We had to describe how romanticism is based off of man and nature because of a lack of God. the rationale for the romantic's reformulation of the old mythus withing a "two-term system" and how this reformulation informs the poetry we read. i chose two poems. we did not have to have a works cited page just parenthetical documentation.
Romanticism
Romanticism was a philosophical movement that redefined the fundamental ways people though about themselves and their world. The early romantic period is also like an ago of revolutions. Humanism played a major role in romanticism, giving way to the idea of the importance of a poets' self dignity, and capabilities. Humanism also brought forth the importance of rationalism along side emotion to have a balance of faculties. There was also a Protestant Revolution, Newton's Revolution, the Bloody Revolution, Darwinism, and the Industrial Revolution. All of the revolutions contributed to the slow erosion of God. A revolutionary energy was the core of Romanticism. The goal was to transform the method of writing poetry and the way individuals perceived the world. Romanticism was a two-term system that relied only on the coexistence of man and nature together. The poets now had to answer simple questions like "Who am I?" without using God. They could no longer answer with "A child of God" because God did no longer exist. William Wordsworth and Percy Bysshe Shelley have subtle difference, but have a common interest in trying to explain how the supernatural can only be found in the natural realm due to the lack of a God.
William Wordsworth is a Romantic poet that values emotion over reason. In one of his famous peoms titled Tintern Abbey, he shows his emotions through his love of nature. "While with an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of Joy, we see into the life of things" (Wordsworth, lines 48,49,50). Wordsworth is saying a good poet thinks with their heart, and not their brain. As a young child the narrator of Tintern Abbey turned to nature. As the narrator grew older he started to separate from nature. "Their colours and their forms, were then to me/An appetite; a feeling and a love,/That had no need of a remoter charm,/By thought supplied nor any interest/Unburrowed from the eye" (Wordsworth, lines 81,82,83,84,85). He is saying that nature, mountains, air, and all of nature's components gave shape to his passions, appetites, and his love. As an adult nature now gives more mature gifts. "Abundant recompence, For I have learned/To look on nature not as in the hour" (Wordsworth, lines 90,91). "Nor harsh no grating, though of ample power" (Wordsworth lines 94,95). The narrator can now sense the presence of something more subtle, powerful, and fundamental in the light of everything. This energy, to him, seems to be "a motion and a spirit that impels/All thinking things, all objects of thought" (Wordsworth lines 102,103). The energy "rolls through all things" (Wordsworth line 104). For that reason the narrator says that he still loves nature, mountains, pastures, woods, and the overran because they are a foundation for his purest thoughts, and they guard his heart and soul "Of all of my moral being" (Wordsworth line 113). He then makes a prayer because his sister's voice beholds what he once was and wants to continue to be. He says that "nature never did betray/The heart that loved her" (Wordsworth lines 125,126). Wordsworth believes that in nature there is a Might being. Although "Might being" is capitalized, Wordsworth is not referring to God. He is saying there is a stronger force that holds everything together. This force is the joy that once finds in nature, or what is also known as a visionary gleam. In later years when the narrator's sister is sad or fearful, the memory of this experience will help to heal her, and if the narrator is dead, she can remember the love that he worshiped nature with.
Nature meant many things to Romantic poets. Nature was often presented as a work of art that was constructed by a divine imagination. Views on nature varied among nature as a healing power, a refuge from fake constructs of society, and even nature as an image. Wordsworth portrays that in the mind of man reflected in nature is the supernatural. The prevailing views portray nature as the status of an organically united whole. Organic referring to something made, and original like a tree in nature. Organic writing replaced mechanic writing of the classical period which depicted writing like a machine. Romantics wanted to capture accurate occurrences in nature. They sought the supernatural in the natural as Myers Abram stated in his thesis about Romanticism. He theorized that
"what distinguishes writers I call 'Romantic' derives from the fact that they undertook, whatever their religious creed or lack of creed, to save traditional concepts, schemes, and values which had been based on the relation of the Creator to his creatures and creation, but to reformulate them within the prevailing two-term system of subject and object, ego and non-ego, the human mind or consciousness and its transactions with nature" (Natural Supernaturalism, p.13).
