The Romanticism Period Essay -- history, neoclassicists

History is the story and knowledge of the past. There are individuals that are interested by history and wish to study it by learning more. It is very informative to know what has happened in the past for self-knowledge. An individual cannot be naà ¯ve to the past including but not limited to how literature came to. One can understand literature more when they understand the time period the author wrote during and the way they wrote. There are several time periods different authors have been through with each period having specific beliefs. Romanticism is the time period that interests me the most; it was a time during the eighteenth century and focused on nature along with the individual’s expression of imagination and emotion. The Romanticism period started in 1789 and lasted till 1830. This time period was a major international movement, shaping modern views of art, literature, music, and other aspects in life. Romanticism was the â€Å"reaction against artistic styles of classical antiquity, which was neoclassicism.† Neoclassicists focused on the power of reasoning to discover the truth while Romantics focused on the hope to transform the world through the power of imagination. They had a deep love for nature (Furst 302). The aspects of romanticism are important; they are the beliefs of this period. The first aspect includes nature, which allows them to be free from the artificial aspects of civilization; they were with man’s true setting. Nature was there to reveal and heal individuals. An example of the love for nature in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poetry ‘Frost at Midnight’ is he is describing how happy he is that his baby will be able to see nature instead of living in the city like he did, â€Å"But thou, my babe! shalt wander like ... ...what it is without the influence of the key leading intellectual figures of the romantic period and also the leading literary figures. This information is still used today and the literature is still read and passed down to generations. The romantic period is by far the most interesting in my eyes because of the literature works that were written during that time. â€Æ' Works Cited Fuller, Edmund. The New Book of Knowledge. Vol. 5. Danbury: Grolier Incorporated, 2000. Print. Furst, Lilian. The New Book of Knowledge. Vol. 16. Danbury: Grolier Incorporated, 2000. Print. Hart, James D. "Romanticism." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Print. King, Neil. The Romantics. New York: Evans Brother Limited, 2003. Print. Phillips, Jerry, and Andrew Ladd. Romanticism and Transcendentalism. New York: DWJ Books LLC, 2006. Print.