Essay on The Everlasting Dark Shadow of Romanticism

For many, saying or hearing the word romanticism evokes numerous stereotypical and prejudged definitions and emotions. The biggest reason this probably happens is because of how closely romanticism sounds like romance. The similarity of the sounds and spelling of the two words can lead to some thinking that the two words mean the same thing or are closely related. Although romanticism and romance do share some similarities in their spelling and pronunciation they couldn’t be more different. In the Merriam Webster Dictionary romance is defined as, â€Å"a love story†. The Romantic Period was not necessarily a time of true romance and love stories, although love was written about, but was instead a time of extreme emotion expressed in many†¦show more content†¦Whether Shelley anticipated that her story of reanimation and death turning to life would be her masterwork is unknown, although it is likely that she never anticipated the kind of response that her littl e tale would immediately receive and the impact that it would still have today. Frankenstein is one of the greatest examples of Romantic writing. One of the biggest traits of Romanticism that the story possesses is the inclusion of the Byronic hero. Victor Frankenstein’s creation is a hideous, murdering, and vengeful being but the reader can’t help being fascinated by the monster and wanting to see what he will do next. The way that the monster is written can also make the reader want to root for him in certain parts of the story. The monster is actually an incredibly sympathetic character. Even though the monster kills everyone that Victor loves and he performs numerous acts of evil, the reader can still sympathize with the character and understand his motives. Unlike in most of the film interpretations of Frankenstein and the stereotypical idea of what the monster is, he is textually very intelligent, calculated, and isn’t the slow moving speechless mongolo id that pop culture has made him out to be. The monster even sorrowfully gives his own type of self eulogyShow MoreRelatedAmerican Literature11652 Words   |  47 PagesAmerican Literature through Time To find out more about a particular literature time period, click on the links below: ï‚ · ï‚ · ï‚ · ï‚ · ï‚ · ï‚ · ï‚ · ï‚ · ï‚ · ï‚ · Puritan Times Rationalism/Age of Enlightenment American Renaissance/Romanticism Gothic Realism Naturalism Modernism Harlem Renaissance Postmodernism Contemporary Puritan Times period of American Literature - 1650-1750 Content: ï‚ · ï‚ · ï‚ · errand into the wilderness be a city upon a hill Christian utopia Genre/Style: ï‚ · ï‚ · ï‚ · ï‚ · ï‚ · sermons, diaries personalRead MoreVictorian Novel9605 Words   |  39 Pagesconscious they lived in the ‘Victorian period’. They thought that this was a modern era marked with turbulent transition. However, the most crucial writers of the period grew up in the earlier years, and had been influenced by the age of English Romanticism. Therefore, although Victorian was modern, materialist, factual and concerned with ‘things as they are’, Romantic, associated with Gothic, melodramatic, idealistic influenced the way novelists wrote in the beginning of the 19th century. I THE