If one cannot see God than he is not empirical, therefore one cannot know him, and he does not exist.
Percy Bysshe Shelley writes a poem called Mount Blanc similar to Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey. In Mount Blanc the idea that human thoughts is based on data that comes through senses. A river is an "everlasting universe of things" (Shelly line 1), which is nature, and "it flows through the mind" (Shelley line 2). In Mount Blanc and Tintern Abbey Shelley and Wordsworth are looking at nature head on and searching for answers. Wordsworth identifies a greater being and leaves it at that. "The wilderness has a mysterious tongue/Which teaches doubt, or faith so mild" (Shelley lines 77,78). Mount Blanc teaches relief, but Shelley does not know himself why it teaches doubt, or faith. Shelley asks himself: if death is a sensation of breath (a biological process) and physical decay turns things from ashes to dust, then why does one even exist? "if to human mind's imaginings/Silence and solitude were vacancy?" (Shelley lines 144,145). If Mount Blanc is empirically verifiable, but on the other side is vacant and void, then the universe is absurd! Shelley is saying that nature could betray the one that loves her, and that she does. This point is the exact opposite point that Wordsworth was trying to make in Tintern Abbey, yet they are both trying to say that nature, or the not-I, coexists with man, or the I.
Like most Romantic poets, especially William Wordsworth, Shelley shows a great affection for the beauty of nature, and he feels closely connected to nature's power. He believes that some unifying spirit runs through everything in the universe. This force is what causes all of human joy, faith, goodness, and pleasure. This force is also the source of inspiration for poets and truth. Shelley declares many times that this force can influence an individual to want to change for the better. Shelley also realizes that nature's power is not always positive. Nature destroys things just as much as it inspires, or creates them, and eventually leads to madness and despair. For that reason Shelley's comfort in nature becomes shifted. He no longer is able to find that luxury in nature like Wordsworth could. His comfort is mitigated by an awareness that nature does have a dark side. Shelley uses this as inspiration for his poetic works Even though he does use nature as inspiration he feels that his imagination has creative power over nature.
Imagination is what gives people sensory perception. Sensory perception allows a person to describe nature in different, more original ways, to help shape how nature appears or exists. The poet then uses sensory data to make inferences and come up with reason. When Romantics were trying to piece things back together in the universe they had to use reason based upon sense data. After piecing everything together the Romantics must have enough to make the whole greater than the sum of all of the parts. The human mind becomes equal to the power of nature, and the experience one has with beauty in the natural world. That beauty is a collaboration between the perceiver and what they perceive. Since Shelley is unsure that the sublime powers he senses are only results of his imagination, he finds it difficult to attribute the powers of nature to God. Therefore, he believes that nature's beauty comes solely from a divine source. Shelley argues that the imagination is the source of sympathy, compassion, and love. Imagination relies on the ability to project oneself into the position of another person.
Different poets of the Romantic time period came up with many different ways to describe things with the absence of a God. Myers Abram says exactly what the Romantic poets attempted to do by claiming that they did so by the "displacement from a supernatural to a natural frame of reference" (Natural Supernaturalism, p.13). Nature was the main way that they did so. From this Nature could either be a positive aspect, a negative aspect, or completely neutral. Authors like Wordsworth who tended to value reason over emotion thought that nature was positive. They would say that nature would never betray them. That in nature lies a force that holds everything together. Although that force is not God, that force is considered to be a spirit or motion. Poets like Shelley who had properly balanced faculties of reason and emotion with imagination say that it is possible for nature to betray them. Nature contains all of the elements necessary to explain all things that used to be easily explained by the existence of God. The I and not-I now have to coexist with each other without the first term in a three-term system: God. The new two-term system created many problems for aspiring poets and writers. Shelley and Wordsworth disagreed with each other. Wordsworth's mistake was saying that nature did not betray the one that had loved her. Nature can be both malevolent, and benevolent. She can provide beauty and inspiration to those in need just as easily as she can completely destroy cruelly and indiscriminately. Therefore nature can betray the heart that did love her.
