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describing the beauty of nature
describing the beauty of nature
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Romantics often emphasized the beauty, strangeness, and mystery of nature. Romantic writers expressed their intuition of nature that came from within. The key to this inner world was the imagination of the writer; this frequently reflected their expressions of their inner essence and their attitude towards various aspects of nature. It was these attitudes that marked each writer of the Romantic period as a unique being. These attitudes are greatly reflected in the poem “When I Heard the Learned Astronomer” by Walt Whitman.
Walt Whitman reflects this Romantic attitude in the speaker of his poem. He situates the speaker in a lecture about astronomy that the speaker finds very dull and tedious. Thus the speaker looks past the charts, diagrams and the work that is involved with them and starts to imagine the beauty of the stars alone. Being lifted out of the lecture room, the speaker is freed of his stress and boredom and is able to enjoy the peace and true beauty that the stars embrace.
Varying degrees of Romantic attitude has affected many areas in our lives today. A vast area that Romantic attitude has affected is The Arts. The Arts, composed of many types of genre, are composed and interpreted very different. Some people may look at a painting and imagine extremely different attitudes than the artist who painted it had intended. Another area that the Romantic attitude has drastically affected is fashion. As you glance around you’ll probably observe that very few people dress similar and each person has developed their own style of dress. Fashion often reflects a person’s attitude towards life and may express the mood that the particular person has, this gives each person a unique quality to distinguish them from the rest of society.
"Romanticism -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia." Encyclopedia - Britannica Online Encyclopedia. Web. 3 Dec. 2010. .
"look in vain for the poet whom I describe. We do not, with sufficient plainness, or sufficient profoundness, address ourselves to life, nor dare we chaunt our own times and social circumstances. If we filled the day with bravery, we should not shrink from celebrating it. Time and nature yield us many gifts, but not yet the timely man, the new religion, the reconciler, whom all things await" (Emerson 1653). Emerson is stating how everything can be a poem and a poet can reflect on valuable resources like nature to draw on and write. Whitman clearly uses this guide in order to write his poetry. He agrees that nature is a valuable tool.
Just as the European romantics cared about emotions, nature, imagination, meditation, humanity and freedom, the American first "group of great imaginative writers -Irving, Bryant and Poe" (readers Note p 57) -cared about the them too . In their writings, these writers were taken by the romantic ideals empathizing on nature, creating their own world, borrowing sets from the past or from legends, meditating their life, and finding their own explanations to its processes . With such attitudes, these writers made their way into literature as romantics . " The Devil And Tom Walker","Hop Frog", " To a Waterfowl" and "Thanatopsis" serve as good examples for American Romanticism .
After the peaceful and productive Baroque era came the Rococo, and then the period of Romanticism and Realism. Art from this era was very similar to the Rococo period, save one element; the tumult of the French Revolution. The tension from this historical tragedy came out in many paintings, even though they were created twenty to thirty years after the end of the Revolution. Paintings such as Goya's Third of May (27-11) and Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People portray the terrible effects of mislead ideas. The rest of the world took after the humanistic thoughts injected into some of the art; the Revolution had been influential, but not good in a very good way.
History is the story and knowledge of the past. There are individuals that are interested by history and wish to study it by learning more. It is very informative to know what has happened in the past for self-knowledge. An individual cannot be naïve to the past including but not limited to how literature came to. One can understand literature more when they understand the time period the author wrote during and the way they wrote. There are several time periods different authors have been through with each period having specific beliefs. Romanticism is the time period that interests me the most; it was a time during the eighteenth century and focused on nature along with the individual’s expression of imagination and emotion.
Walt Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” is a poem that illustrates a boring moment in the narrator’s life. The speaker is listening to a famous and renowned astronomer speak about everything but the stars. He, the speaker, politely listens as the astronomer continues with his lecture on equations and numbers. We can assume that the narrator is feeling a type of disappointment when he starts to feel a sense of sickness. Some of the themes that Walt Whitman uses in describing his poem for one would be dissatisfaction. Another theme Whitman uses is isolation he self imposes on the narrator.
