in James Hogg's ambiguous masterpiece Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified
Sinner.
Although critics (as Andrea Henderson in Romantic Identities) have debated the extent that Romanticism dramatises divisive crises with the psychological self , the vast majority of writing on the subject agrees that "crisis of identity" is certainly a "Romantic concern".
Hugo Donelley draws attention to the "Modernis...
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... Doubleness of Hogg's Confessions and the Tradition", Studies in Scottish Literature, Vol. 18, pp.
59-74.
Punter, D. "The dialectic of persecution" in The Literature of Terror
Volume I, 1996, Longman Group (David Punter), London and New York.
Simpson, L. James Hogg, a Critical Study, 1962, Oliver and Boyd,
Edinburgh.
Wittig, Kurt. The Scottish Tradition in Literature, 1958, Oliver and
Boyd, Edinburgh.
Wu, Duncan. "Introduction" in Romanticism: An Anthology
WEBSITES.
http://prometheus.cc.emory.edu/panels/4C/R.Incorvati.html
Incorvati, R. "Dialogue and Marginality in James Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner." Prometheus Unplugged Website.
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[1] Although Hogg was writing in a pre-Freudian era the essentials of his psychodynamic theory were as pertinent in 1834 as they were in
1934.
In the late eighteenth century arose in literature a period of social, political and religious confusion, the Romantic Movement, a movement that emphasized the emotional and the personal in reaction to classical values of order and objectivity. English poets like William Blake or Percy Bysshe Shelley seen themselves with the capacity of not only write about usual life, but also of man’s ultimate fate in an uncertain world. Furthermore, they all declared their belief in the natural goodness of man and his future. Mary Shelley is a good example, since she questioned the redemption through the union of the human consciousness with the supernatural. Even though this movement was well known, none of the British writers in fact acknowledged belonging to it; “.”1 But the main theme of assignment is the narrative voice in this Romantic works. The narrator is the person chosen by the author to tell the story to the readers. Traditionally, the person who narrated the tale was the author. But this was changing; the concept of unreliable narrator was starting to get used to provide the story with an atmosphere of suspense.
Just as the European romantics cared about emotions, nature, imagination, meditation, humanity and freedom, the American first "group of great imaginative writers -Irving, Bryant and Poe" (readers Note p 57) -cared about the them too . In their writings, these writers were taken by the romantic ideals empathizing on nature, creating their own world, borrowing sets from the past or from legends, meditating their life, and finding their own explanations to its processes . With such attitudes, these writers made their way into literature as romantics . " The Devil And Tom Walker","Hop Frog", " To a Waterfowl" and "Thanatopsis" serve as good examples for American Romanticism .
Voltaire's Candide and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein are classics of western literature, in large part, because they both speak about the situation of being human. However, they are also important because they are both representative of the respective cultural movements during which they were written - the Enlightenment and the Romantic Era. As a result of this inheritance, they have different tones and messages, just as the Enlightenment and Romanticism had different tones and messages. But, it is not enough to merely say that they are "different" because they are linked. The intellectual movement from which Frankenstein emerged had its origins in the intellectual movement from which Candide emerged. By examining each of these works from the context of these intellectual movements, the progression in tone from light-hearted optimism in Candide to a heavier brooding doom in Frankenstein can be explained as being an extension of the progression from the Enlightenment to the Era of Romanticism.
Romanticism has been described as a “‘Protestantism in the arts and letters’, an ideological shift on the grand scale from conservative to liberal ideas”. (Keenan, 2005) It was a movement into the era of imagination and feelings instead of objective reasoning.
In recent years, multiculturalism, tolerance and political correctness have been integrated into how American society thinks. America seems to be trying to learn more about the ingredients of her melting pot. These efforts can be best understood by examining post-modernism. Post-modernism is especially important to breaking down stereotypes such as those that exist surrounding the black family.
Wolfson, Susan and Peter Manning (eds.). The Longman Anthology of British Literature: The Romantics and Their Contemporaries. Volume 2A. New York: Longman, 1999.
History is the story and knowledge of the past. There are individuals that are interested by history and wish to study it by learning more. It is very informative to know what has happened in the past for self-knowledge. An individual cannot be naïve to the past including but not limited to how literature came to. One can understand literature more when they understand the time period the author wrote during and the way they wrote. There are several time periods different authors have been through with each period having specific beliefs. Romanticism is the time period that interests me the most; it was a time during the eighteenth century and focused on nature along with the individual’s expression of imagination and emotion.
Stillinger, Jack, Deidre Lynch, Stephen Greenblatt, and M H. Abrams. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume D. New York, N.Y: W.W. Norton & Co, 2006. Print.
