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Romanticism and nature
Romanticism and nature
Significance of the romantic period in English literature
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“Wine is bad as well as good”; it heightens the emotions of the drinker just as the emotional appeal of the writing during the Romantic Era were amplified (Hamilton 72). Any literary era must follow a literary concept of either Apollonian or Dionysian dichotomy. Under Apollonian, literature embodies Apollo, the God of the Sun, who represents order and reason (30). Under Dionysian, literature embodies Dionysus, the God of Wine, who represents the contradictory ideas of “ecstatic joy and of savage brutality” (68). The Romantic Era followed the belief that the world is not bounded by reason; thus, the world is chaotic. Additionally, romantics focus on the emotions they expressed in their writing. Therefore, the Romantic Era is strictly Dionysian in nature. Due to the Romantic Era’s major beliefs in the supernatural mystery of nature, personal expression, and its catharsis, the era correlates itself to the Dionysian ideology.
Romantics perceive nature as inherently good and not being bound by reason. However, they also understood that nature is chaotic in its actions. Dionysus is the god of the harvest; thus, he can be directly associated with the patterns of nature (Hamilton 56). Just as the perception of nature is envisioned differently, it is due to Dionysus also being the god of wine. “Wine could be kind and beneficent” or cruel and drive people to terrible deeds (67). The chaotic nature of wine is responsible for the chaotic actions of nature. In “The Devil and Tom Walker” Washington Irving narrates the life of Tom Walker, an anti-hero, who makes a deal with the devil for riches. Irving uses detailed descriptions of the settings to express the changes of Tom Walker. Irving’s detailed description of “the foliage...
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Dickinson, Emily. “My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close.” Glencoe Literature. New York: Glencoe McGraw-Hill, 2009: 440. Print.
Dickinson, Emily. “The Soul Selects Her Own Society.” Glencoe Literature. New York: Glencoe McGraw-Hill, 2009: 440. Print.
Francis, Rogers. "The Final Days of Edgar Allan Poe: Clues to an Old Mystery Using 21st Century Medical Science." EBSCOHost. Omega: Journal of Death & Dying, 2009. Web. 12 April 2014.
Hamilton, Edith. Mythology. Boston: Little, Brown and, 1942. Print.
Irving, Washington. “The Devil and Tom Walker.” Glencoe Literature. New York: Glencoe McGraw-Hill, 2009: 242-250. Print.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. The Birth of Tragedy And The Case of Wagner. New York: Vintage, 1967. Print.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Raven.” Glencoe Literature. New York: Glencoe McGraw-Hill, 2009: 256-260. Print.
Written during the American Romanticism period, “The Devil and Tom Walker,” by William Irving, personifies the belief in the primacy of imagination. The period of Romanticism in America is often seen as the crucial period of American culture, as it was the central movement of the Renaissance period that moved into a more free-feeling and artistic approach to literature. American Gothic literature made its early appearance with William Irving, first with “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” in 1820, and carrying over to “The Devil and Tom Walker” in 1824, both of which use a macabre approach to establish a moral ending (Matterson). Told by a narrator known as Geoffrey Crayon, “The Devil and Tom Walker” takes on the tone of a legend or tall tale as the story describes the life of a greedy money lender by the name of Tom Walker, who sells his soul to the devil to gain wealth. Irving ultimately uses literary elements such as symbolism and character development, as well as themes such as greed and hypocrisy to establish a moral to the corrupt man’s tale.
New York: A.C. Armstrong & Son., 1884. xv-xxvi. EPUB file. Sova, Dawn B. "Poe, Edgar Allan.
Irving, Washington. “The Devil and Tom Walker”. Elements of Literature: Fifth Course. Austin: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2008. 175-185. Print.
Washington Irving’s “The Devil and Tom Walker” includes great examples of Romanticism, such as symbols in nature having links to the supernatural, the importance of the inner nature, and the emphasis of the individual. In the story, Tom Walker is a selfish man who cares more about money than he does about anyone else, including his wife. One day, while he is walking through the woods, Tom Walker comes across the Devil, who makes a deal with him to exchange his soul for the treasure that is buried in those woods. Tom declines and returns back to his wife and tells her that he has passed on an opportunity that could bring them lots of money. Tom’s wife, outraged by his actions, decides to strike a deal of her own with the Devil and after several attempts, she never returns from the woods. The next time Tom goes to the woods he finds that his wife had been killed by the Devil. He finally agrees to make the deal with him, now that Tom doesn’t have to share anything with his wife. Tom ignores the Devil’s suggestion of becoming a slave-trader and becomes a moneylender instead. He gets wea...
