Natalie Felts
Professor Nichols
British Literature 2332
04 May 2017
Shedding some Moonlight
(Exploring the differences between Keats and Smith’s views on life and death)
During the Romantic era poets were beginning to concentrate on nature, beauty, and explore the mysteries of life and death. The era was one that focused on the commonality of humankind and, while using emotion and nature the poets and their works shed light on people’s universal natures (Hall). Romantic works relate the author’s personal feelings and emotions and also focus on a more detailed natural setting. The period was also a time of poverty, urbanization, discrimination against women, and the debtor’s prison.
For example, Charlotte Smith’s works were greatly influenced
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Charlotte envied death, the moon, and the ocean. “While Keats was in love with death and he viewed death as a conqueror to any problem even if the problem was a force of nature” (e-artnow). Keats even said that “Land and sea, weakness and decline are great separators, but death is the great separator for ever” (Keats) this is the way that both Romantics used similar writing tactics when it came to nature. Smith used the ocean to portray the emptiness and loneliness she was feeling, and she uses the moon in her poetry as a mirror into her poetic soul. Keats also used nature to express a feeling much like Smith does often in her poetry. “Keats and Smith have not always been considered together, they wrote in very opposite ways on the Romanticism spectrum” (Hall). “Smith uses melancholia quite often in her poetry” (Hunt) - “I wrote mournfully because I was unhappy” (5). “Keats never gave Smith the recognition she deserved, and Smith frequently made herself the subject of her poetry which was the direct opposite of Keats poetic ideals of negative capability and disinterestedness” (Hall). “In Keats poem “On Death” he writes “Can death be sleep … When life is but a dream” Keats is stating that there is no difference between being asleep or being dead, if we consider that life is a form of a dream”
In the nineteenth century, growing industrialization led people to impersonal, greedy, and selfish lives. As a reaction against this situation, romanticism emerged; this artistic movement offered people the place away from the corrupted society. During this era, people favored untamed nature instead of unscrupulous society. Upon a people’s encounter with Romanticism, they enjoyed an enthusiastic burst of feelings. This era is characterized by not only an outpouring of emotions but also themes of imagination, fantasy, emotion, nature, superstition, individuality, mystery and the supernatural. Among them, nature, imagination, and superstition theme were the most beloved theme during this period, particularly demonstrated by give stories of The Most Sublime Spectacle on Earth, Nature, The Fall of the House of Usher, and The Devil and Tom Walker.
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
The similarities between the poems lie in their abilities to utilize imagery as a means to enhance the concept of the fleeting nature that life ultimately has and to also help further elaborate the speaker’s opinion towards their own situation. In Keats’ poem, dark and imaginative images are used to help match with the speaker’s belief that both love and death arise from fate itself. Here, Keats describes the beauty and mystery of love with images of “shadows” and “huge cloudy symbols of a high romance” to illustrate his belief that love comes from fate, and that he is sad to miss out on such an opportunity when it comes time for his own death.
Imagine a candle-lit dinner on a starry night in Paris, the Eiffel Tower just in view with dazzling lights shining into the night. This image is probably what you think of when you hear the word “romantic,” correct. However, this image is a stumbling block when people think of the “Romanticism Period” in literature. Where “romantic” means having a lovely time with the person you love the most, “Romanticism” is a piece of literature written with key themes in mind. Those themes tend to be a strong emotion, imagery or worship of nature, and individuality and subjectivity. The peak of inspiration for these pieces was in the years 1800-1850, and there are famous poems that are well loved today from this period. Many of the poets that you enjoy reading and know are, in actuality, Romanticism writers, and instill the themes above in our minds.
The romantic period,1735 to 1830, for writers is a dark and confusing time, it is a time when dark things are made to seem better than they are. Many great literary works come from this period, but at the price of confusing the population. People believe that “emotions and relationships were not just important, but were the very currency of life.” Three romantic era pieces stand out, The Pit and The Pendulum by Edgar Allen Poe, Thanatopsis by William Cullen Bryant and The Devil and Tom Walker By Washington Irving. These stories resemble the best qualities of the romantic era and maybe even some of the worst.
The era of Romanticism began as a rebellious response to the Enlightenment era. Three different authors— Wilhelm Wackenroder, August Schlegel, and Percy Shelley— allude to the Romantic significance of poetry and conceptualize poetry as “the language of the people.” In their documents presented in Breckman’s European Romanticism: a Brief History with Documents, they explore poetry and the impact it has on the people and Romanticism and persuade their readers to connect with nature and art.
The Romantic movement was the denial of the sensible and logical thinkers in favor of the free and the dramatic thinkers. In his literature, Poe stressed practical elements didn’t have a place in literature or art. The subject should deal with the feelings, and the greatest
Characters presented in romantic writings are often heroic with introspection.. but reject the cultural norms and are sometimes isolated. Mary Shelley’s character Victor Frankenstein is an example of romanticism writer's’ imagination that hoped to create a new understanding of the world and lead to a more perfect version of human beings. Henry David Thoreau’s poem “Prayer” is
The Age of Romanticism gave birth to a generation of creators, who understood the very basis of wonder and fear. From painter to poet, from pianist to politician, the works of the Romantic era catapulted the rare and exciting—those who offered bare emotion. Like any age, Romanticism was not wholly sound; war, strife, and poverty still existed. And so, it was tragedy and misery that produced the sensitivity and “problems of the heart.”
Romanticism is an intellectual, spiritual, and literary movement that begins at the start of the nineteenth century and concludes at the beginning of the twentieth century. Of the many characteristics that are associated with Romanticism, the characteristics that are most evident in literature from this period are the characteristics of individuality and imagination. The author Edgar Allen Poe exhibits these characteristics in his works “The Black Cat”, and the “The Raven”.
The Romantic Period is characterized as an artistic and intellectually stimulating literary movement. Writers of this genre and time are considered to be those who fused the elements of romance in their writings to enhance the human experience. Edgar Allan Poe, known as the father of the modern short story, epitomizes this notion in his writings. In “Annabel Lee,” and “The Oval Portrait,” Edgar Allan Poe uses romance to illustrate the essence of death and misery and to illustrate elements in which the reader can actually feel that was is happening in the story is happening to them.
The Romantic Era gave poets permission to express their strong emotion and to highlight to their readers to consider their experiences and values. Despite
Romanticism is the active search for expression and understanding, whether scientifically or creatively and the composers of texts are significant in providing insight and understanding of the various perceptions of these individuals. There are countless concepts and ideologies that contribute to the way of thinking that is Romanticism. However, two themes consistent in and central to texts that express Romantic concerns is that of the transcendent world; a world most commonly manifested in the realm of the imagination and within the expression and search for the divinity that links one human being to another and creates individualism between persons. Within my studies I have recognised to a great extent that ways of thinking are represented
As a new way to criticize the Romantic period, desperate times call for desperate measures and it did through the use of children’s point of view in Romantic poetry. A period of fifty years called Romantic period included the French Revolution, the American Revolution and wars of national independence in Europe. William Blake, one of well known Romantic poets, commented on his society by viewing it through the child’s eyes in the two sets of ‘Songs of innocence and of Experience’. It is said that ignorance is a blessing but not according to William Blake.
Writing about the beauty of nature and the simple life was how romantic artists rebelled against the industrial