William Blake and John Keats were both prolific English poets of the Romantic era. Blake, an early Romantic along with Wordsworth and Coleridge, produced a poem called "Night" in 1789, part of a series of illustrated poetry called "Songs of Innocence." This poem represents romantic values ​​with its emphasis on self-realization, freedom of expression, and the natural world. These ideas are conveyed through Blake's use of sensory imagery and evocative language. Keats, a late Romantic along with Shelley and Byron, produced "Ode on Melancholy" in 1819 along with other odes known as "The Great Odes." This Ode embodies the romantic turn towards nature, the importance of expressing emotions and experiencing it through the senses. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayThe late 18th century saw a shift toward the ideal that to be a truly modern person one had to free oneself from rules that constrained society. . This movement was called Romanticism, a term derived from medieval tales of myth, magic, and the supernatural called "novels" because they were written in the language of Romanz. The movement lasted from 1798 to 1832 and is believed to have begun at the same time as the French Revolution. It was the first time that England had been involved in a revolution, and the violence and terror that accompanied it came as a shock to many. It was Wordsworth who envisaged the idea of ​​a revolution of the imagination and everything completely divorced from war rather than a revolution of the people. The Romantic period was in many ways a violent reaction against the Age of Enlightenment that preceded it. The Enlightenment of the early 1700s emphasized a mechanical, deterministic universe with an emphasis on rationalism and science, and was therefore called the "Age of Reason." In a Europe torn apart by revolutions and wars, the certainties of the Enlightenment had already proven false. Philosophically, Romanticism represented a shift from the certainty of science to the uncertainty of the imagination, from the objective to the subjective. This decision coincided with German philosopher Immanuel Kant's proposition that we do not see "things in themselves" directly, but understand the world only through our human point of view. Romanticism was essentially the opposite of everything the Enlightenment stood for. The roots of romanticism had developed alongside neoclassicism, but by the 1780s the neoclassical virtues of reason and decorum were rejected and the romantic mood took over in music, poetry, painting and architecture. Romantic values ​​of expressing emotion and imagination were embodied in all forms of art. Romantic music aimed to transmit moods, feelings and passions. The opening of Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique are two examples of works that exploit instrumental expressive abilities and each tell some kind of story. Poetry relied on the use of the senses to narrate experience, while paintings oriented toward depicting landscapes and other objects of nature. The Romantic emphasis on the individual was reflected in ideas of self-realization and a turn toward nature. It was believed that the individual could understand nature directly without resorting to social artifice and that the solitary individual achieved salvation. People generally tended to behave informally, leavinggiving vent to their emotions and focusing on themselves. They held in high esteem the concept of human freedom rather than that of human moderation. Romanticism engendered an existence beyond superficial reality and a feeling of abstract idealism. There was a revolt against conventional morality, authority and government. People began to more meaningfully question fundamental questions such as the existence of a God and conventional Christianity. The Romantics had beliefs in the exploration of the senses rather than in the use of the brain or any other rationalist way of thinking. This stood in direct contrast to the ideals of the Enlightenment and the neoclassical period. The 1792 publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women sparked the beginnings of the feminist movement, with the establishment of women's political nightclubs in Paris in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Romanticism remained a force in the arts until the end of the 19th century. Blake's poem about night illustrates romantic values. The first stanza defines the “night” scene of the poem. He creates this atmosphere by using whistling throughout the stanza, an example of which is "The sun sinking in the west, the evening star shines." This soft sound creates an atmosphere of calm and stillness, which is further enhanced by the use of alliteration, as demonstrated in the last line "with silent pleasure, sits and smiles at night" and also by the repetition of the word “silent”. "The poem is organized into six stanzas, each consisting of eight lines, the first four of which are in iambic pentameter, with an alternate rhyme scheme (ABAB). The use of iambic pentameter serves to add a singing quality to the poem, its steady rhythm echoing the pleasant tone of the poem and the scenes Blake describes Blake paints a picture of these scenes in the reader's mind through his use of