The secular representation of man is found in Romantic writings very commonly. The zeitgeist of the romantic era was embracing imaginations, beauty and the beauty and power of nature; also called the cult of sensibility. This era was filled with authors such as Edgar Allan Poe whose writings were filled with his imaginations, Ralph Waldo Emerson who questioned the classical definition of nature, and Emily Bronte who used the power of nature to turn events.
Poe authored poems such as ‘The Raven” , a poem solely based on the imaginings of a mad man. This man has no concept of religion; instead he is a secular, common, man struggling with the concept of death while still romanticizing it. The imagination presented in Poe’s poems exudes the feelings of the Romantic era in their idealistic basis rather than the straightforward factual feelings explored in the enlightenment era. Emerson personified nature in his transcendentalist works during the Romantic era such as “Walden” and “Nature.” In these poems Emerson strayed from the literal, practical feelings about nature into the belief that nature ruled the human race and that one must become one with nature. Bronte, in Wuthering Heights used the very power of nature, straying from the previous practical notion of nature to a more conceptual one, to drive forward her tale; in many parts of the story nature is her driving force causing future events and feelings.
This answer is very well written and draws upon many examples from the Romantic Era to support its thesis: that there was a very common representation of humanity as secular in the writings of that period. Edgar Allen Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Emily Bronte are all well-known authors from the Romantic Era – using them as examples gives ethos to your arguments and helps familiarize the reader with who exactly the Romantic writers were. It is certainly true that ‘The Raven’ is a work with many romantic elements – it contains elements of fantasy that are expressed through nature (in this case, a raven) as wells as a message of despair for humanity. It is also secular, as you have clearly stated in your synthesis answer.
ReplyDeleteI think that it would have been better to pick one or two authors, rather than picking three, because it would have allowed you more freedom to explore their works in depth. You could have used more details from each work to help support your thesis and make your points stronger. However, it was overall a very strong essay that was convincing – and the broad range of authors makes up for the lack of detail given to each individual one. It is also certainly true the actual points you made were well-developed and reflected research. You identified the idea that imagination is essential to the Romantic Era. Aall the works we have read and analyzed use imagination very well to convey ideas that also have impact in the real world.