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LITR 5431 American
Romanticism 2010 Student Midterm Samples #2 short essay |
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Cristen Lauck, "Totally unreal!
Throughout this semester, I have been struggling to
find a standard text that best represents American Romanticism for me. I had a
difficult time understanding how one text can be considered Romantic while
another which is completely different can also be considered Romantic. I
wondered how two vastly different writings can both be categorized in the same
genre. The idea that Romanticism elevates or exaggerates the “real” is the only
unifying quality I came up with. James
Wright’s A Blessing not only exhibits
this trait but also has all the other sub-themes that make up a Romantic poem;
gothic, sublime, transcendence, focus on nature, it’s all there. It has all the
elements of American Romanticism condensed in a single poem.
The best idea of romanticism, the elevation of an
ordinary, real situation, is the basis of this poem. Wright takes an ordinary,
uneventful walk by a pasture and elevates it by highlighting the simplistic
beauty in it. His language elevates an everyday scene of two horses in a pasture
to something beautiful and life changing, he talks about the Indian ponies, the
willows, wet swans, young tufts of spring, and a light breeze. All of which are
ordinary images of nature but he puts such a focus on them to add importance.
His attention to common scenes is found in a lot of the other Romantic writings.
For instance, in Irving’s Rip Van Winkle, Rip talks about the beautiful
mountains, sky, and little village. All of which is commonplace but is elevated
by the Romantic language. Sleepy
Hollow also shows this elevation of nature when it talks about the great tree
and creepy forest even though it is darker, stranger than the nature in Wright’s
poem. Nevertheless, nature is both elevated and a major focus in both stories.
In fact, it’s a major theme in almost all the works we have read.
The creepy, dark, gothic aspects of romanticism are
also found in Wright’s poem. He produces these images by his walk taking place
at twilight, and there being barbed wire and darkness. We get some of the gothic
color codes of white and black in the ponies’ mane. This theme of romanticism is
further elaborated on by Poe in Ligeia
and Fall of the House of Usher,
especially in Ligeia in the creepy room of red, black and white. The same gothic
imagery is also found throughout the
Legend of Sleepy Hollow. It’s just a simpler, toned-down image of the gothic
in A Blessing.
The Romantic sub-theme of the sublime and
transcendence are also found in Wright’s poem. The sublime can be seen in the
two lines of “they can hardly contain their happiness” and “there is no
loneliness like theirs”. This inexplicable, unattainable emotion is a major
theme in our Romantic readings. It’s especially emphasized in Poe’s stories.
It’s also found in both A Wide, Wide
World and The Lamplighter when
the girls are overcome with emotion that they cannot express themselves.
The transcendence aspect of the poem is
found in the last line which states, “if I stepped out of my body I would break
into blossom”. This transcendence aspect was also a major theme is Jonathan
Edwards’ Sinners in the hands of an Angry
God as well as others throughout the semester.
While James Wright’s
A Blessing may not
give us the best examples of the Romantic themes and sub-themes, it is an
easy way to see all of them in a short, condensed version. For me, his examples
are the easiest to identify and understand. I can easily pick out the different
aspects without have to dig too deeply. And then I can go to the other texts to
find better, more elaborate examples. But it is nice to first be able to
identify those themes easily as I can in
A Blessing.