visual imagery, shown by "the evening star shines"; , "the moon...sits and smiles"; and compare, "the moon, like a flower". These techniques allow Blake to adequately represent the scene of "Night" and to set the mood of the poem in the first stanza The next stanza introduces a supernatural and somewhat magical element into the poem This is evident by the appearance of the angels, which reinforces the allusions to "heaven" that Blake depicted in the first stanza. “a blessing…on every sleeping breast.” This emphasizes the romantic ideal of concern for the individual. This ideal is defended throughout the poem, seen by the angels protecting the sheep from its prey and guarding “each beast, to preserve them from evil”. The nocturnal atmosphere is carried through the second stanza by the repetition of the words "silent" and "sleeping", and by figurative images: "silent moves the feet of bright angels" (visual) and "where the lambs have nibbled » (touch). Blake's use of alliteration in "every bud, every flower, and every breast" at the end of the second stanza emphasizes the fact that the angels care for each individual creature. The fourth stanza witnesses the angles crying for the sheep about to be eaten as well as the wolves and tigers who cannot help but be cruel to the sheep. This is representative of the romantic value of letting go of emotions and expressing oneself freely. It is implied by "receiving to every gentle spirit new worlds to inherit" that the angels will take the sheep to heaven even if the tigers kill them. Blake juxtaposed the natural with the supernatural perhaps to install a message of protection of the weak and show the innocence of the angels' sympathy for thecreatures. This emotive mood in the fourth stanza is reinforced by Blake's use of assonance on the "ee" sound through words such as "cry", "seek", "keep", "sheep" and "careful". , as well as through his auditory imagery as shown in "When Wolves and Tigers Howl at Their Prey". The last two stanzas demonstrate the epitome of romantic sentiment, with the lion taking pity on the sheep's "tender cries" while its "red eyes will flow with golden tears". The lion's tears could symbolize an awareness of the fragility of innocence, with innocence clearly represented by the sheep. The sound imagery of the “bleating lamb” emphasizes his helplessness and thus reinforces the role of the lion in guarding him. The allusion to “the immortal” once again suggests a celestial atmosphere, specific to the “new world” mentioned in the previous stanza. It has been suggested (I) that the "new world" is only an extension of the earthly world, because earthly creatures reside in the new world and experience the same emotions. However, the lion clearly says that anger "by his health is disease driven from our immortal day" and Blake could therefore be suggesting that the world must be transcended so that innocent vision can triumph. Romanticism is reflected in this poem through the references to nature, the individual, and the emotions felt throughout the poem. Nature is not only used to describe the atmosphere, but it is also associated with the ideas presented, such as the metaphor “the river of life” and the simile “the moon, like a flower”. Blake's use of sensory imagery is also representative of Romantic values, that things should be experienced rather than obtained through reason. The image of the angels “standing and weeping with pity” embodies this statement: all that angels accomplish through the use of their senses and emotions. Similarly, Blake uses sensory imagery to describe the setting and set the scene. The juxtaposition of the natural and the heavenly relies on imagination and a sense of the abstract, also a romantic characteristic. The wolves and tigers can be seen as representing a form of authority, which Blake clearly rejects, as most Romantics would, when the angels attempt to "keep them from the sheep." But it can also be seen as the innocence of the "natural order" (the tiger and the wolf attacking the lamb), which is actually a challenge to romantic values ​​because it does not promote concern for the individual. However, the last image that sticks in the reader's mind is that of the lion guarding "above the fold." It is obvious that the lion has achieved happiness by doing this when he uses the simile "My shining mane will forever shine like gold." Perhaps this is Blake's way of saying that true happiness is only achieved through self-realization, focus on the individual, and freedom of expression, all hallmarks of Romantic values. In three stanzas of ten lines each and a decasyllabic structure for each line, Keats chose the subject of "melancholy" on which to write an ode. In the first stanza, Keats exhorts the reader not to be consumed by the misery of life, for death will come eventually. This is implied by “for the shadow to the shadow will come too sleepy and drown the waking anguish of the soul.” This evocative use of language implies that a sleep will eventually drown all sorrows. The mood of this poem, unlike that of Blake, is, as the title indicates, quite melancholy. This melancholy atmosphere is established in the first stanza by the neoclassical symbols of sorrow and death, such as "moth", "owl, 1998.