The Romantic Period

The Romantic Period

The Romantic Period began in the mid-eighteenth century and extended into the

nineteenth century. Romanticism was about creative thinking, “thinking outside the box”,

completely contradicting Neoclassicism, which was about straight forward thinking,

“thinking inside the box”. It was a philosophical movement that redefined the

fundamental ways of what people thought about themselves and the world around them.

The Romantic period overlapped with the “age of revolution”, which included the

American (1776) and the French (1789) revolutions. This was a time of change, where

new skeptical ideas were “in” and old traditional ones were “out”. In romanticism poetry

came new concepts, like the use of imagination, nature, and symbolism. These new

concepts soon became very popular with most of the poets. With these new concepts

came new poets like John Keats, William Blake, and William Wordsworth, who soon

became leading poets of the romanticism movement. Although using the same concepts:

imagination, nature, and symbolism, Keats’s, Blake’s, and Wordsworth’s works are

distinguishably different due to their distinct use of poetic devices. The style of writing is

a characteristic of the poet. Each poet uses the concepts in various ways to present their

ideas. The concept of opening a reader’s imagination is used widely with several poetic

devices.

A great physicist by the name of Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination is more

important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

Albert Einstein was one of the most intellectual human beings to have lived on Earth. His

statement shows the importance of imagination. What he is trying to say is that though a

person may be very knowledgeable there will always be a limit to what they know, for

they can not know everything, and knowing everything is a limit in itself for then the

person can not learn anything new. A person’s imagination on the other hand is limitless,

since it is so vast, new ideas are always “popping” into their heads. Opening a reader’s

horizons became a key purpose in romanticism poetry. Poets started using more

descriptive language so that the reader would be able to have a vivid picture in their head

and be able to relate better to the images and...

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... person’s life. When a sunflower grows, it grows

towards the sun, as if its goal is to reach the sun. This is the same for a person in the

means that their goal is to reach the heavens or paradise in the sky at the end of their life.

This is shown in lines one to three, “Who contests the steps of the sun; / Seeking after

that sweet golden clime / Where the traveler’s journey is done;” This poem expresses the

similarities between nature and human life. Wordsworth uses the daffodils in the poem,

“Daffodils”, to show the kind impact nature can have on a person’s well being. “And then

my heart with pleasure fills / And dances with the daffodils.”(line 23-24) shows that by

seeing something so simple, in this case a field of daffodils, a person’s heart can be

overcome by a feeling of immense joy. Most often poets would use things or events in

nature to symbolize human life.

Symbolism became a very popular concept in romanticism because it allowed the

poets to write something that could have multiple meanings depending on the

interpretation of the poem. This opens the doors for the poets to write to a wide variety of

people.