Romanticism

The writing style of the romanticism period is very different from the writing styles of the other periods. The writing style used in the romanticism period and in the writing of the fireside poets is very detailed. They use a lot of colorful words that add a lot to their writing. When you read these poems you have to read them a lot slower than you would read the writing of the puritan time period or of the rationalism writing. You have to think about what you are reading a lot more and you have to really analyze everything. A lot of the poetry could be analyzed differently by different people and mean different things to everyone. There were five different fireside poets. They are called fireside poets because families would sit around a fire and recite their poems. These poets told stories with their poetry and used very descriptive language to describe the New England countryside in their poetry.

One poem that I found by the fireside poet James Russell Lowell is called "The Captive". It was kind of hard for me to understand the poem and what was happening in it because it used a lot of words that I am not familiar with. The writing style of this poem was completely different than that of the rational time periods. When you compare the two, the fireside poetry of the romanticism time period uses a lot more descriptive words than the writings that we read from the rational time period. In the rational time period, a lot of thought and logic and science were used and reflected into their writings, in the poetry from the romanticism period, they did not talk about science and logic, they talked more about nature and religion. Nature was mentioned in the poem that I read more than anything. James Russell Lowell talked about and described nature a lot in his poem, "The Captive". For example, in one part of his poem, he uses an entire verse to describe how the moon was glowing on the woods and the hilltop. He uses so much descriptions that it takes up a whole verse.

"Then the great moon on a suddenOminous, and red as blood, Startling as a new creation, O'er the eastern hilltop stood, Casting deep and deeper shadows Through the mystery of the wood."

You can tell that they valued nature during the romanticism period because they talk about it a lot in their poetry. In the writings that we read from the Puritan time, you can tell that unlike the logical writings style of the rational time period and the importance of nature in the romanticism time period, they valued religion a lot. Everything that happened to them, they would bring it back to God and say how he had something to do with it. For example, in Anne Bradstreet's poem "Upon the Burning of Our House", her house burns down and she relates it back to God. She could have complained and mourned the loss of all of her earthly belongings and her home, but she does not. Instead, she says that it is not important because the things she lost were all just earthly things that did not really matter. She said that they were not her own things, but God's so it was fair that God took them away from her.

"And when I could no longer look,
I blest His name that gave and took,
That laid my goods now in the dust.
Yea, so it was and so 'twas just.
It was His own, it was not mine,
Far be it that I should repine"

This poem is a very religious poem, which is very different from the writing of the romanticism style and the fireside poets.

"James Russell Lowell's Poem: The Captive." Read Book Online: Literature Books,novels,short Stories,fiction,non-fiction, Poems,essays,plays,Pulitzer Prize, Nobel Prize. 2011. Web. 02 Dec. 2011. .

Bradstreet, Anne. "Upon the Burning of Our House." Glencoe Literature. Ed. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Co, 2009. 91. Print.