Dickinson, Emily. Baym, Nina, editor. The Norton Anthology: American Literature. New York: W. W. Norton
Edgar Allan Poe was a celebrated author who wrote many poems and short stories in the 19th century. Poe was known for his romanticism and the mysterious feeling that was sure to be felt through many of his tales. Edgar Allan Poe was himself, quite a mystery. One of the strangest parts of his character that highlights the mystery within him was his obsession with death. This obsession was most likely rooted from the fact that many of his loved ones had untimely deaths. His mother died when he was very young from tuberculosis (Dameron). Following in the footsteps of the depressing death of his mother, many years later Poe’s young wife died of the same disease, tuberculosis. Many other members of Poe 's family died from various causes,
Edgar Allen Poe was one of the greatest writers of the nineteenth century. Perhaps he is best know for is ominous short stories. One of my personal favorites was called The Raven. Throughout his works Poe used coherent connections between symbols to encourage the reader to dig deep and find the real meaning of his writing. Poe's work is much like a puzzle, when u first see it its intact, but take apart and find there is much more to the story than you thought. The Raven, written in 1845, is a perfect example of Poe at his craziest. Poe's calculated use of symbolism is at his best in this story as each symbol coincides with the others. In The Raven, Poe explains a morbid fear of loneliness and the end of something through symbols. The symbols not only tell the story of the narrator in the poem, they also tell the true story of Poe's own loneliness in life and the hardships he faced. Connected together through imagery they tell a story of a dark world only Poe Knows exists.
Emily Dickinson is one of the great visionary poets of nineteenth century America. In her lifetime, she composed more poems than most modern Americans will even read in their lifetimes. Dickinson is still praised today, and she continues to be taught in schools, read for pleasure, and studied for research and criticism. Since she stayed inside her house for most of her life, and many of her poems were not discovered until after her death, Dickinson was uninvolved in the publication process of her poetry. This means that every Dickinson poem in print today is just a guess—an assumption of what the author wanted on the page. As a result, Dickinson maintains an aura of mystery as a writer. However, this mystery is often overshadowed by a more prevalent notion of Dickinson as an eccentric recluse or a madwoman. Of course, it is difficult to give one label to Dickinson and expect that label to summarize her entire life. Certainly she was a complex woman who could not accurately be described with one sentence or phrase. Her poems are unique and quite interestingly composed—just looking at them on the page is pleasurable—and it may very well prove useful to examine the author when reading her poems. Understanding Dickinson may lead to a better interpretation of the poems, a better appreciation of her life’s work. What is not useful, however, is reading her poems while looking back at the one sentence summary of Dickinson’s life.
The idea of losing a loved is a powerful emotion and one that virtually every person can relate to. It was with this concept in mind that Edgar Allan Poe crafted his classic narrative poem “The Raven.” For some, poetry acts as a means to express different ideals, either social, intellectual, or philosophical. For Edgar Allan Poe, poetry was at its best when it conveyed beauty through the expression of simple yet powerful emotion. In Poe’s mind, there was no purer manifestation of poetic beauty than the deep emotion felt from the loss of a beloved woman. Is with this in mind the Poe employs setting, tone, and symbolism to relate the powerful emotion of never-ending despair to connect with his audience in the classic poem “The Raven.”
Dickinson, Emily. “Because I could not stop for Death.” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and writing. Seventh Edition. X.J. Kennedy, Dana Gioia. Saddle River. Pearson Education, 2013. 777. Print.
On December 10, 1830, a cold winter day, Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was brought into the world. Emily lived on Maine street in a lovely brick home, which they called the “Homestead.” Emily had an older brother named Austin. She also had a younger sister, who was born three years after her, her name was Livina. The first school that Emily attended was a school right down the road from her house. This was the first education that she received. This was the school that her father wanted her to attend. This is also where Emily’s writing career began (Borus: 9-14).
Di Yanni, Robert. “Character Revealed Through Dialogue.” Readings on The Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996. Reprint from Literature. N. p.: Random House, 1986.
Emily Dickinson is frightened of death and the unknown life after it. To release her
The first two stanzas of The Raven introduce you to the narrator, and his beloved maiden Lenore. You find him sitting on a “dreary” and dark evening with a book opened in front of him, though he is dozing more than reading. Suddenly, he hears knocking on his door, but only believes it to be a visitor nothing more. He remembers another night, like this one, where he had sought the solace of his library to forget his sorrows of his long lost beloved, and to wait for dawn. Meanwhile the tapping on his door continues.
Dickinson, Emily. “The last Night that She lived.” Literature. 5th ed. Ed. Robert DiYanni. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. 843.