Varieties of Romanticism in the Poetry of Blake, Shelly, and Keats The Romantic Poets speak even though their time is past. A poem may reflect the period in which it is written, but the Romantic poets will forever inspire the imaginations of humanity by writing on that which can exist only in the imagination itself a poem ensures it perpetuity by inspiring thought in those people who read it, even if only one. The Romantic era of poetry was from the late 1700s through to the mid 1800s, and saw the likes of Blake, Keats, and Shelley. At that time the world was rife with revolution, and battles fought in America and France were a main topic of conversation among all. Turmoil and passion were in the air, and just as there was uprising in countries, there was uprising in the poetic world. Poets across the globe began to write with emotion, in response to a century of neoclassicism, a form abundant with rigid structures and restrained feelings.
These seditious works emphasized the poets passion rather than reason, and imagination and intuition rather than logic. They favored full and unrestricted expression of emotion, and free, spontaneous action, rather than restraint and order. The Romantics saw nature as a living spirit, attuned to human feelings of love and compassion; and they yearned for the unreachable infinite. The Romantics fiery passion for life and nature is embodied in Shelleys Ode to the West Wind, an earnest invocation of a surging wind; and a poem about the Romantic spirit. The force of this passionate, revolutionary wind is so great that even nature is bent before it know thy voice, and suddenly go grey with fear. Ode to the West Wind also expresses the hungering for imagination, a quality held high among the Romantic poets.
The Essay on Romantic Poetry Imagination And Emotion
rticular characteristics of the literature of romanticism includes subjectivity and an emphasis on individualism; spontaneity; freedom from rules; solitary life rather than life in society; the beliefs that imagination is superior to reason and devotion to beauty; love of and worship of nature; and fascination with the past, especially the myths and mysticism of the middle ages." ...
Not only does Shelly want the force to make him the trumpet of a prophecy, but for the wind to make me thy lyre the lyre being a frequent symbol for the artist being played by inspiration. The main reason for this poem is that Shelley was a visionary of a change that he believed had to come to earth, where something good might somehow come out of the evil and waste that the world had become for him. He invokes the powerful West Wind, a force he identifies with evil, his ever-changing world, and his own subconscious, to work through him to bring about the change that he so badly wants for the world, and believes could be possible. Shelleys poem is his passionate attempt to let the West Wind work through him. It is the subject of the Romantic works which inspires such tremendous thoughts in humans for the main subject of nearly all Romantic poetry is the abstract. Whether it be truth, beauty, love, or even a combination of abstractions, almost all the works of the Romantics is subjected squarely on the conceptual. And being conceptual born of concept the only place in which it can exist is the mind itself and in existing, even for only a few moments of deliberation after the reading of a poem, it ensures its perpetuity forevermore.
The permanence of poetry lies not in whether it rhymes well, but in whether it inspires well. Keats stated that Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into ones soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject. One such example of a poem that inspires thought about its subject is Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn. It begins by speaking of a beautiful and ancient urn, with Dionysian scenes painted upon the sides. By the end of the first four stanzas, with its melodic and beautifully flowing words and intensely passionate emphasizes, an amazing picture is formed within the imagination of the reader. Already this beautiful urn enraptures the reader, and in the fifth and final stanza, Keats springs upon us one of the most discussed and intense statements in all of Romantic poetry: Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all Ye know on earth, and al ye need to know.
The Essay on Elizabethan Period Poets Poetry Romantic
This anthology is a published collection of poetry throughout the five major periods including- the Pre Elizabethan period, Elizabethan Period, Metaphysical Period, Romantic Period and the Victorian Period. The Pre Elizabethan Period was first in Old English and then in Middle English. Old English was used after the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5 th and 6 th centuries. The invaders from Germany ...
T. S. Eliot claims to have read over twenty-five completely different and yet detailed analyses of just these two lines. Keats also believed in a concept he called negative capability. He said that nothing in this world is provable. Therefore, man must be capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.
What he was saying is that we must reach a sort of acceptance and satisfaction with uncertainty. We cannot be sure of the truth of words, but we can be sure of the truth of emotions and the abstract, as they are in our mind, and what is in our mind is the only thing we can claim to know to be true. Thus, beauty is truth, and truth beauty. But perhaps the greatest proof that Romantic poetry ensures its perpetuity through inspiring thought in all who study it is front of you now, dear reader. More discussion can and has been written on poetry than any other art form, and including the critique that you now read has been written by people inspired by poetry. Romantic poetry perpetuates itself through its passion and concepts, and will continue to do so forever. Through their unbridled passion and the use of abstractions, the Romantic poets are still able to inspire thought in the mind of their readers, sometimes even intense contemplation and reflection. This thought-inspiration, even if in only one person, perpetuates the poem, the poet, and poetry itself.
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