Romanticism

Shifting the focus from the Renaissance of Shakespeare to Romanticism, my English class compared the the themes that brought about the large shift of the themes of the eras. The Renaissance focused on technology, the exploration of the New World like in Shakespeare's Tempest, the rise of capitalism and the rise of the middle class, and the changing notion about God, religion and the church. Romanticism on the other hand, focused on themes of the imagination, nature, life, death, and mutability or the process of change. The Romantic era was characterized by a heightened sense of nature and the individual. Emphasis on the individuals expression of emotion and imagination strongly contrasted the ideals of the Renaissance. Therefore there was a departure of of many forms of classicalism; there was a rebellion against social rules and conventions. The focus of this unit will be on John Keats and a series of his lyric poems. Keats writes about the everyday values and how special they can be to the eye of the beholder.