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Industrial revolution and it's impact on literature
literature romantic era essay
literature in the romantic period
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Literature gives a unique and lasting portrait into the past. Long before picket lines and protests, poets wrote about issues they saw in the world. England was in chaos as the Industrial Revolution began. Poets like Wordsworth and Blake did not like the results of the urbanization had on humans and nature. The Romantic period’s authors works give the perfect vision into the time and still hold true now. In the late 1700s, marked a large change in England as industrialization took hold. People moved into the city and took factory jobs. This era marked the time of the printing press and the transfer from manual labor to machines to produce wares. At around the same time England’s slave trade began. All of this brought about literature that railed against. The literature, itself, was about the power of nature and its ability to prevail over mankind. There was a human element to the poetry too, emotion was important to the poets of this time. Many of the Romantic era poets felt that working in factories dehumanized people, made them forget their emotions. One of the quintessen...
Both Romantics and Modernists felt loss of authority, either from man or man's religious following. Poetry changed what it focused on as those figures lost respect or importance in the public's lives. I believe Yeats sums up my point partially in lines 19 and 20, "That twenty centuries of stony sleep/ Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle.
Originating in Europe in the late 18th century, the Romanticism Era characterized an interest in nature and emphasized the individuals emotion and imagination. The sudden change in attitudes formed an age of classicism and rebellion against established social rules and conventions. Praising imagination over reason, emotions over logic and intuition over science, this made way for a vast body of literature of great sensibility and passion. The variety of this impressive romanticism literature can be focused on by specific authors, works of literature, and how romanticism influenced their writing.
The Romanticism period started in 1789 and lasted till 1830. This time period was a major international movement, shaping modern views of art, literature, music, and other aspects in life. Romanticism was the “reaction against artistic styles of classical antiquity, which was neoclassicism.” Neoclassicists focused on the power of reasoning to discover the truth while Romantics focused on the hope to transform the world through the power of imagination. They had a deep love for nature (Furst 302). The aspects of romanticism are important; they are the beliefs of this period. The first aspect includes nature, which allows them to be free from the artificial aspects of civilization; they were with man’s true setting. Nature was there to reveal and heal individuals. An example of the love for nature in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poetry ‘Frost at Midnight’ is he is describing how happy he is that his baby will be able to see nature instead of living in the city like he did, “But thou, my babe! shalt wander like ...
The Romantic period brought a new outlook on how people viewed the world. The fight for individual rights was a major cause for the sudden change. There were too many rules that held people back from being able to express themselves. Once they began to broaden their ideas and practice new motives whether it was political, or emotional, it brought freedom of expression. Many poets took the chance to enlighten their readers on their works. They would write in order to paint a picture and gave more detailed descriptions of the conscious mind. For these poets it brought many people to enjoy their freedom of speech and encouraged a new way of thinking.
The Industrial Revolution during the late 1700's was a time of great change. People were moving into cities, and watching the rural countryside evolve into a great monstrosity. This happened so fast that the city couldn’t keep up with the growth and the conditions within the city were atrocious. This change made them rethink city life, the all in one location scenario wasn’t appealing anymore. They saw the countryside rural and beautiful, which made it very powerful and surreal. Literature was very pre-defined and boring, but now writers use everything happening around them to create inspirations and to let their imaginations run deep. This change during this time period was known as Romanticism or the Romantic Movement. The Romantic Movement is by far the most important literary period. It empowered writers to act on their emotions and tell the story as it was not as it needed to be. This new form of writing encouraged men and women of all classes to explore novels. Everyone felt involved, like they were a part of the novel, they understood emotion and nature.
Blake, Wordsworth, and Keats all represent the Romantic style of literature with their unorthodox themes of nature, art, and life; and how those three points can be tied together and used for creative purposes among humankind. Art and life are counterparts; one is lacking without the other. The Romantic period was about passion; finding inspiration and beauty in things people see every day. Wordsworth found childhood memories in a familiar landscape, Blake found himself captivated by the mysteries of how the majestic tiger was created, and Keats’ urn triggered him to put his inquiries of it into poetry. Each man expressed his individual view within their works; and like many of their Romantic contemporaries, their ideas ran against the flow of their time’s societal beliefs.
