American Romanticism

Task 2

“Whenever he went dodging about the village, he was surrounded
by a troop of them, hanging on his skirts, clambering on his back, and
playing a thousand tricks on him with impunity; and not a dog would bark
at him throughout the neighborhood.”

This excerpt from the story of Rip Van Winkle shows Romanticism by exaggerating the truth in my opinion. Instead of saying that that he was like by all, or that he was a popular man among the community, they portrait an image of children hanging off of his clothes and following him around everywhere he went. They also say a “troop of them”, which implies a great number of children instead of 5 or 6. Also, to get the point out to the full extent, they talk about the dogs not even barking at him, trying to say that even every single one of the dogs in the town like him. So overall, this sentence is ideal Romanticism because it portraits how people like Rip a lot more than they probably did.


“Their visages, too, were peculiar; one had a large head,
broad face, and small piggish eyes; the face of another seemed to consist
entirely of nose, and was surmounted by a white sugar-loaf hat, set off
with a little red cock’s tail. They all had beards, of various shapes and
colors. There was one who seemed to be the commander. He was a stout
old gentleman, with a weather-beaten countenance; he wore a laced
doublet, broad belt and hanger, high-crowned hat and feather, red
stockings, and high-heeled shoes, with roses in them. The whole group
reminded Rip of the figures in an old Flemish painting, in the parlor of
Dominie Van Schaick, the village parson, and which had been brought
over from Holland at the time of the settlement.”

This excerpt for the story shows a great deal of Romanticism. This bit of the story is going against every way you would try to explain what’s going on. He’s in the middle of the woods and sees these seeming to be elf creatures that look like something out of a painting he had once seen. How would you be able to find logic in that? How would you be able to explain why they are what they are and why they are there in the woods drinking liquor and playing a game called nine pins? Overall, this is just defies everything that the rationalists believed in, because you can’t logically explain what’s going on and why it’s going on.

Task 3

Thanatopsis is a poem about death. This poem portraits death not as we see it. It’s saying that we are going to be one with the earth, and that it’s really not as bad as we think it is. It wants us to feel as though it is a normal thing that happens to all of us and that it’s really natural. For some reason we don’t see death as the above when that’s really what it is. Thanatopsis actually is not at all religious in the least bit, and it’s actually not very happy or cheerful. They talk about death as a casual thing, and refer to nature as being a numbing device for the depression that death brings. The poem definitely not saying that death is a happy thing and that it’s not bad, but it really emphasizes that, in nature, you can find refuge for a content state, instead of the catastrophic and sad state of mind that we drag ourselves into while dealing with death.
The Romantic aspect of this poem is that Bryant is making death seem like a lighter and less devastating than it really is to most people. Romantics give an opinion and a vision of better than reality, so when he’s saying that “all they that breath shall share their destiny”, he saying that the same exact thing is going to happen to everyone in the world. By saying something this bold, it’s definitely a shock to the family of those who died because it’s not the norm and it’s kind of careless in their eyes.

Task 4

- To tell you the truth, I’m not exactly sure of the poem. One point that I thought up is that he is a positive man. Maybe he’s trying to point out all of the positive things that could come out of this “dreary, dreamy sound”. By showing the positive things, maybe he was hoping that us, the people who read it, would look at situations in our own lives that are not exactly perfect, or “good”. Also, not only may he have been trying to do the above, but also while we maintain a positive attitude towards the “bad” things in our life, we should keep our thoughts creative and imaginative.
- Some images that stand out to me are the following:
- “Squares of sunshine on the floor light the long and dusky lane”.
- “With it mounts her own fair face, as at some magician’s spell.
- “Then within a prison-yard, faces fixed, and stern, and hard. Laughter and indecent mirth; Ah! It is the gallows-tree! Breath of Christian charity, blow, and sweep it from the earth!
- The ropewalk is a good example of Romanticism, due to, in my opinion, one main factor. The fact that Longfellow was looking at this spinning factory covered in dust and that was very badly lit, and was somehow picturing all of these images is basically your answer. He’s looking at the thread but seeing a woman by a well, and describing her with such unusual detail and creativeness, that he is for sure a romantic. He’s looking at the thread but seeing an old man ringing a bell at the “noon hour”, and watching get lifted off the ground. By the way he is looking at such a dull and kind of depressing factory and turning into the above, definitely defines him as a romantic.

Task 5

In the picture, the sky looks like it’s literally on fire. It looks like the fire has kind of turned to smoke in some parts. The title is Twilight in the Wilderness, and this picture, in my opinion, is trying to make us think of this time of day in the wilderness as more beautiful and more intense than if were to be some where else. You can still see the blue of the sky through the red fire in the sky, which isn’t something that you can logically explain. Also, the sky by the mountains where there are no clouds looks like the sun has already set. You can’t really make too much sense of that because the blue sky above wouldn’t be blue if the sun had already set in what we think of as the horizon. Also, when I look at the clouds, I think of the artists trying to portrait the sun as burning off, or setting. Because the sun is burning out, it causes these massive fire clouds in the sky that also fill with smoke. That’s just my thoughts about it though. Also, even though it may not make very much sense, it’s also Romantic in that way, because you can’t explain logically why the sun’s burning out causes fire clouds, but it just is.

This picture is by a Romantic painter by the name of Francisco Goya. It resembles because it makes you use your imagination to look at the bigger picture the painter is trying to help us see. It’s not a logical thing for a man to be eating a child, but it’s how Goya imagined a symbol for the “violence, terror, and horror” for the world. If you look at this picture with a closed mind, you may just scroll down really fast, but with an open mind and imagination, you can see even more than what Goya was trying to portrait. You can see the wrongs of man that aren’t deeply thinking about what they’re doing. Look at the man’s eyes. It doesn’t look like he likes what he’s doing, and he doesn’t have a possessed look. He looks like he’s scared or worried. Maybe Goya was trying to say that man is doing all of these things no knowing the true consequences of our actions, but just ignoring our gut feeling and doing wrong overall. Overall, this is a perfect display of Romanticism because you have to use your imagination to get the bigger picture and also because it’s not logical for this man to be eating a child, but it’s not like you can just ask him his thought process for doing so. You have to usar su cabeza.