The idea of beauty with the romantics

Introduction

I think that Romanticism gave many good things over the years. The Romantics lived intensively, explored transcendental life, and were against the oppression of society. At that time people wanted to escape from society and to live individual, to live for themselves. The Romantic Movement appeared in Germany and went into England and France. The ideas of the French Revolution were inspirational for the Romantics and in those times, England prepared for such a movement because of the cruel work program and the national debt; hence, a reform was necessary and expected.

Many works of art and literature underlay Romanticism. It shows how the theme is full of resources. Romanticism managed to change beliefs and ideals and remained untouched, during the ages. Using Romantic ideas different poets and artists were able to show various perspectives of their work by using love of nature and common person, heroism and emotions.

I have chosen to analyze Wordsworth and Coleridge because they were very important in history, therefore based on their poems, the followers completed their work. They isolated themselves from modern society and went back to the original things. All the Romantic writers were aware of their environment and, therefore, deeply involved in its study. Their best works came out of their impulse to come to terms with the inner self.

All the way from nineteenth century until today, Romanticism is present in our everyday life: paintings, literature, movies, and will always be so, because "Romanticism turns out to be the biggest asset for art and literature". (Bowra, 1950, 56)

I have chosen an archetypal approach based on the poems of Wordsworth and Coleridge, therefore in Chapter I, I analyzed the Romantic Movement, in Chapter II, I studied Coleridge and Wordsworth and in Chapter III, I have made an analysis about the archetypes found in their work. Archetypal approach interprets a text focusing on myths and archetypes, figures or patterns that reappear in works of the imagination.

Many researchers studied the phenomenon of recurring archetypes, but the best known is C.G. Jung. Jung expressed that an archetype is “a figure…that repeats itself in the course of history wherever creative fantasy is fully manifested”. He believed that human beings were born innately knowing certain archetypes. The evidence of this, Jung claimed, lays in the fact that some myths repeat throughout history in cultures and eras that could not possibly have had any contact with one another: for example, stories from the Greek and Roman mythology have similitude in Chinese and Celtic mythology.

Archetypal characters include the hero, the villain, the outcast, the femme fatale, and the lovers. Archetypal situations include the quest, the journal, death and rebirth, and the task. Archetypal symbols and their associations include light/dark, water/desert, height/depth, spring/winter.

Myths become "myths to live by" and metaphors "metaphors to live in," which ". . . not only work for us but constantly expand our horizons, we may enter the world and pass on to other things that are true for ourselves". (http://w3.stu.ca/stu/sites/nble/f/frye_herman_northrop.html Recited at 24.02.2014). Most of the myths and symbols underlay the ideas that humans could not explain (the origins of life, what happens after death, etc.). Every culture has a creation story, a life-after-death belief, and a bunch of scary stories. Therefore, archetypes are a part speculative because underline human fears and involves religion, anthropology and cultural history.

Jung analyzed classic archetypes like the members of the family, for example, mother means nurture, and magicians mean mystery, sorcery, the trickster shows underneath cover, the horse and the dog are faithful animals. Another important myth for Jung is Anima the feminine part or Animus the masculine part. A human being contains both parts in their persona; only society makes us change after our gender. Freud, Adler and Jung, consider that we all are bisexual and behaving as social rules tells us, analogous we only develop half of our personality. (http://coltulcultural.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/arhetipurile-lui-jung/ Recited at 14.08.2013). For Plato archetype was "the thing in itself", what the thing should be in the perfect non-existing world. The Jung's definition was closer to modern, but too narrow. (Plato, 449a-472a, 476). Jung's contribution to literary criticism lies in the theory of racial memory and archetypes. The author based on Freud theories says that there is a collective unconsciousness shared in the psychic inheritance in all humans. For Jung archetypes were not inherited ideas, but a response to certain stimuli. Myths are ways to show archetypes (ideas) in an actual form. Archetypes express themselves through the unconscious as instinctive trends, which create corresponding thought forms. The archetypes have their own energy and their own plan. In an individual psyche they can either produce meaningful symbolism or interfere with their characteristic desires and thought formations. They function like complexes, which are transient to the personality and modify or obstruct the conscious psyche in negative ways.

The best-known archetype for Jung is the Shadow, the chaos, the dark side of our personality. The wilderness is a very common symbol for the shadow, used in many tales. People deny this part of their personality and project it to the others. The shadow appears as well when we are not reconciled with what we do: a part of us goes in one direction, the other in another direction. Another important myth for Jung is the self, God's imagine because one cannot tell what is Human and what is divine. The greatest thing for a man is to discover his true spirit, the Divine one.

Besides Jung's archetypes, we can find many others like water, creation, power, purification, growth, energy, intellectual light, heroes and quests like in the Romanian tales. Even the seasons are archetypes; spring is beautiful and designates the forces of nature, and meanwhile winter means darkness, loss of consciousness, coldness and death. The literary works include multiple archetypes, many of them inherited or part of the author's consciousness, that made him write unforgettable pieces, found interesting over the centuries. Many of the writers are poets, who used archetypes to convey their poetical ideas. Romantics used these archetypes; hence, many elements appear in their poetries: nature, colors, the femme fatale, the sacrificial scapegoat. Archetypes can have many representations. They can designate more than an object, for example, God represents consciousness or an individual. Archetypes have stayed with us during the decades and will remain as long as the human society, that is why researchers like Jung expressed that the archetypes reappear all over the world and are very similar for each person.