...The Romantic poetry was limited to a few poets, still, those few altered the aspect of literature forevermore. In a group of such prominent poets were George Crabbe and Thomas Moore who gave vivacious renderings of natural scenes with Romantic emotionality. George Crabbe was one of the first poets whose works provided the link between Pre- Romanticism and Romanticism. He was a great bard of nature who portrayed it as strange being and arresting as no other Romantic poet did and therefore was named by Byron as “Nature’s sternest painter”. Throughout the age, Crabbe persisted in his precise, realistic portraits of rural life and landscape, writing mainly in the heroic couplets of the neoclassical age. His poems described village manners without...
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...To the romantic poets poetry was an instrument of emotion and feeling intended to reconnect man with the natural world, and in general the poet was viewed as a person uniquely equipped to guide the layman to this reconnection. Romanticism as a movement appeared following a period in history when great importance was put on scientific discovery and formal education. In the eyes of the romantic poets mankind had become so swept up in the pursuit of knowledge and innovation that they had disconnected from both the natural world, and their deeper, natural selves. Though the philosophies of the individual poets differed, in general romantic poetry focused on and lauded primitivism, and emotion, while minimizing (but not discounting) the importance of reason and logic. The ultimate goal of romantic poetry was the attainment of the sublime, the ultimate, transcendental connection with the natural self. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of the pioneers of the Romantic Movement, believed that the creative imagination was the key to man achieving his connection to the sublime. This caused much difficulty though, as the source of creative imagination was impossible to trace and because creative inspiration was quite fickle. Coleridge struggled with this conundrum throughout his life, but felt that as a poet and as one who understood the importance of the creative imagination it was his right and responsibility to better mankind through his poetry. William Wordsworth was, along with Coleridge...
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...The Concept of Nature in the Poetry of William Wordsworth and Robert Frost : A Comparative Study Chapter One Introduction 1. Background Poets have long been inspired to tune their lyrics to the variations in landscape, the changes in season, and the natural phenomena around them. The Greek poet Theocritus began writing idylls in the third century B.C.E. to glorify and honor the simplicity of rural life--creating such well known characters as Lycidas, who has inspired dozens of poems as the archetypal shepherd, including the famous poem "Lycidas" by John Milton. An idyll was originally a short, peaceful pastoral lyric, but has come to include poems of epic adventure set in an idealized past, including Lord Alfred Tennyson's take on Arthurian legend, The Idylls of the King. The Biblical Song of Songs is also considered an idyll, as it tells its story of love and passion by continuously evoking imagery from the natural world. The more familiar form of surviving pastoral poetry that has retained its integrity is the eclogue, a poem attuned to the natural world and seasons, placed in a pleasant, serene, and rural place, and in which shepherds often converse. The first eclogue was written by Virgil in 37 B.C.E. The eclogue also flourished in the Italian Renaissance, its most notable authors being Dante and Petrarch. It became something of a requirement for young poets, a form they had to master before embarking upon great original work. Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and Edmund Spenser’s...
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...Concert essay Without possessing the knowledge of what is so called romantic music, we generally refer to it is a kind of music which tends to evoke a soft mood or dreamy atmosphere. However, it is partially true; many musical works in Romantic era produce strong, harsh sounds for agitated emotion. The characteristics of this period’s music are strongly tied to a word, “extreme”; that is, extreme in size, length, pitch, dynamics and tempo in most musical pieces. During this era, the musician has a greater freedom in form and design, and a more intense personal expression of emotion in which fantasy, imagination, and quest for adventure play an important part. Highly accomplished composers such as Frederic Chopin and Eugene Ysaye, had great technical virtuosity in playing piano and violin. Eugene Ysaye’ “Sonata No.2 in A minor, op. 27, no.2” is considered a miniature, a piece that is small in size and short length, consisting only of two movements. The first movement is a little bit vivacious, and the second movement is slower and softer. It is only performed by one performer and one instrument. Because of its short length, smaller size and relative simplicity, this instrumental piece is called a lyric or character piece, which “expresses one emotion or emotional journey.” The lyric or character piece is new genre that appeared in the Romantic period. The two musical elements Ysaye emphasized most are tempo and dynamic range. The violinist in both movements was struggling...
