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Industrial revolution and it's impact on literature
Literature romantic era essay
Literature in the romantic period
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Literature gives a unique and lasting portrait into the past. Long before picket lines and protests, poets wrote about issues they saw in the world. England was in chaos as the Industrial Revolution began. Poets like Wordsworth and Blake did not like the results of the urbanization had on humans and nature. The Romantic period’s authors works give the perfect vision into the time and still hold true now. In the late 1700s, marked a large change in England as industrialization took hold. People moved into the city and took factory jobs. This era marked the time of the printing press and the transfer from manual labor to machines to produce wares. At around the same time England’s slave trade began. All of this brought about literature that railed against. The literature, itself, was about the power of nature and its ability to prevail over mankind. There was a human element to the poetry too, emotion was important to the poets of this time. Many of the Romantic era poets felt that working in factories dehumanized people, made them forget their emotions. One of the quintessen...
Both Romantics and Modernists felt loss of authority, either from man or man's religious following. Poetry changed what it focused on as those figures lost respect or importance in the public's lives. I believe Yeats sums up my point partially in lines 19 and 20, "That twenty centuries of stony sleep/ Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle.
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.
Originating in Europe in the late 18th century, the Romanticism Era characterized an interest in nature and emphasized the individuals emotion and imagination. The sudden change in attitudes formed an age of classicism and rebellion against established social rules and conventions. Praising imagination over reason, emotions over logic and intuition over science, this made way for a vast body of literature of great sensibility and passion. The variety of this impressive romanticism literature can be focused on by specific authors, works of literature, and how romanticism influenced their writing.
The Romantic period at its height extended over just a bit more than a century, from the latter half of the eighteenth century through to nearly the end of the nineteenth century. During this period, a new school of poetry was forged, and with it, a new moral philosophy. But, as the nineteenth century wound down, the Romantic movement seemed to be proving itself far more dependent on the specific cultural events it spanned than many believed; that is, the movement was beginning to wind down in time with the ebbing of the industrial and urban boom in much the same way that the movement grew out of the initial period of industrial and urban growth. Thus, it would be easy to classify the Romantic movement as inherently tied to its cultural context. The difficulty, then, comes when poets and authors outside of this time period-and indeed in contexts quite different then those of the original Romantic poets-begin to label themselves as Romantics.
King, Neil. The Romantics: English Literature in Its Historical, Cultural, and Social Contexts. New York: Facts on File, 2003. Print.
The world is changing and evolving at an astounding rate. Within the last one hundred years, the Western community has seen advances in technology and medicine that has improved the lifestyles and longevity of almost every individual. Within the last two hundred years, we have seen two World Wars, and countless disputes over false borders created by colonialists, slavery, and every horrid form of human suffering imaginable! Human lifestyles and cultures are changing every minute. While our grandparents and ancestors were growing-up, do you think that they ever imagined the world we live in today? What is to come is almost inconceivable to us now. In this world, the only thing we can be sure of is that everything will change. With all of these transformations happening, it is a wonder that a great poet may write words over one hundred years ago, that are still relevant in today’s modern world. It is also remarkable that their written words can tell us more about our present, than they did about our past. Is it just an illusion that our world is evolving, or do these great poets have the power to see into the future? In this brief essay, I will investigate the immortal characteristics of poetry written between 1794 and 1919. And, I will show that these classical poems can actually hold more relevance today, than they did in the year they were written. Along the way, we will pay close attention to the style of the poetry, and the strength of words and symbols used to intensify the poets’ revelations.
The Romantic period brought a new outlook on how people viewed the world. The fight for individual rights was a major cause for the sudden change. There were too many rules that held people back from being able to express themselves. Once they began to broaden their ideas and practice new motives whether it was political, or emotional, it brought freedom of expression. Many poets took the chance to enlighten their readers on their works. They would write in order to paint a picture and gave more detailed descriptions of the conscious mind. For these poets it brought many people to enjoy their freedom of speech and encouraged a new way of thinking.
For example, during the Great Depression, a hard time for many, people were seeking distractions from their troubles, and such brought on a focus on escapist and humor themes. Furthermore, as mentioned previously, literary pieces focused on the lack of progress and the want of a simpler, more pure lifestyle as was once had. Literary periods have come and gone; romanticism, for example, filled with poetry and idealisms, with artistic expression that wouldn’t have been as tolerable in earlier times, or naturalism, which found expression almost completely in the novel, concerned with searching and discovering the causes for a person’s actions or beliefs (2). Literature has changed and developed, just as our society and our history have.
English literature: The Romantic Period." The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. 1994, 2000-2006, Infoplease. 2000–2007 Pearson Education, published as Infoplease. http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/ent/A0858004.html>. (accessed 21 February 2011).
Humanities is described as the study of how people as a whole, process and record human life. From the wall paintings of the Stone Age, to Plato’s “The Republic”, to the exhilarating tranquility of the sound of jazz, humans have used philosophy, literature, storytelling, and art to express ourselves. The term “the humanities” is a term that molds its definition with the movement of time and the progression or regression of humans. The 18th century brought unprecedented change throughout the world. The colonies declared independence while creating arguably, some of the world’s greatest literary documents, the Declaration of Independence and
Wolfson, S. & Manning, P. 2003. The Longman Anthology of English Literature Vol 2: The Romantics and their Contemporaries. London: Longman.
Manufacturing, business, and factories skyrocketed. Industrialization began to take over nature. Forests, rivers, trees are destroyed and replaced by smoking factories and pollutions. Destruction of mother earth continued and the society was changing rapidly. This change and destruction caught many British poet’s attention and became one of the most popular themes for their writings. During this time period, many Romantic literary works emerged from the feelings of anxiety towards the alienation of mankind from nature, and many writers tried to warm people to reestablish a sustainable, livable relationship with natural world through their writings.
The Romantic writers of the late 1700s and the early 1800s enjoyed a freedom in writing that is reminiscent of the freedom of some of the great Greek writers. Like the Greeks more than one thousand years earlier, the Romantic writers were able to enjoy such professions in the humanities due to the influx of technology in their respective societies. With the rise of the Greek Polis came efficiency in farming, shared labor, and specialized manufacturing on a more primitive scale. These innovations were key to the origin of philosophical writing for never before had so many humans had the luxury of time for contemplating life. The medical and mechanical advances, and increased importance of education for all classes in England during the 19th century replicated this revolution in many ways. England was developing into a network of urban areas. Wealthy business owners were able to support young poets and artist in their artistic endeavors. Without the support of the urban society, poets such as Shelley would have lived a life of labor and non-published thoughts of life. The irony occurs in that Romanic Poets such as Percy Shelley, who enjoyed the luxuries of modern life, would come to distain the very evolutionary events of society which enabled the time and freedom to contemplate. There was no end to the apparent contradictions of personal philosophy versus popular culture, and ...
Many periods of time throughout history have developed their own forms of literature. From 1558 to 1603, Queen Elizabeth I reigned during the golden age in English history. The Elizabethan Era had a large growth of literature because Queen Elizabeth supported and encouraged the fine arts more than any monarch in England’s history did. The literature of the time was characterized by a new energy, originality, and confidence based on Renaissance humanism. During the Elizabethan Era there were many things that affected the literature and the way authors during this period wrote. During the Elizabethan Era there were religious aspects, major political events and the Renaissance that contributed to the literature, which influence various popular authors during the Elizabethan Era.
...infinite. Mainly they cared about the individual, intuition, and imagination. English Romantic poets had a strong connection with medievalism and mythology. Romanticism witnessed a loosening of the rules of artistic expression that were prevalent during earlier times. (Rhan, 1)