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American War Of Independence And The French Revolution Essay

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Romanticism as a movement is as rebellious as its content. Lynch and Stillinger attempt to define it historically rather than continuously, naming it the “shortest … period in British literary history” (3).
They place it within the timespan of 1785 to 1832, beginning between the American War of Independence and the French Revolution and ending with the passage of the Reform Act in British Parliament. In this time of reflection and change, authors re-examined the previously discarded medieval romances and breathed new, strange life into them. Romantic art became a form of activism, against structures both political and poetic. To account for Romanticism’s “complex multiplicity” (4), Lynch and Stillinger mention five distinct characteristics of British Romantic work: the piece is written by a British author between 1785 and 1832, it is a response to a politically or socially impactful event, it features rebellion to convention, it is imaginative, and it utilizes imagery. Coronations, executions, massacres, abolition, wars, rebellions, and revolutions are a lot to handle in under half a decade. Constant change and turmoil was the reality for British Romantic writers (28-29). With all these happenings, “political philosophy gained new authority in and through poetry and fiction” (4) as every Romantic author wrote asserting their two cents on the latest issue. They wrote with a purpose to spark new a new thinking or perspective on the subject, to “guide historical change” (4)

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