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...This essay intends to compare the perspectives of two romantic poets, William Wordsworth and George Gordon Byron, toward nature. In1921, David Nichol Smith commented on William Wordsworth as ‘our greatest nature poet’ and it is an opinion many would still believe in. As a poet of Nature, Wordsworth is at the highest ranking. He is a worshipper of Nature, Nature’s enthusiast or high-priest. The poem ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ or commonly known as ‘Daffodils’ is one of the last remaining truly well-liked poems. From it, one obtains an image of Wordsworth as someone comforted and enlivened by the flowers he finds while walking among the dales and hills. His worship of Nature was likely more genuine, and more sympathetic, than that of any other English poet. Nature comes to take up a different or independent position in his poem and is not treated in an indifferent or hasty manner as by poets before him. Wordsworth had a mature philosophy, a new and innovative perspective of Nature. Three points in his doctrine of Nature may be indicated: I. Wordsworth understood Nature as a living character. He believed that there is a holy spirit permeating all the articles of Nature. This belief in a pervasive holy spirit may be named as spiritual Pantheism and is completely indicated in Tintern Abbey and in some passages in Book II of The Prelude. II. Wordsworth believed that the system of Nature gives pleasure to the human heart and he regarded Nature as practicing a healing effect...
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...Alita Fonseca Balbi “The Less Deceived”: Subjectivity, Gender, Sex and Love in Sylvia Plath's and Philip Larkin's Poetry Belo Horizonte Faculdade de Letras Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais 2012 i “The Less Deceived”: Subjectivity, Gender, Sex and Love in Sylvia Plath's and Philip Larkin's Poetry by Alita Fonseca Balbi Submitted to the Programa de Pós-graduação em Letras: Estudos Literários in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Mestre em Literaturas de Expressão Inglesa. Thesis Advisor: Sandra Regina Goulart Almeida, PhD Belo Horizonte Faculdade de Letras Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais 2012 ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To my father, Tadeu, for always reminding me of the importance of having dreams and being true to them; for motivating me to be creative and to believe in my potential; and for teaching me to seek beauty and happiness in everything I see and do. To my mother, Socorro, for always making sure I enjoy all the possibilities that cross my path, and for reminding me that hard work is the only means to achieve my goals. To my brothers, Bruno and Diego, for being my best friends. To my sister-in-law, Sabrina, for embracing me as family and making me feel at home even when I’m not. To Paulo, for his company, for his love and care, and for all his witty remarks. To the professors of Letras, Julio Jeha, José dos Santos, Eliana Lourenço and Gláucia Renates, for being extraordinary professors, and for all the knowledge each...
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...Kubla Khan Kubla Khan is one of the strangest, greatest and most ambiguous poems that I've ever read. This romantic poem is written by Coleridge, and through it, he shows the power of imagination that results in the importance of poetry as an art. The poem has the most significant romantic characteristics: nature, imagination and supernaturalism. The mother is everything for everyone, and nature, considered as the great mother by the romantics, is everything for Coleridge and other romantic poets. The poem takes place in nature in which Kubla Khan builds his dome of rock. The poet describes a wild nature showed by the sacred river that is measureless and sunless and the forests, the hills and the eternal spring. This beautiful nature is no more when it's touched by humans. When Kubla Khan ordered to build the dome, humans begin to corrupt every natural element there and to mix it with artificial one. When the natural place is distorted by humans, we find the poet describing the place as enchanted, and introducing a woman wailing for her demon-love. All these frightened scenes described in the poem have something to do with the corruption man causes to nature. Romantic poets would be nothing without imagination. Imagination is the power that distinguishes the romantic poets from others. The two kinds of imagination is found here in the poem. The primary imagination is the foundation on which the author based his poem. The action of Kubla Khan ordering people...
