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The misshapen, the ominous, and the gruesome; these are all words from the fascinating movement of Dark Romanticism which took place from 1828-1865. This movement embraced all of these irrational elements and shaped them into the most popular sub-genre of American literature. Life to the Dark Romantics was colorful, impulsive, and paradoxical. Unlike the Romantics, the Dark Romantics set their stories based on the wickedness of man and the repulsion of evil. The dark romantics believed that humans were equally capable of good or evil. While the Romantic’s tried to ignore the wickedness and immorality actions of man, the dark Romantics decided to remind people of the evil doings of man. Like the Romantics and Transcendentalists; however, the Dark Romantics valued instinct and feelings over judgment and rationale and saw symbols and signs in nature and everyday events. They also paid attention to the mysteries of life that were impossible to explain by reasoning. Although they did focus on the morbid and the dreadful, they were not cynical. Edgar Allen Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne were both associated with this movement and were both key figures in it.
The definition of Dark Romanticism varies. It is used by different people in diverse situations. Some may describe it as a Gothic novel from the eighteenth -century while others remember the word being used to describe pop music from the 60’s and 70’s. Consulting a dictionary to find the actual meaning of the word, it was a surprise to not find the term “Dark Romanticism”. However the terms “dark” and “romantic” were there. The definitions gave an understanding that the term Dark Romanticism is in fact, a contradiction. The dictionary stated that dark romantic may be sentiment...
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... They look ahead but at the same time distrust changes brought by the future. They have strong use of imagery and symbolism is the most striking element in their works.
Work Cited
1."Dark romanticism." New World Encyclopedia. 25 Feb 2009, 02:17 UTC. 29 Apr 2011, 18:14
2. "Dark Romanticism - ArticleWorld." Main Page - ArticleWorld. Web. 29 Apr. 2011. .
3."Dark Romanticism: The Ultimate Contradiction." Http://library.thinkquest.org. Web. 23 Apr. 2011.
4. Dincer, Figun. The Light And Dark Romantic Features In Irving, Hawthorne And Poe. Rep. 10th ed. Vol. 3. The Journal of International Social Research. DOAJ -- Directory of Open Access Journals. Web. 29 Apr. 2011. .
5.Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Dover Publications, 1994. Print.
. “Emerging from these conditions was an assertion of the value of the individual self, an intense concern with the inner workings of the perceiving mind, and an affirmation of emotion and instinct” (Robinson 1). Robinson defined romanticism as the value of the individual self and working with the mind which is what we see with our two male main characters. Nonetheless Poe and Hawthorne were involved with the Dark Romanticism. It has been said that Hawthorne is about morality within his dark romanticism whereas Poe focuses on the psychological aspect of it. “Melville exemplifies the turn in Romanticism that inverts the hero and disavows the quest for unity and understanding, replacing it with a growing recognition of chaos and darkness”
During the American Renaissance, writers were put into one of two categories. The categories were the Dark Romantics and the Transcendentalists. Some Dark Romantics include Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving. The Dark Romantics stories included creepy symbols, horrific themes, and psychological effects of guilt and sin. The Devil and Tom Walker by Washington Irving gives a few examples as to why life is meaningless to some people.Humans are not all good, there are some cruel people in this world. The Pit and the Pendulum tells you exactly why.
Romanticism was a movement in art and literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in revolt against the Neoclassicism of the previous centuries. The romanticism movement in literature consists of a few of the following characteristics: intuition over fact, imagination over fact, and the stretch and alteration of the truth. The death of a protagonist may be prolonged and/or exaggerated, but the main point was to signify the struggle of the individual trying to break free, which was shown in “The Fall of the House Usher” (Prentice Hall Literature 322).
The Romantic Movement started in Europe during the 18th century and was a reaction against the Enlightenment period. Romanticism in literature was that rational thinking couldn’t explain everything. Romantic writers searched for the subconscious meaning behind writing. Romantic writers have focused more on creativity, emotions, nature, and intuition. Poe born in 1809 in Boston was one of the first American Romantic writers. Poe was most known for his Romantic “gothic” or Dark Romanticism style of writing. “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a short story by Poe about a brother and sister, childhood friend, and their house that in the end results in death. In Poe’s story “The Fall of the House of Usher” you see this Romantic gothic style by the dark and gloomy setting, mystery, and use of nature.
Edgar Allan Poe has a unique writing style that uses several different elements of literary structure. He uses intrigue vocabulary, repetition, and imagery to better capture the reader’s attention and place them in the story. Edgar Allan Poe’s style is dark, and his is mysterious style of writing appeals to emotion and drama. What might be Poe’s greatest fictitious stories are gothic tend to have the same recurring theme of either death, lost love, or both. His choice of word draws the reader in to engage them to understand the author’s message more clearly. Authors who have a vague short lexicon tend to not engage the reader as much.
The Dark Romantics or Gothic Fiction was part of the Romanticism Movement that emphasized the use of primitive, medieval, wild and mysterious elements including supernatural events and horrifying situations. The Dark Romantics took place in the eighteen hundreds and started as a reaction to the Transcendentalists, but did not entirely embrace the ideas of Transcendentalism. The Dark Romantic works were less optimistic than the transcendental works that believed that knowledge could be arrived at not just through the senses, but also through intuition and contemplation of the internal spirit. The Romantics took on a shadowy approach to the fantastical with the use of creepy symbols, horrific themes, and psychological effects of guilt and sin.
