Literary Elements of the Romantic Period: Emotion, Nature & the Gothic
According to Douglas Hunt, the Restoration Period, also known as Neoclassical, came about as a reaction against "the unrestrained energy and humanism of the Renaissance," and that during the 18th century, it stressed "the imperfections and limitations of humanity." In addition, the creation of art was "valued for its exaltation of reason and its restraint of emotion and the imagination" (2078). In contrast, the era of Romanticism, roughly from 1795 to 1850 in Europe, began as a reaction against Restoration order and restraint and was enthusiastically followed by the English Romantic poets who embraced "supernatural themes, the wildness of nature, human imagination and self-expression" (Hunt 2078). With these principles in mind, it is obvious that the literary elements of Romanticism differ greatly from those of the Restoration Period, especially in the areas of emotion, nature and the use of Gothicism. Two sp
In Coleridge's English masterpiece The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, composed between 1797 and 1798, the reader immediately senses a strain of great human emotion expressed through the narrator (perhaps Coleridge himself). In Part Two of the poem, one reads "And I had done a hellish thing/And it would work 'em woe/For all averred, I had killed the bird/That made the breeze to blow" (lines 90-94), a reference to killing the albatross which brings a sentence of death and doom to the ancient mariner. Following this, the narrator says, "Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay/That made the breeze to blow!" (lines 95-96), a reply by his fellow shipmates who are also doomed. ecific English poets best illustrate the ideals of Romanticism-Samuel Taylor Coleridge (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner), and William Wordsworth (The World is Too Much With Us and Tintern Abbey). In conclusion, the use of emotion, nature
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Approximate Word count = 616
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)
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