The Romantic Movement was a time of huge changes in the values of many humans. It was a movement during the late 1700's-early mid 1800's that had totally opposite values to the values of the enlightenment and industrial revolution. The Romanticism Movement started as a reaction to the age of enlightenment and industrial revolution. The age of enlightenment was all about science, logic, and progressing technology which led to the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution took on the values of the age of enlightenment, making huge progresses in technology, however that being done in the exchange of destroying nature. On the other hand, romantics went totally against these values. Romantics believed in individual freedom, nature, art, and feelings and emotions. The contrasting values of the Romantic Movement and the age of enlightenment are shown through the characteristics that are in Romantic Literature. For example, in romantic literature, there is value of nature while the industrial revolution only destroyed nature. There is also value of human feelings, emotions and behaviour in romantic novels-the enlightenment valued logic and science, being totally opposite from each other. Imagination and individual freedom are other concept shown in romantic novels while the enlightenment valued science and a place in society. Using these characteristics, Mary Shelly makes Frankenstein a piece of Romantic literature.Specifically, she uses the ideals of nature, emotions and feelings and knowledge being harmful to express the values of the romanticism in this novel, Frankenstein.
With words and phrases like “isolated” (“Noiseless” 2) and “vacant vast surrounding” (“Noiseless” 3), Whitman retains dark and hopeless tone. The words that define the tone are mainly describing how hopeless human’s soul can be. This is based on the analysis of the humans, which is based on individualism, the cornerstone of transcendentalism. On the other hand, in “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” Whitman keeps his casual tone, just like he is discussing his anecdote. This tone is the opposite of the one used during the Age of Reason, when the justifications and logics were prevailing. As the transcendentalism sought separation from European heritage, the works at that time period were casual and from sudden inspiration. “Astronomer” definitely shows how the writings demonstrate the sudden change in writing form—an important aspect of
Romantic: of, characterized by, or suggestive of an idealised, sentimental, or fantastic view of reality… concerned more with feeling and emotion than with form and aesthetic qualities.
One of the most popular American poets is Walt Whitman. Whitman’s poetry has become a rallying cry for Americans, asking for individuality, self-approval, and even equality. While this poetry seems to be truly groundbreaking, which it objectively was, Whitman was influenced by the writings of others. While Whitman may not have believed in this connection to previous authors, critics have linked him to Emerson, Poe, and even Carlyle. However, many critics have ignored the connection between Walt Whitman and the English writer William Wordsworth. A major proponent of Romanticism, Wordsworth’s influence can be seen in Whitman 's poetry through a Romantic connection. Despite differences in form, one can see William Wordsworth’s influence on Walt
Through the clever use of anaphora, well-chosen appropriate diction, and varied sentence structures, Whitman was able to emphasize and effectively portray to the reader how learning from the astronomer was boring and useless while learning from nature was superior. By doing so, Whitman was able to extend the ideal of transcendentalism that true knowledge is gained from first hand experiences from nature and not from traditional learning practices and reading books.
Walt Whitman poem is about the marvel of astronomy. He wanted to learn about the stars. He went and heard an astronomer. He tells, “When I heard the learn’d astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me.” All the data about astronomy was laid out in front of him, but this did not captivate his interest or filled his curiosity. It mad things worst. His plan to see the beauty in the stars was turned to boredom and sitting in a tiresome, lackluster lecture. He writes, “How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick.” The lecture, data, and astronomer were not the beauty he wanted to see. The visual experience is what he wanted to see. The silence and view of the stars was better for him than the lecture and data. The beauty is what he really wanted. He did not want the hard facts.
"Romanticism." Gale Student Resources in Context. Detroit: Gale, 2012. Student Resources in Context. Web. 27 Apr. 2014.
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).
In “On the Beach at Night Alone,” Walt Whitman develops the idea that everyone has a connection with everything else, including nature. Whitman uses a variety of writing techniques to get his point across. First, the repetition and parallel structure that his poems contain reinforce the connection between everything in nature. The usage of “All” 11 times emphasizes the inclusion of everything in the universe. The sentence structure remains the same throughout the poem, without any drastic change; however, the length of the lines in the poem vary. In addition, Whitman’s’ extravagance with his words further illustrates his idea of the Over-Soul. For example, “A vast similitude interlocks all” (4) shows his verbose nature. Whitman does not do directly to the point, but gives every little detail. Most importantly, Whitman’s’ use of catalogues stands as the most recognizable Whitman characteristic that illustrates his beliefs. These long lists that he uses set the mood of the poem. “All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,” (5) shows the idea that everything is connected in nature. Similarly, “All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations languages.” (10) furthermore emphasize Whitman’s belief in the Over-Soul.