Romanticism

Romanticism:

a Period of Imagination, Nature, and Symbolism

The Romantic Period began in the mid-eighteenth century and extended into the

nineteenth century. Romanticism was about creative thinking, "thinking outside the box",

completely contradicting Neoclassicism, which was about straight forward thinking,

"thinking inside the box". It was a philosophical movement that redefined the

fundamental ways of what people thought about themselves and the world around them.

The Romantic period overlapped with the "age of revolution", which included the

American (1776) and the French (1789) revolutions. This was a time of change, where

new skeptical ideas were "in" and old traditional ones were "out". In romanticism poetry

came new concepts, like the use of imagination, nature, and symbolism. These new

concepts soon became very popular with most of the poets. With these new concepts

came new poets like John Keats, William Blake, and William Wordsworth, who soon

became leading poets of the romanticism movement. Although using the same concepts:

imagination, nature, and symbolism, Keats's, Blake's, and Wordsworth's works are

distinguishably different due to their distinct use of poetic devices. The style of writing is

a characteristic of the poet. Each poet uses the concepts in various ways to present their

ideas. The concept of opening a reader's imagination is used widely with several poetic

devices.

A great physicist by the name of Albert Einstein once said, "Imagination is more

important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."

Albert Einstein was one of the most intellectual human beings to have lived on Earth. His

statement shows the importance of imagination. What he is trying to say is that though a

person may be very knowledgeable there will always be a limit to what they know, for

they can not know everything, and knowing everything is a limit in itself for then the

person can not learn anything new. A person's imagination on the other hand is limitless,

since it is so vast, new ideas are always "popping" into their heads. Opening a reader's

horizons became a key purpose in romanticism poetry. Poets started using more

descriptive language so that the reader would be able to have a vivid picture in their head

and be able to relate better to the images and events presented in the poem. In John

Keats's poem, "Ode to Autumn", his use of language creates images only seen in autumn,

that put the reader in a sense of awe, making them appreciate autumn for what it really is,

rather than the season that comes before winter and after summer. In the first stanza he

uses a wide range of imagery to create a visual image of an autumn

landscape:

"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, / Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; / Conspiring with him how to load and bless / With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; / To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, / And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; / To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells / With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, / And still more, later flowers for the bees, / Until they think warm days will never cease, / For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells,"(line 1-11).

William Blake's writing style in the poem, "The Lamb", creates a mood that allows the

reader when reading poem to picture a little fluffy white lamb playing in a green

meadow. In the lines, "Give thee such a tender voice, / Making all the vales rejoice?"(line

7-8), Blake puts the reader in a sort of melancholy mood as if they could actually hear the

lamb's beautiful voice. The poem, "Daffodils", by William Wordsworth creates mental

images for the reader through his use of similes and personification. In the first line, "I

wandered lonely as a cloud", Wordsworth presents a simile comparing himself to a cloud.

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