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What Is The Difference Between Charlotte Smith's Views On Life And Death

Decent Essays

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 …show more content…

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”

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