Romantic literature, as Kathy Prendergast further claims, highlighted things like splendor, greatness, vividness, expressiveness, intense feelings of passion, and stunning beauty. The Romantic literary genre favored “parts” over “whole” and “content” over “form”. The writer argues that though both the Romantic literary genre and the Gothic art mode were medieval in nature, they came to clash with what was called classical conventions. That’s why, preoccupations with such things as the supernatural, the awful, the dreadful, the repulsive and the grotesque were the exclusive focus of the nineteenth century Gothic novel. While some critics perceived the Gothic as a sub-genre of Romanticism, some others saw it as a genre in its own right (Prendergast).
The term romantic first appeared at sometime during the latter half of the 18th Century, meaning in quite literal English, "romance-like", usually referring to the character of mythical medieval romances. The first significant jump was in literature, where writing became far more reliant on imagination and the freedom of thought and expression, in around 1750. Subsequent movements then began to follow in Music and Art, where the same kind of imagination and expression began to appear. In this essay I shall be discussing the effect that this movement had on music, the way it developed, and the impact that it had on the future development of western music.
Romanticism and Transcendentalism are both literary movements that were appreciated in the American literature. Both movements are quite similar; however, Romanticism is a strong motivational force that depicted emotions, patriotism, and imagination. Dark Romanticism, on the other hand, is a branch of Romanticism that focuses on the evil qualities of the man. Not only it is a branch of Romanticism, however, it is a reaction of Transcendentalism. Transcendentalism focuses on self-realization, empowering the connection between man and nature, and the goodness of man and nature. Throughout the years, American authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe projected dark romantic features in their work, “Young Goodman Brown” and “Tell-Tale Heart”, where they show the conflict between the good and evil. However, Emerson portrayed transcendentlistic characteristics in his book “Nature” as he shows the power of knowledge, nature, and divinity.
Edgar Allen Poe can be considered the father of the dark romanticism and valued the human subjectivity (Prestwood). According to the book Diagnosing Romanticism" : Romantics was often perceived as both curse and blessing, as encouraging an egocentrism, however also motivating a drive to artistic production that promises a form of existential therapy, a transformative process of discovery that will allow the subject to merge with wider phenomena outside the self (Ahern, p.p 70). It is impossible not to be engaged in his short story “The cask of Amontillado.” This essay will discuss how romanticism genre is embedded perfectly on Poe’s short story and also analyze the main characters of the fictional story.
The Romantic Era of the 18th century was filled with writers and critics, such as Edgar Allan Poe. His work is known for its gothic horror and suspenseful outlook, which is considered to be Dark Romanticism. Literature in this time period was influenced by Transcendentalism and the ideas of mankind, nature, and divinity, but did not directly embrace it. Poe was a Dark Romantic because his writing presented individuals prone to sin and self-destruction, rather than a soul born with goodness and perfection. There are many ways Poe's work represented Dark Romanticism.
Hawthorne is a dark romantic because of his early life, dismal adulthood. He grew up without a father, when he was four his father died, leaving his mother and two sisters (Pearson 1). Pearson said the woods helped young Hawthorne heal, when he was young he was considered to be “delicate”, and Hawthorne became a reckless child injuring himself leaving him laid up for almost a year (1). While he was healing he developed a strong love for reading (1). When he was old enough he added a W to his name to escape his ancestor’s background because his great-great-grandfather was a judge at the Salem Witch Trials, and he was the only man to not apologize for sentencing innocent people to their deaths (Allen 454). “I take shame upon myself for their sakes and pray that any curse incurred by them…may now and henceforth removed” (454). Hawthorne was also fascinated by common man because he saw himself different from them, and he avoided failures daily (Bloom 33). Hawthorne didn’t waste his time “chatting” with people especially people who he thought of as fools (33). Hawthorne’s methods were to love and pity mankind more than he mocked them, he never created a character which didn’t possess a soul; another method was to write with a noble respect for his own...
Roughly from 1815 to 1910, this period of time is called the romantic period. At this period, all arts are transforming from classic arts by having greater emphasis on the qualities of remoteness and strangeness in essence. The influence of romanticism in music particularly, has shown that romantic composers value the freedom of expression, movement, passion, and endless pursuit of the unattainable fantasy and imagination. The composers of the romantic period are in search of new subject matters, more emotional and are more expressive of their feelings as they are not bounded by structural rules in classical music where order, equilibrium, control and perfection are deemed important (Dorak, 2000).
Writers during the ‘Dark Romantics’ period took a close, in-depth look at the flaw in human nature. Authors such as Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville, use feelings, imagination, and nature to show a different vision of the individual than that of the Transcendentalists. The work produced by the ‘Dark Romantics’ suggests that human beings are not divine. Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’ Hawthorne’s ‘The Birthmark,’ and Melville’s ‘Benito Cereno’ all support this idea by showing the dark side of humanity through their characters’ evil doings.
The Romantic period has many beginnings and takes different forms; so that in a celebrated essay, On the Discrimination of Romanticism (1924), A.O. Lovejoy argued that the word “Romantic” should no longer be used, since it has come to mean so many things that by itself, it means nothing. On the derivation of the word “Romanticism” we have definite and commonly accepted information which helps us to understand its meaning. Critics and literary historians differ widely and sometimes as violently, about the answer then have differed about love truth and other concepts. Romanticism is concerned with all these concepts and with others with equal importance. It is an attitude toward life and experience older than religion, as permanent as love, and as many-sided as truth. (Watson, J.R. English Poetry of the Romantic Period, Longman Inc. New York)