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...Literary Criticism is, as Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), the Victorian poet and critic points out, a "disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate" the best that is known and thought in the world. And he strove hard to fulfill this aim in his critical writings. Attaching paramount importance to poetry in his essay "The Study of Poetry", he regards the poet as seer. Without poetry, science is incomplete, and much of religion and philosophy would in future be replaced by poetry. Such, in his estimate, are the high destinies of poetry. Arnold asserts that literature, and especially poetry, is "Criticism of Life". In poetry, this criticism of life must conform to the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty. Truth and seriousness of matter, felicity and perfection of diction and manner, as are exhibited in the best poets, are what constitutes a criticism of life. Poetry, says Arnold, interprets life in two ways: "Poetry is interpretative by having natural magic in it, and moral profundity". And to achieve this the poet must aim at high and excellent seriousness in all that he writes.This demand has two essential qualities. The first is the choice of excellent actions. The poet must choose those which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human feelings which subsist permanently in the race. The second essential is what Arnold calls the Grand Style - the perfection of form, choice of words, drawing its force directly from the pregnancy of matter which it conveys. This, then...
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..."The two giants of 19th-century American poetry who played the greatest role in redefining modern verse are Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson" (Burt). Both poets Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman are considered as the founders of today’s modern American poetry that are tried to revalue the poetry of the last century. Sooner or later, but they succeeded. They put the keystone of the modern American poetry which drifted in the breeze. The poetry has been redefined in a way to be able to get to the modern society's cultural level. The modern poetry becomes more discreet and it uses the topics of everyday life spiced with emotions. The emotions of the human being began to depict a higher quality. By the poets, so to speak, the mankind adjusts to the destiny and the things which have been hardly accepted before. The personal values what Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman representing are very complex and sometimes we don’t know what to expect or in what direction we should go. Many times if we read these poems we have to go deeper and deeper until we don’t reach the roots. In the sake of an understanding lot of people don’t understand the meaning of these poems or they are hatred to know, because of its complexity and unpredictability which cause the inability to understand the message. These thoughts what we’ve mentioned in generally are the evidence of the facts. Greedily, the facts which prove that the poets as Dickinson and Whitman are testifying almost the same values, but in the...
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...Thinking Reading and writing are things that I am very well at. The difference is, I’m stronger in my writing skills than my reading skills. The reason for this is that when I’m writing I get so into my words and imagination to where my hand with the magical pencil does the talking. My skills in reading only depend on one thing, if it catches my attention or not. Stories have to get me involved with the story somehow in order for me to get interest. If it’s not catching my attention, I’m not reading it. But most importantly, critical thinking is what ties reading and writing together. I am very picky about the books and articles I read. Stories for me have to have a mystery or even sometimes a sappy love story. Of course I’m going to love romantic books because I’m a girl, right? Yet again, some love stories bore the living hell out of me because it’s a “typical” love story. Reading books just all depends on how the author grabs his reader’s attention and how he plays the story throughout the book. When I find a book that I’m interested in, I will read the entire novel. Or even something that is scary will keep hooked on the story. Scary stories are my favorites because the story just keeps my suspense in play. Celebrity gossip is definitely something that I get into reading. There is always something new with these celebrities. Since these celebrities are well known, their lives are somehow interesting to us. We love the celebrity gossip because they’re famous and any juicy...
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...never seen a greater monster or miracle than myself." He opposed the conquest of the New World, deploring the suffering it brought upon the natives. Citing the case of Martin Guerre as an example, he believes that humans cannot attain certainty. His skepticism is best expressed in the long essay "An Apology for Raymond Sebond" (Book 2, Chapter 12) which has frequently been published separately. We cannot trust our reasoning because thoughts just occur to us: we don't truly control them. We do not have good reasons to consider ourselves superior to the animals. He is highly skeptical of confessions obtained under torture, pointing out that such confessions can be made up by the suspect just to escape the torture he is subjected to. In the middle of the section normally entitled "Man's Knowledge Cannot Make Him Good," he wrote that his motto was "What do I know?". The essay on Sebond ostensibly defended Christianity. However, Montaigne eloquently employed many references and quotes from classical Greek and Roman, i.e. non-Christian authors, especially the atomist Lucretius. Montaigne considered marriage necessary for the raising of children, but disliked the strong feelings of romantic love as being detrimental to freedom. One of his quotations is "Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside desperate to get out." In education, he favored concrete...