Manufacturing, business, and factories skyrocketed. Industrialization began to take over nature. Forests, rivers, trees are destroyed and replaced by smoking factories and pollutions. Destruction of mother earth continued and the society was changing rapidly. This change and destruction caught many British poet’s attention and became one of the most popular themes for their writings. During this time period, many Romantic literary works emerged from the feelings of anxiety towards the alienation of mankind from nature, and many writers tried to warm people to reestablish a sustainable, livable relationship with natural world through their writings.
In the Industrial Revolution poetry advanced and Romanticism began. Romanticism started in the 18th century and was said to be influenced by the French and Industrial Revolution. People decided to rebel against the political and social rules of their time and started a new trend of art. It conveyed dramatic subjects perceived with strong feelings and imagination. William Blake was a poet commonly connected with Romanticism.
Historic poetry is unique in the respect that it gives readers an insight into a certain historic time period that textbooks cannot provide. Historic poetry not only gives a description of the time period but it allows the readers to connect to the emotions of the poet and to a point experience what it would have felt to live in that era. This is the case with William Blake’s poem London. London not only describes the horrid condition of England’s lower class during the industrial revolution but it also connects this description with a strong emotion response from the speaker. Blake’s stylistic and structure choices through out the poem paint a dark and morbid view of London but the emotion of the poem remains divide. The words of the poem’s speaker evokes both sympathy for the lower classes at the same time as he is chastising the people who have the power to change the situation.
Percy Shelley is known as one of the greatest romantic poets of his time and is also noted as one of the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley’s work “Men of England” talks about the dispute between two classes in England, rich and the poor, and discusses how the working class should bind together to have a revolution. The poem mentions England’s government at the time and how their king, George III, is going insane. This poem will be compared and contrasted with William Blake’s “London” which talks about the disparaging situation that London is facing due to the prior generation’s mistakes made by the government. Some comparisons that will be demonstrated are the talk about the lower class of society in both poems as well as the discouraging tone that both poems present. In contrast, the speakers in the poem are on different subjects such as the speaker in “Men of England” calling for a revolution of the poor nobles and the speaker in “London” making the public realize what shambles the city of London is in.
Humanities is described as the study of how people as a whole, process and record human life. From the wall paintings of the Stone Age, to Plato’s “The Republic”, to the exhilarating tranquility of the sound of jazz, humans have used philosophy, literature, storytelling, and art to express ourselves. The term “the humanities” is a term that molds its definition with the movement of time and the progression or regression of humans. The 18th century brought unprecedented change throughout the world. The colonies declared independence while creating arguably, some of the world’s greatest literary documents, the Declaration of Independence and
The Romantic Period in English literature was an era that brought forth profound literary rebellion. Romantics were truly rebels. They were in total defiance of the morals set by the movement known as the neoclassical period. The Romantics were also idealists, who believed in change. These idealists wrote about the change they wanted, socially as well as politically. Nature, both human and natural, and childhood and social conditions were of the many themes literary artists of this time chose to focus on. Mary Wollstonecraft, William Blake, and William Wordsworth were among the literary artists who have done just this. In creating works such as, “A Vindication of the Rights of Women”, “The Garden of Love”, and “She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways”, one can see the spirit of this era is well depicted.
For example, during the Great Depression, a hard time for many, people were seeking distractions from their troubles, and such brought on a focus on escapist and humor themes. Furthermore, as mentioned previously, literary pieces focused on the lack of progress and the want of a simpler, more pure lifestyle as was once had. Literary periods have come and gone; romanticism, for example, filled with poetry and idealisms, with artistic expression that wouldn’t have been as tolerable in earlier times, or naturalism, which found expression almost completely in the novel, concerned with searching and discovering the causes for a person’s actions or beliefs (2). Literature has changed and developed, just as our society and our history have.
The Romantic Period was a time in which music and poetry talked about love, nature, and the good of being human. Different poets like Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge made poetry that will live on in literature forever. The Romantic period didn’t only affect Britain. It affected the entire world
...infinite. Mainly they cared about the individual, intuition, and imagination. English Romantic poets had a strong connection with medievalism and mythology. Romanticism witnessed a loosening of the rules of artistic expression that were prevalent during earlier times. (Rhan, 1)