INTRODUCTION: The period from 1818 to 1900 is seen
as the period of Dark Romanticism in literature. It is much different from
Romanticism (1798-1832). Romanticism emphasized more on the depiction of nature
in all its beauty whereas Dark Romanticism focused more on the destructive and
pessimistic aspects of human life and nature.
The poets of Dark Romanticism expressed the pain, agony and darker side
of nature. For example, the mountains, rivers and oceans which seem so
beautiful but the same elements of nature can be disastrous and painful in the times
of flood, tsunami or earthquake. Hence, Dark Romantic authors mainly expressed
this darker side of both nature and human life.
FEATURES
OF DARK ROMANTICISM:
1. The focus is more on the tragic side of human life.
2. Terror, punishment, guilt, sins and social evils of human life are
expressed.
3. Mysteries of human life are projected.
4. Human conflict and struggle against the external forces are given much
scope.
5.
Gothic novels too are related to Dark
Romantic literature which express the terror, horror, and supernatural forces.
“My faith is gone!” cried he, after one stupefied moment.
“There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come devil; for to thee is
this world given.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘Young
Goodman Brown’
EXAMPLES
OF DARK ROMANTICISM: Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Shelley,
and John William Polidori who are
frequently linked to Gothic fiction, are sometimes referred to as Dark
Romantics. Edgar
Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville and Emily
Dickinson are the major exponents of Dark Romanticism.
1.
‘Tell-Tale
Heart’ (1843) by Edgar Allan Poe
2.
‘The
Birth-Mark’ (1843) by Nathaniel Hawthorne
3.
‘The
Minister's Black Veil’ (1843) by Nathaniel Hawthorne
4.
‘Moby Dick’ (1851) by Herman Melville
5.
‘Bartleby
the Scrivener’ (1856) by Herman Melville
6.
‘The
Fall of the House of Usher’ (1839) by Edgar Allan Poe
7.
‘Dream-Land’
(1844) by Edgar Allan Poe
8.
‘The
Raven’ (1845) by Edgar Allan Poe
CONCLUSION: To conclude, one may say that Dark Romanticism was a new literary movement which emerged during the mid 19th century. The authors of Dark Romanticism mainly concentrated on the darker side of human life. Pessimism, destruction, pain, agony were exclusively found in such literature. Poe, Hawthorne and others were the major Dark Romantic authors who popularized this movement in literature.
“The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague.
Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?” This famous quote from Poe’s short horror
story ‘The Premature Burial’ rightly expresses this spirit of Dark Romanticism.
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