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...How to Say Nothing in 500 Words by Paul Roberts, an essay, discusses common mistakes made by college freshmen in academic writing. During my semester of Intro to Expository Writing, my academic writing has greatly improved. My writing started as “Elementary school was like a fairytale; there was a pretty princess and a handsome prince, but I was an evil villain.” And has grown to “Through her diction, Walls creates various tones in order to convey to her audience that despite obstacles, it is possible to escape from a dysfunctional family in hopes of a brighter future.” Using How to Say Nothing in 500 Words, I will be evaluating my own writing by discussing my strengths, weaknesses, and how I have grown as a writer. Writing narratives have always been a personal struggle for me. Unless I passionately come up with a story, and immediately write it on paper, my narratives are bland. It is hard to write personal life-changing stories when I have a deadline. One weakness of mine is using colorful words. For example, a sentence from my personal narrative was written as “It was magnificent with its stained green carpet and plenty of wooden bookshelves stocked with colorful books.” In retrospect, this is how it could have been written, “The spacious library had wooden bookshelves stuffed with leather-bound books, which rested on gritty emerald carpet.”...
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...Essay on “Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts” We’re spending more and more time online and less time out in the real world. But is modern technology really doing us harm? And are we missing out on a lot of important stuff when we hide behind our screens and use a mouse as our mouthpiece? These are some of the important question that arise from reading Jonathan Franzen’s essay, “Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts” from 2011. The 51-year-old author puts our daily internet routines into perspective and forces us to think critically about what we are doing online. But he beats around the bush for a while before he starts presenting his actual message. He thus starts out sharing a personal experience of getting a new smartphone and uses this as a starting point for voicing his concerns. Jonathan Franzen is aware of the danger of scaring off those young readers who might be fed up with older people complaining about the youth of today, “Very probably, you’re sick to death of hearing social media disrespected by cranky 51-year-olds” (ll. 140-142). He therefore catches this young audience’s attention by comparing his relationship to his outdated smartphone to a relationship of romantic nature. He uses familiar expressions like “trust issues”, “accountability issues” and having “outgrown the relationship”. In this...
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...e Story of an Hour" What do YOU think killed Mrs. Mallard? Why? What did you learn by reading the essays following the story? How do you think that reading the sample essays will help you in writing your own essay on fiction? The Story of an Hour written by Kate Chopin is about Mrs. Mallard, the sickly wife of Bentley Mallard who is believed dead. Throughout the story the Chopin describes the rare reaction of Mr. Mallard towards the institution of marriage after her husbands dead. Chopin describes the grief of the woman in such a sad event, as a potential for the woman to change her life in a positive way. The different ways in which the author describes Mrs. Mallard feelings and actions after the notice are purposed to reveal the problems of being tied to another person. From my point of view the concept of being married means being tied to another person no matter how good or bad circumstances are. The matter of fact is that being tied to another person, prevent us from being ourselves. The story of an hour clearly reflects this concept beginning by describing Mrs. Mallard as a woman with a “heart trouble” and not certainly because she is unhealthy. All of her illnesses come her condition within marriage, either because she finds out about her husband death or because of the inherent thought of being tied to her partner. This is explained later as the author describes the main character as "young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain...
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...Valerio Sanders Music Appreciation Final Exam My comparison will go between two periods that was classic vs. romantic classical music composers were satisfied to stay and work within a definite boundary of what made up the acceptable music. In this era the chord resolutions were at all times the identical, and furthermore the connection between keys, sections, and movements, maintained proportion. On the other hand the Romantic composers extended these boundaries or rather limitations, and in place they brought in new chords, atypical key changes and in numerous ways went in opposition to the way they were made in the classical period Romantic period dealt with more emotions. Ludwig Van Beethoven - Symphony No. 5 in C Minor which is my favorite piece from the classical period and Franz Liszt - Hungarian Rhapsody which consisted of great story telling through the music. Exoticism influenced by some ethnic groups music groups from the late 19th-century. This means when different ethnic cultures start to make a dramatic influence on the primary music at this time which led to a major change in music. Nationalism is the fact that various types of political evolution were achieved in each country that in turn affected musical nationalism refers to the various national schools that consciously tried to separate themselves from the standards set in the Classical period. Trying to remove themselves from the boundaries of which classical music set transcending music itself...
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