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British Lit. Romanticism to Present
Following the liberating Age of Reason, the Enlightenment, the age when humanity was triumphing through literature and Rousseau's philosophy was inspiring revolutions, the age of Romanticism saw the birth of some genius writers of its own. Among them, Lord Byron, a man who lived his thirty-six years with the intensity of one who wants to know it all and do it all, was a prolific writer whose works were the expression of his time.
Lord Byron was the restless soul who burnt every resource he had in his inquiries about the meaning of life. He traveled extensively and, like most of his fellow artists, was enchanted with the exotic of the East. Byron was both blessed and haunted by his genius. His image on the seashore, watching the fire lit to burn Shelly's body at Via Reggio, in Italy, is one of those images most illustrative for the Romantic period.
Romanticism is a period full of excesses, contradictions, conflicts, search within the human soul and desperate attempts to escape materialism and find the essence, the meaning of life. In every romantic author's work, Lord Byron's, most of all, there is a cry for finding a higher meaning of life than what reality could offer. The industrial revolution brought splendor and riches for some countries like England, but even here, they were still in stark contrast with the darkness of poverty....
Lord Byron was essentially aristocratic in his behavior and the image he projected of himself, but he was also thirsty of seeing justice being done to those who were suffering from oppression. Byron admired the greatness of the classics, but he never ceased to deplore the vanity of human existence: "We- we have seen the intellectual race / Of giants, stand, like Titans, face-to-face / …But where are they- the rivals! A few feet / Of sullen earth divide each winding sheet " (http://books.google.ro/books?id=D0onB1xe_kYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Byron+works&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ii2fUtrSBY6jhgf5soHQBQ&ved=0CEsQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=Byron%20works&f=false)
The Romantic period in English literature will make way for a very interesting epoch: the Victorian era. Writers such as Dickens have made famous mainly one of the features related to this era: its bleakness. Others, such as Tennyson, have left the world indelible features that marked the era, such as: the thirst for knowledge, the love for beauty expressed thorough art. But among these writers, Oscar Wilde stands as the one who is not only one of the most famous writers of the Victorian era, but also one of the most vocal and representative at the same time.
There is continuity between the Romanticism and Victorian art, with the Romantic artists bearing a strong influence on their successors. The British society was going on the way to progress and shifting from a predominantly agrarian to a predominantly industrial society. This important shift meant that the majority's views and…
Romanticism "Romance," "Romanticism" and "Romantic" are three related words frequently utilized rather loosely by literature readers and hence requiring some clear definition. The most important fact is these words are always written with the first letter capitalized to differentiate them from the words "romantic"and "romance" -- words which are generally used to denote erotically intensified conditions and events or love stories. While Romances commonly do contain love interests, it isn't a
These young men were not immersed in the high modernist traditions of Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot: rather, they were immersed in the experience of war and their own visceral response to the horrors they witnessed. Thus a multifaceted, rather than strictly comparative approach might be the most illuminating way to study this period of history and literature. Cross-cultural, comparative literary analysis is always imperfect, particularly given the linguistic challenges
Frankenstein & Romanticism How Romanticism is Demonstrated in Frankenstein In less than six years, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein will be 200 years old. This novel, indicative of the romantic period, is a compelling narrative with numerous themes and vivid imagery to consider. In the context of romanticism, Frankenstein is a worthwhile piece of literature to examine. Literature and art of the romantic period is characterized with an emphasis on intense emotional reactions, specifically
Her list includes the following: culture / Nature reason / Nature male/female mind/body ( Nature) master/slave reason/matter (physicality) rationality/animality ( Nature) human / Nature (non-human) civilised/primitive ( Nature) production/reproduction ( Nature) self/other At first glance, this list seems to capture the basic groupings and gender associations that are at work in Mary Shelley's novel. The Creature exemplifies animality, primitiveness, and physicality, whereas Victor represents the forces of civilization, rational production, and culture. Victor is part of a happy family
Victorian literature was remarkably concerned with the idea of childhood, but to a large degree we must understand the Victorian concept of childhood and youth as being, in some way, a revisionary response to the early nineteenth century Romantic conception. Here we must, to a certain degree, accept Harold Bloom's thesis that Victorian poetry represents a revisionary response to the revolutionary aesthetic of Romanticism, and particularly that of Wordsworth. The
The supernatural is defining feature of gothic genres of gothic and horror. Supernatural motifs are also integral to Romanticism, especially as the supernatural is counterpoint to the natural. Romanticism reveals an uneasy relationship between science and nature. Science reveals nature and demystifies it, essentially taking God out of the question and leading to a “crisis of religious faith,” (Sanders 1). Focusing on the supernatural in literature, authors in both Old