Dark romanticism

William Faulkner is a man who has written drastically complex works and is renowned around the world. His major works include The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, written in the 18th century. Faulkner was a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his novel writing as well as two Pulitzer prizes and National Book Awards. Additionally, he received his education from the University of Mississippi. The film A Rose for Emily directed by Lyndon Chubbuck is based upon William Faulkner’s short…

Suppressing senses in John Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale and Ode on a Grecian Urn Abstract: John Keats, as a pursuer of beauty, is well-known for his beautiful sensory language in his odes, but many of the odes intentionally limit the senses they inhabit. With particular references to Ode to a Nightingale and Ode on a Grecian Urn, this paper focuses on the reasons for suppressing senses and the methods of creating an abundance of believable sensation with limited senses. Key words: Ode to a…

Defamiliarization In Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” Jabberwocky (or The Jabberwocky) is a nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll that appears in the novel Through the Looking Glass (And What Alice Found There) which he published in 1871 (Niki Pollock, 2000). It is a prime example of how language can be used as tool for defamiliarization as he does with his use of nonsense words and imagery. Jabberwocky is a nonsense poem. That is no accident. It did not get mangled in the printer, it was not jumbled up…

West Side Story is a romantic musical film, that is compared to a ‘ Romeo and Juliet’ story. The musical explores a wide variety of themes. Some of the main themes include racism, sexism and loyalty. These themes are still relevant today however, they may be different to us. The choreographer uses dance throughout wisely, to help get different points across. Racism is one of the main themes throughout and shapes a lot of the film. The two sides Sharks and Jets, Sharks ( Puerto Ricans), Jets (…

Diction and tone can greatly influence the theme(s) in written work. Richard Lovelace, Lord Tennyson, Mary Borden, and Wilfred Owen used diction to develop the themes within their poems. Furthermore, there is a difference in tones due to the writer’s era. Lovelace and Tennyson were influenced by Victorian ideals (1600’s and 1800’s), whereas Borden and Owen wrote during the early 1900’s – a time of war and dramatic social upheaval. This resulted in completely different perspectives and ideals…

Romanticism is a rebellion against neo-classicism. During the Romantic period, the English Civil war taking place and the pressure felt from the external world led them to feel insecure. Therefore, Romanticism took place and they focused on individualism, inspiration, imagination, intuition and idealism. For these five motifs to succeed, the writers during this era looked upon nature and considered nature as the source of all the five motifs. Therefore, nature became the main theme in the…

From blockbuster Hollywood movies to parodies on the internet, the creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is commonly portrayed as a “monster”, but is this accusation really true? The creator of the creature, Victor Frankenstein may have more in common with the “monster” than previously thought. Through careful evaluation, we can see the many similarities and differences between the two main characters in the story. In Frankenstein, the similarities between the creature and its creator,…

When it comes to the correlation between the beauty of nature and the consciousness of man, John Muir states, “In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks.” It’s interesting to notice that a simple walk can encourage a man to be inspired by the beauty that nature offers. From seeing nature through the point of an essay and seeing nature through the point of a poem, John Muir, and William Wordsworth created two different pieces that express their connection between man and…

Innovative novels, much like significant events and notable people, are capable of providing inspiration for artists in their works of pop culture. One of these novels, Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell, has contributed ideas that have been replicated and referenced in many modern works of cultural art, ranging from dystopian television shows to songs. Many artists use these references to apply Orwell's arguments to modern events, holding testament to the truly innovative nature of Nineteen…

As Marjorie Levinson compellingly argues in Keats’s Life of Allegory: The Origins of a Style, these contemporary reviews saw in Keats’s poems namely, a social-ego enterprise of a middling class, the self fashioning gestures of the petty bourgeois. Levinson is primarily interested in Keats’s style as the manifestation of his class ambition, but her argument is equally germane to Keats’s conceptualization of negative capability: it is part and parcel of his self-fashioning gestures. In a letter…