Romanticism Essay, Research Paper

In the Early 19th Century Romanticism, man becoming one with him self and nature, was a reaction against the Enlightenment of the 18th century. With such people as William Wordsworth, William Blake and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe fueled romanticism with their writings and poems. William Wordsworth, for example, wrote many poems about nature and his beliefs on how life and nature are closely related to one another.

In Wordsworth’s Tables Turned stated, in other words, that the human can archive goodness by becoming one with nature. The poem heavily stated that the human should throw down the books, stop “wasting” your life on learning and becoming knowledgeable and book smart when all you have to do is go outside and enjoy nature. This would help you achieve all that is needed in life. Wordsworth thought that nature had a huge impact on the human’s imagination. He felt that nature was humanity’s teacher. That it brought out the human imagination because that all the living organisms inner meaning made man think and put meaning into forming there own ideas instead of accepting those of others. The way Wordsworth’s philosophy, as well as others of this time period, differs from that of the Enlightenment is that the philosophers of that time felt you should return to the classics. Meaning read the works of the Greeks and Romans become well rounded.

William Blake, another poet whose beliefs of romanticism were expressed in writings such as Milton gave his feeling toward those who wrote and documented their ideas during the Enlightenment period. He felt that people such as Bacon, Locke, and Newton wrote for self-envy and that their views on science were daft and that science its self is the work of imagination. This shows that the Romantic Movement was based on believing not what others teach you but that of what you want to believe and what your personal thoughts and ideas might be. As well as disapproving with those of the past concluded and basically saying they were full of it.

In Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust Dr. Faustus is full of discontent and pain due to the fact that even thought he has all the titles and knowledge he is any more better off than before. He saying that even though he is book smart he isn’t happy with how he is as a person. This could vary well be seen or considered the greatest Romantic expression of all due to the fact that this is what it was all about, meaning the Romantic Movement. Not being happy with who you are because you don’t know who you are or what your surroundings are.

Romanticism has had a more significant effect on the modern Western Civilization because people have keep the concepts of the people named above and other philosophers of the time alive through out time. People care more about what they are more than what they could know. Even after saying this I don’t know what to classify myself as being, either a cool rationalist or an intuitive, spiritual being. I guess I could be both. This being to my beliefs as an individual person towards certain things as nature and religion, things along the lines of what these two movements were based on. So I really have no answer to that particular question.

Romanticism in the 19th century was a time that shaped peoples in the way that there thinking and actions have changed dramatically since the Enlightenment. People started to think and wonder more than before. They wanted to know the truth behind what they were being taught. This was a time when people were becoming more independent than before. This was a time when a lot of questions were answered and the truth came out.