Death in Romantic Melancholia shivangani thakur College

Abstract

Emerging out of the need for freedom of self-expression in literature, romanticism materialized as the age of unrequited love, sentimentality, melancholy and death. It was a reaction against the rationality of the previous age where individual thought and existential questions weren’t condoned. The last years of the 18th century saw an aesthetic of emotions in literature; poets distinguishing themselves with perception and feelings, both unique to that individual. Out of this came forth the sadness of the mind. This research paper focuses on the themes of death in a romantic era and compares how two different poets from the same age interpret death. The analysis of their poems – ‘the lament’ by Percy B. Shelly and ‘On Death’ by John Keats- also reveals how they deal with death differently. The attitude of a poet on something as morbid and raw as death exposes a vulnerability unseen in other subject matters. We would discuss how this vulnerability brings out the essence of the nature of a poet and gives a true unmasked quality to the poem. Delving into the theme of death, this paper argues that mortality was one of the primary themes of the romantic era and that there were different views on something as universal as...