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The Eolian Harp Synthesis Essay

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The Romantic Period was an explosion of artistic energy from 1790-1820, which began in Germany and quickly spread to the United States, almost all of Europe, and Latin America. It was a period full of emotion, intuition, intense feelings, and the revolt against any authority or order. Those in this time idealized nature and embraced the uncivilized, and imagination was a key component to their writing and way of thinking. Steven Kreis, author for The History Guide writes, “…one power possessed by the Romantic…was imagination…” (Kreis 1). The era was centered on the rejection of the Enlightenment, the acceptance of individuality and self-expression, criticism, and social injustices. One big player in the Romantic Era, and considered to …show more content…

Joseph McQueen, a professor at Ohio State University, writes of the mixed elements, “Coleridge of the poem spends the first 12 lines savoring the natural pleasures around him…from here, the poem turns toward the supernatural…In this world, all things are animated by spiritual power, by what the poem calls ‘‘the one life within us and abroad’ (26)’” (McQueen 3-4). When the music from the harp begins to play Coleridge’s imagination is propelled forward and the poem is turned into a “Fairy-Land” (Coleridge 440), where he paints a picture of the nature the music makes him see. He then says he doesn’t know how someone couldn’t love the world that is so filled with beauty and wonder; the world that God created and filled with beautiful things. He begins to question if like the breeze that played the harp, is God “playing” human’s in the same way. “And what if all animated nature/ Be but organic harps diversely framed, / That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps/ Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, / At once the soul of each, and God of All” (Coleridge 441). He questions if God controls them and can make them do amazing things like the breeze can so easily make the harp play music. Sara, his wife, then chastises him for his questioning God and he prides her in her strong faith. He then asks God to redeem him and mold his mind into one of Christ. Coleridge praises God and thanks him for all he has been given despite the fact that he is a sinful man and has many flaws. Coleridge questioning God and wavering in his faith is similar to that of the Ancient Mariner in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. Like the Mariner, Coleridge had a moment of doubt, while not as extreme as the Mariner’s and it did not result in eternal suffering, the idea of questioning God and being unsure regarding one’s faith is

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