Enlightenment/Romanticism Essay

The age of man is rife with varying motivations and face-to-face reasoning. Over millions of years, life shifted from mere survival, with our minds drawn to food and shelter, into times of semipolitical intrigue and welfargon reform. Buried in the layers, the era of Enlightenment and the (difficult to define) Age of romanticism are found. Within these two periods are rough of our chronicles closely profound shifts in thinking.The Age of Enlightenment brought scientific reasoning to the forefront of everything. Life was pellucid, understandable and predictable. Man contemplated his purpose empirically, study methodically to come to a true conclusion.According to Anne Branham, the enlightenment allowed our de exactly fathers to question mans natural remediates in the valet de chambre of the living. She uses benzoin Franklin as the incomplete figure of true enlightenment. The one man who had his give into all things scientific and technological fought actively for the eart hly rather than celestial rewards (55). Our most important living document, the Ameri displace Constitution, finds its epicenter in the independence to choose our own representation after careful contemplation and consensus-driven choice (59).Paintings reflected life as a physical entity. Portraits of hoi polloi became the chosen artistic creation of the day, a marking of life in that moment. American History portraits multi-coloured by John Trumbull show the events in a concise manner, the emotions of the people stern and musing. Other artists, to include Anton Van Maron and Antonio Visentini, of this period (late Enlightenment) follow this alike theme of capture rather than sensitize (GroveArt Online).Writers such as Locke, Paine, and smith questioned preconceived beliefs, broke them down in their parts, studied them empirically, then alter them into new ideals and theories changing the government agency things were done for centuries. Their articulations of thought chan ged the way concern and politics were conducted, a system we still hold to today. Burnham suggested when we take a good look at these writers (Locke in particular) we can see the seed of trans formattingion that inspired Thomas Jefferson (58).The line between the Enlightenment and Romanticism appears quite blurred. It is non as though humankind stopped get around all of a sudden and agreed to change their thinking. What is evident, however, is that change took place. Today, we are no longer as ideal in questioning what is right for man.This period began as a revolt of sorts against the aristocracy and their accepted norms. state began to concern themselves with emotions and the feelings of things. Psychologists such as Freud and Jung came into play. Not only what is wrong with you, but also why, and how does it feel to lay down that problem?Peckham questions the validity of an actual consummation in that the need and subsequent fight for revolution does not in fact mean an ac tual change in thought amongst the worlds people. Was there in fact a change in mind away from the scientific and toward the ideal and the emotional (6).In wrong of g everywherenment, America found itself growing out of control. States began to fight over the give away of slavery and valuing one mans right to property over another mans right to dignity and the pursuit of contentment as it were. Civil War breaks out, the basis set against the colder ideas of the Enlightenment. These ideas one can conceivably see as justifying slavery if numbers add up. makeup offered a new selection during this era, the novel. Mary Shelley writes about the timeless interlocking of man versus nature with her creation of Frankenstein. Mans emotional struggles in life marked the center of Mark Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Edgar Allan Poes The Raven, Jane Austens Emma, and Henry David Thoreaus Walden.Peckham, writing in the time of Picasso, states Picasso has in his painting expressed p rofoundly the results of the freedom that romanticism has given to the inventive imagination, but he is detested by most people who pretend seen his cubist or post-cubist painting as well as by a great many who has not. He is at home in the universe, but not in his society (21). This simple statement takes us back to a time when the questioning of fundamental things, like shapes and colors, was not appreciated. One forgets Picasso died in 1973 only 33 years ago.Although these two distinct ages followed each other in general timeframe, there are some obvious similarities. In some ways, the transcendentalists, modernists and post-modernists, have all maintained the canonic trend in life, which is to ask questions and present the answers in a way that society will gain from them as well. The questioning being the most serious of crimes against the calm nature of a society, with the actual answer succeeding(a) a close second.The difference lies in the questions asked, the answer g iven and the format preferred. For each successive generation, the questions drive a little deeper, the context of the situations a little more complicated. The answers are increasing more personal, much to the necrosis today of the older citizens. Art today is far racier and stressing in it nature. Artists have the freedom to push the observer to his or her max. Life seems to be essay toward a certain height where all questions are ok, all answers accepted. industrial plant CitedBranham, Anne K. Teaching the Enlightenment in American Literature Shedding uninfected on Faith and Reason. The English Journal 87.3 (1998) 54-59.GroveArt Online. (18 Oct 2006). Peckham, Morse. Toward a Theory of Romanticism. PMLA 66.1 (1951) 5-23.