Romantic Era

Hello again, these last two weeks have been very interesting; reading William Blake, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, etc. Poetry in the romantic era is filled with strong emotional images, practices that still exist in today's poetry, and is in fact, something all poets try to evoke in their readers. Poetry then, as now, emphasis imagination and feelings, evoking emotion in their reader's mind.

Creation from nothingness was highly prized in the arts and poetry. Invention and imagination were chief qualities artists often thought of as radical. Mixed with the realistic forms of poetry, today these qualities are also valued, but no longer thought of as radical. Strong emotional appeal is still sought by authors, but not in the in-you-face melodramatic fashion of the Romantic Era.

Something else I found very interesting was the Romantic Era was being experienced by different nations around the world, not just in Europe. Each nation found their own Romantic expression among their own people and among their own political structures, many revolutions being sparked during this time. Many authors expressed their revolutionary ideas and the views of the times through their works.

Next week is our study of the Victorian Age and the reading of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I look forward to sharing my ideas and insights into this time. I've never read Frankenstein, so I'm looking forward to the experience.