Romanticism
Mr. Kram
10/14/13
5th Hour
Thoughts and emotion have driven the ideals of mankind. The ability to use ones' imagination gets the mind to think. Romantic writings stir passion which leads to the rejection of reason and logic. By design, fictitious scenes that please, but are far from the truth, are the foundation of Romanticism. It prefers to see the world as dynamic and imaginative. Irving, Cooper, and Bryant exemplified Romanticism in “Rip Van Winkle,” “The Slaughter of The Pigeons,” and “Thanatopsis,”respectively. The first example of Romanticism is Washington Irving's inventive writing “Rip Van Winkle," which promotes imagination over reason and logic by creating a character that slept for over twenty years. Iriving wrote, “…it’s twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of since…” (990). Rip Van Winkle awoke on a mountain and noticed some oddities. As he walked down the mountain he saw that the surrounding area had changed and found himself amidst a peculiar town filled with unfamiliar faces. A women said that Rip Van Winkle disappeared 20 years earlier, which seemed odd to Rip, who thought he was only gone a night. Irving uses the element of time travel to defy reason. He creates a fantasy environment Rip could have only imagined. Instead of feeling like he has lost 20 years of his life, the character feels as though he has been propelled 20 years into the future. The use of imagination plays only one factor in how writers can be Romantic. In addition to Irving, James Cooper, who also wrote in the Romantic style, shows how individual morals should be honored regardless of how society acts. In “The Slaughter of The Pigeons,” he wrote: '...I go into the woods till I find one to my liking, and then I shoot him off the branches without touching a feather of another, though there might be a hundred on the same tree. But you couldn't do such a thing, Billy Kirby-you couldn't do it if you tried.'
10/14/13
5th Hour
Thoughts and emotion have driven the ideals of mankind. The ability to use ones' imagination gets the mind to think. Romantic writings stir passion which leads to the rejection of reason and logic. By design, fictitious scenes that please, but are far from the truth, are the foundation of Romanticism. It prefers to see the world as dynamic and imaginative. Irving, Cooper, and Bryant exemplified Romanticism in “Rip Van Winkle,” “The Slaughter of The Pigeons,” and “Thanatopsis,”respectively. The first example of Romanticism is Washington Irving's inventive writing “Rip Van Winkle," which promotes imagination over reason and logic by creating a character that slept for over twenty years. Iriving wrote, “…it’s twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of since…” (990). Rip Van Winkle awoke on a mountain and noticed some oddities. As he walked down the mountain he saw that the surrounding area had changed and found himself amidst a peculiar town filled with unfamiliar faces. A women said that Rip Van Winkle disappeared 20 years earlier, which seemed odd to Rip, who thought he was only gone a night. Irving uses the element of time travel to defy reason. He creates a fantasy environment Rip could have only imagined. Instead of feeling like he has lost 20 years of his life, the character feels as though he has been propelled 20 years into the future. The use of imagination plays only one factor in how writers can be Romantic. In addition to Irving, James Cooper, who also wrote in the Romantic style, shows how individual morals should be honored regardless of how society acts. In “The Slaughter of The Pigeons,” he wrote: '...I go into the woods till I find one to my liking, and then I shoot him off the branches without touching a feather of another, though there might be a hundred on the same tree. But you couldn't do such a thing, Billy Kirby-you couldn't do it if you tried.'