Victorian Period
Romantic period analysis
The beauty of nature and its ability to set you free, the powers of imagination, individuality and a rebellion to tyranny are some of the ideas the romantic period brought to society’s attention. While rejecting neoclassical views of order, reason, tradition, society and formal diction. Romanticism allowed people to get away from the constrained rational views of life and concentrate on an emotional and sentimental side of humanity. The definition of poetry by William Wordsworth, (an important poet of the romantic period) exemplifies the importance of emotion and the individual, stating “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” It was the publication of a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge called lyrical ballads that pushed the Romantic period forward.
One of Coleridge’s more popular poems called Kubla Khan represents the romantic period well, the name referring to the ancient Mongol emperor. The first half of the poem is a vivid description of a fantasy place in the fictional land of Xanadu. The pleasure-dome is what he referred to it as, “where ALPH, the sacred river, ran through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea.” (Coleridge 670) He then goes on to describe miles of fertile ground, gardens bright, and forests as ancient as the hills. Generally a very pleasant place, until he mentions a strange chasm on the side of a hill, surrounded by cedar trees. This chasm is a
“savage” place, “as holy and enchanted” as any place that was ever “haunted by a woman wailing for her Demon Lover” (Coleridge 670). Within this haunted cavern, there are all kinds of turmoil– to illustrate; Coleridge compares this to if the Earth itself were heavily panting for breath. From this savage place in the hill, a geyser of some kind shoots up, things are so chaotic that the River Alph itself changes course and instead runs through the forests, but
reaching
The beauty of nature and its ability to set you free, the powers of imagination, individuality and a rebellion to tyranny are some of the ideas the romantic period brought to society’s attention. While rejecting neoclassical views of order, reason, tradition, society and formal diction. Romanticism allowed people to get away from the constrained rational views of life and concentrate on an emotional and sentimental side of humanity. The definition of poetry by William Wordsworth, (an important poet of the romantic period) exemplifies the importance of emotion and the individual, stating “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” It was the publication of a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge called lyrical ballads that pushed the Romantic period forward.
One of Coleridge’s more popular poems called Kubla Khan represents the romantic period well, the name referring to the ancient Mongol emperor. The first half of the poem is a vivid description of a fantasy place in the fictional land of Xanadu. The pleasure-dome is what he referred to it as, “where ALPH, the sacred river, ran through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea.” (Coleridge 670) He then goes on to describe miles of fertile ground, gardens bright, and forests as ancient as the hills. Generally a very pleasant place, until he mentions a strange chasm on the side of a hill, surrounded by cedar trees. This chasm is a
“savage” place, “as holy and enchanted” as any place that was ever “haunted by a woman wailing for her Demon Lover” (Coleridge 670). Within this haunted cavern, there are all kinds of turmoil– to illustrate; Coleridge compares this to if the Earth itself were heavily panting for breath. From this savage place in the hill, a geyser of some kind shoots up, things are so chaotic that the River Alph itself changes course and instead runs through the forests, but
reaching