Compare Romanticism And Romantic Poetry

Romanticism and Romantic Poetry

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born in1806 to English parents as the eldest child near London. Seemingly, Elizabeth studied alongside his brother foreign languages like Italian and Greek while living in their countryside home at Hope End, near London. While still living at her father’s property at Hope End, she published An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems, which was her first work at the age of fourteen years in 1826. Two years later, she lost her mother Mrs. Barrett. Browning was interested in learning foreign and English works from an early age and as a result, she translated Greek literature to English. For example, in 1832, she translated Eschylus’ tragedy, Prometheus Vinetus and revised it in 1850 to represent

Romanticism poets embraced freedom of expressions, the liberty to love, and anticipated for individual originality to embody personal aspirations without being obstructed by the society (James, Lawall, and Lee 489). For example, Browning used the romanticism ideologies to express her individual feelings from a poetic perspective. “How Do I Love Thee?” is a poem that exaggerates the individual feelings of a persona towards her subject. The main theme of the poem is love even after death. The first line of the poem highlights the persona’s intent to discuss ways in which she loves her husband or lover. Moreover, in the poem, Browning distinguishes her intense feeling of love in an unlimited way that breaks from social restrictions, “Tis universal truth perceived in emotion” (Neri 61). She confesses about her feelings of admiration according to the ideals of the Romanticism movement, which requires one to expressing authentic personal feelings creatively and imaginatively without being bound by the societal norms. Romanticism era broke from the assumptions of social control and embraced self’s importance, “I know my own heart, and understand my fellow man” (James, Lawall, and Lee 487). For example, in the last line of the poem

In fact, Browning uses an emotional language whose ideologies are individualistic and provides an unbound human involvement that emphasizes an ideal love experience that is free of social control. Mysteriously, the persona transcends ordinary earthly limitation in the poem by claiming that she would love her husband much better at death, which is contrary to the general belief that love end with death of a persona. Equally, James, Lawall, and Lee assert that immortality is an element common in romanticism poetry, and Browning used it to idealize her feminine ability to express deep human feeling that go beyond the bounds of nature and overcome any social control. Symbolizing love with nature help the poet to express emotions without any