Modernism is defined in Merriam-Webster's Dictionary as "a self-conscious break with the past and a search for new forms of expression." While this explanation does relate what modernism means, the intricacies of the term go much deeper. Modernism began around 1890 and waned around 1922. Virginia Wolf once wrote, "In or about December, 1910, human character changed." (Hurt and Wilkie 1443). D.H. Lawrence wrote a similar statement about 1915: "It was 1915 the old world ended." (Hurt and Wilkie 1444). The importance of the exact dates of the Modernist period are not so relevant as the fact that new ideas were implemented in the era. Ideas that had never before been approached in the world of literature suddenly began emerging in the works of many great authors. Two of the pioneer Modernist writers were Joseph Conrad and T.S. Eliot. The tendencies to question the incontestable beliefs embedded in all thinking and to focus on the inner self dominated. Old viewpoints were tossed aside to make way for the discovery of modern man's personal spirituality. Two works that are considered important forbears in the Modern period are T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
When many hear “Romanticism” they think of love, but Romanticism isn’t mainly about love. Yes, it may have some love, but it’s also about reasoning, nature, imaginations, and individualism. Like American Romanticism, that occurred from 1830 – 1865. It was actually caused by Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper. For Americans, “it was a time of excitement over human possibilities, and of individual ego. American writers didn’t know what “America” could possibly mean in terms of literature, which was American and not British. It questioned their identity and place in society, creatively” (Woodlief). It was characterized by an interest in nature, and the significance of the individual’s expression on emotion and imagination; good literature should have heart, not rules. Some of the most famous authors who wrote during American Romanticism were Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. American Romanticism is important because it was the “historical period of literature in which modern readers most began to see their selves and their own conflicts and desires”. Romanticism was a literary revolution.
Mary Shelley, with her brilliant tale of mankind's obsession with two opposing forces: creation and science, continues to draw readers with Frankenstein's many meanings and effect on society. Frankenstein has had a major influence across literature and pop culture and was one of the major contributors to a completely new genre of horror. Frankenstein is most famous for being arguably considered the first fully-realized science fiction novel. In Frankenstein, some of the main concepts behind the literary movement of Romanticism can be found. Mary Shelley was a colleague of many Romantic poets such as her husband Percy Shelley, and their friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge, even though the themes within Frankenstein are darker than their brighter subjects and poems. Still, she was very influenced by Romantics and the Romantic Period, and readers can find many examples of Romanticism in this book. Some people actually argue that Frankenstein “initiates a rethinking of romantic rhetoric”1, or is a more cultured novel than the writings of other Romantics. Shelley questions and interacts with the classic Romantic tropes, causing this rethink of a novel that goes deeper into societal history than it appears. For example, the introduction of Gothic ideas to Frankenstein challenges the typical stereotyped assumptions of Romanticism, giving new meaning and context to the novel. Mary Shelley challenges Romanticism by highlighting certain aspects of the movement while questioning and interacting with the Romantic movement through her writing.
Toward the end of the eiteenth-century, Romanticism emerged as a response to Classicism. Even though this change was gradual, it transformed everything from art and philosophy to education and science. While the Classicsts thought of the world as having a rigid and stern structure, the romanticists thought of the world as a place to express their ideas and believes. The Romaniticists and Classicsts differed in their views of the relationship between an individual and society, their views of nature and the relationship between reason and imagination.
Roughly from 1815 to 1910, this period of time is called the romantic period. At this period, all arts are transforming from classic arts by having greater emphasis on the qualities of remoteness and strangeness in essence. The influence of romanticism in music particularly, has shown that romantic composers value the freedom of expression, movement, passion, and endless pursuit of the unattainable fantasy and imagination. The composers of the romantic period are in search of new subject matters, more emotional and are more expressive of their feelings as they are not bounded by structural rules in classical music where order, equilibrium, control and perfection are deemed important (Dorak, 2000).
...hout the strains of one’s divided nature. Both authors, despite their varying approaches, use the literary devices of symbolism and personification to preserve this controversial yet crucial theme of duality. This is to be found prominently in late and modern Victorian works such as the intriguing novellas by Robert Louis Stevenson and Joseph Conrad.
Love, lust, passion, and desire all of these put together can cause great explosion. Romanticism began in England about the year 1798. The poets of England started writing about nature, imagination, and idealism. Most poets wrote considering the changes occurring in England during the revolutionary era. During the period the writers became irritated of the changes and created imaginary things to write about; their motive was to try to capture the mind of the reader. Thanks to these poets people became well conscious of the natural surroundings around them. Although the country resulted in poverty the people in that period were given strength with poetry. This made the poets more inspired and distracted towards their pain. “Poetry-making is much older than writing. Although its origins have been lost to history and can never be known for certain, the widely-accepted theory is that poetry arose in early agricultural societies, where it was spoken or chanted as a spell to promote good harvests. Certainly it was a part of religious rites and ceremonies in ancient Greece and Rome, and was the vehicle used for handing down the stories of the people's struggles and triumphs.” (History of Poetry). Late night thinking can really put a person into deep thoughts. Romanticism had a similar effect on people, when irritated and confused from the world and its habitat the mannerism of poetry transported people of the era to escape into a land of metaphors.