The Revealings of Dark Romanticism

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Should our intellectual reason be the answers to our imaginative thoughts and desires, or should it be a harmony of reason and moral sense? After the Civil War the greatest nation on earth had more opportunities and more freedom “On the other hand, there was dissatisfaction with problems caused by the industrialization and urbanization, as well. These developments during the Revolution, an artistic, literary and intellectual movement gained strength, which is called Romanticism with Dark Romanticism being one of its subgenres.” (Dincer, 218) Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” the narrator’s psychological disorder and sense of guilt serves to display the Dark Romanticism within the short story in which shows the human impulse towards irrationality and contrast the Rationalist belief of intellectual reason. The following paper describes the Romantic Movement towards the irrational thought of the human mind and how this ideology was influenced by the Rationalist Movement who believed that logical reasoning was the answer to understanding the human race. Then it shows how Edgar Allan Poe uses gruesome imagery and literary devices to portray the views of Dark Romanticism in his short story the “Tell-Tale Heart”. Finally, the analysis on how Edgar Allan Poe depicts the unnamed narrator to show the ideas of Dark Romanticism. The Romantic period gave the literature world a different aspect of the human mind and the malicious thoughts of human beings. The Romantics wanted to show that the human mind can either find particular solutions through reason but also through experiences and emotion. So the “Romantics encouraged contemplation and self-awareness, direct contact with nature and a focus on and on exploration of inner feelings.” (Dincer, 218) and with this in mind the Romantics sought to explore the irrationality human beings have towards guilt, madness, sin,
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