Romantic art tended to revolve around nature or some heroic deed, ignoring or tuning away from industry and logic, and when it did not, it reviled it. Paintings often depicted beautiful landscapes such as those by Friedrich and Turner. William Wordsworth wrote poems about nature that portrayed it as a mystical, mysterious force. Romantic writers, such as Edgar Allen Poe and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe emphasized emotion, tragic figures, and sometimes mystery giving rise to Gothic literature. Romanticism responded to industrialization by shunning it and turning to nature, emotion, and mysticism.
The storm is continually built up to be a wild force with words like “lashing” and “fierce slanting” both showing the power of the force of the rain and wind on everything around it. The “death-wind” mentioned in line 7 makes the setting appear even more unfriendly, making the reader wonder what the wind is trying to do. The way Whitman
Victor’s use of religious connotations when discussing his hubristic ambition and thirst for knowledge, is representative of the contextual fear that scientific advances will remove societal values of religion and the sublime. Shelley’s portrays of Victor aiming to expose the “secrets of heaven and earth… secrets which I desired to divine”. This is indicative of Victor’s challenge to the established values of the romantic period in his “desired acquisition of knowledge”. Shelley
However, the film’s 20th century context of capitalist greed and mass industrialisation shifts the criticism to the pursuit of commercial dominance and not god like power. Composed during the Industrial Revolution and the enlightenment period, Shelley symbolises the Romantic Movement as she forebodes her enlightened society of playing God. Her warning is shown through the character of Victor, whose pompous diction “many excellent natures would owe their being to me” represents a society focused on reanimation. Shelley questions the morality of this society through the pursuit of god like reanimation and through religiously and morally condemned methods of using dead body parts as materials. Through Victor’s retrospection to Robert Walton, “lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit”, with juxtaposition of “all” and “one” emphasis of Victor’s obsession to conquer death is made; similar to scientists of Shelly’s time such as Erasmus Darwin.
Elizabeth Barrett-Browning’s sonnet sequence Sonnets from the Portugeuse, explores the experence of idealised love in the patriarchal confines of the Victorian era, juxtaposed against F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, which comments on the unatanability of idealised love due to the corruption of the American dream. Through an exploration of love, both composers subvert societies preconcieved attitutdes to love through the reccurring motif of ‘Plato’s ladder of love’. Barrett-Browning’s poems highlight the realities of a spiritual, connected love, contrasting to Fitzgeralds commentary on the illusionary goals of ‘true’ platonic love in the post WWI hedonistic, materialistic society. Barrett-Browning conveys the Romantic ideals of platonic love, against the prudish rationalism of the Victorian era. The Petrarchan sonnet form has an inbuilt dialectic structure, enabling her to have a progressive narrative, which follows the path of the Platonic system.
Consequently, the ethics of humanity is challenged through these creators in both texts as they express the contextual concerns such as post-industrialism and greed. Shelley exhibits both nature and nurture in “Frankenstein”. The importance of nature is illustrated through the use of imagery. Victor states - “These sublime and magnificent scenes afforded me the greatest consolation that I was capable of receiving.” His surroundings control his emotions. This point of view is formed by Shelley’s experience of Romantic Idealism and sublimity.
As Calvinists the Puritans believed in divine sovereignty. They felt that God’s plan was to reform church and society to conform to John Calvin’s theological ideas. In their eyes the English government went directly against the divine plan of purity and social order by allowing and participating in such things as drunkenness, gambling, public swearing and Sabbath breaking. The Government also allowed celebrations based on pagan customs such as maypole dancing and celebrating Christmas and saints’ days. 2 1 Davidson, James West et al, U.S. A Narrative History, Volume One, (New York: McGraw Hill, 2012), p.65.
Frankenstein was composed during the Romantic period; which involved challenging previously accepted, scientific statements, regarding the practical and ethical possibilities arising from human enquiries into the sources of life and human knowledge in general. Romantics such as Shelley held firm views in the rejection of science and rationalism, espousing the sublimity of nature and emotional experiences. This ideology involved the concept that mechanical production, such as seen through the Industrial Revolution, led to the alienation of man from essential human nature. Shelley’s Gothic writing style was heavily influenced by such ideologies; evident through her use of vivid imagery, juxtaposing the beauty of natural elements and the hideousness of scientifically manufactured beings, a symbol of the Enlightenment; “I watched
In short, this essay will examine both Burke and Paine’s views of human nature, natural rights, and the rights of man to overthrow their government. Burke and Paine came from two opposite ends of the political spectrum. Burke was an archetypal conservative, valuing history, tradition, and the status quo. Paine was a firebrand of the left, advocating revolution and popular democracy. Ironically, Edmund Burke sympathized with the colonists in North America during the period of turmoil there, but he did not support the complete social revolution which took place in France during the last years of the 1700s.
Enlightening our minds, refreshing our souls, the transcendentalists of the 19th century preached their feelings of how society is, and what needs to be done to fix the corruptness of it. Their writings, known as American Romanticism, told how people need to be one with nature to have the fulfilling life in which we all desire, (with non-fulfilling lives the world would be a disaster). From Ralph Waldo Emerson’s piece, “Nature”: “To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society“ (page ). Emerson tells of how people need to get out of the house, the place they find comfort in the dumbness of their absent thought, so they can find the individual in them, that strives to express the way they feel about everything.