Dark Psychology

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In the nineteenth century, individuality, personal growth, and imagination characterized the period of Romanticism. Writers of this period searched within their own souls for truth and expression. One subgenre of this time period was Transcendentalism. Transcendentalists believed that nature was the closest you could get to God and that people were born good. When Transcendentalism emerged, many people disagreed with the optimism of the Transcendentalists and these people believed more in the darkness and evilness of humanity. These people came to be known as Dark Romantics. Dark Romanticism was seen in some authors’ poems and stories, such as Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell- Tale Heart” and “The Raven” and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter and “The Minister’s Black Veil.” These writers’ works contrast with the prospect of Romantic writer Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden.” The Dark Romantics wanted the darkness of the people in their time period be documented as well as the optimism and positivity of the people in their time period.
Edgar Allan Poe was an all-around Dark Romantic. All of his writings showed the dark minds and the twisted psychology of the people in his time period. “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe projects the darkness of the people’s minds that peers into this period. “…Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!” (Poe 286). The poem had the essence of a desolate man with no hope for happiness. In such loneliness and despair, the narrator’s own mind drives him mad. He is believed to be talking to a raven that repeats “nevermore” to every question. The more questions the narrator asks, the more twisted the raven’s answer becomes. This sh...

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..., Age of Reason,nd Romanticism reflect times of darkness in humanity. Throughout the Puritan era, there existed a very strong darkness among the belief of the Puritans that God was a vengeful and provoked being. Dark Romanticism contrasted with the Age of Reason due to the rational thinking of this time when people rarely relied on emotion, and rather relied on intellect and logic. The period of Romanticism brought on the subgenre of Dark Romanticism which really emphasized the darkness of the preceding time periods. Darkness in literature was present since the first literary period of Puritanism, but it was not greatly emphasized and brought into its own genre until the Romanticism time period. Dark Romanticism is greatly used today in many novels, poems, short stories, and even movies. Although it may not be apparent, the darkness is peering through all around us.

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