Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Ayn Rand - A False Romantic Essay -- Biography Biographies Essays

Ayn Rand - A False romanticist The Romantic period at its height extended over proficient a bit more(prenominal) than a century, from the latter half of the eighteenth century through to nearly the end of the ordinal century. During this period, a in the buff school of poetry was forged, and with it, a new moral philosophy. But, as the nineteenth century wound down, the Romantic movement seemed to be proving itself far more dependent on the specific cultural events it spanned than many believed that is, the movement was begin to wind down in time with the ebbing of the industrial and urban boom in much the same way that the movement grew aside of the initial period of industrial and urban growth. Thus, it would be easy to correct the Romantic movement as inherently tied to its cultural context. The difficulty, then, comes when poets and indites removed of this time period-and indeed in contexts quite different then those of the archetype Romantic poets-begin to label themse lves as Romantics. The twentieth century author Ayn Rand, author of operations such as The Fountainhead, Anthem, and Atlas Shrugged, is one such example of a self-labeled Romantic. In 1971 Rand published a collection of essays in a book she titled The Romantic Manifesto. This series of essays, with topics ranging from romantic art to the personality of a novel, carefully lays out Rands conception of Romanticism and her place inside it. The question one must ask, then, is how does Rand manage to write a work of nearly two hundred pages on the nature of Romanticism without ever once mentioning any of the key Romantic poets Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and so on. The obvious serve up would seem to be that Rands conception of Romanticism must be diametrically opposed to that of... ...us, while one may draw valuable insights well-nigh some of the potential flaws of the Romantics ideals and philosophy through a equation with Rand, in the end it truly is a comparison of Ra nd and the Romantics, not a comparison of Rand and her fellow Romantics. Works Cited blossoming, Harold and Lionel Trilling, eds. Romantic Poetry and Prose. advanced York Oxford University Press, 1973. Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. New York Dutton, 1957. Rand, Ayn. The Romantic Manifesto. New York Signet Publishing, 1975. Footnotes 1 Preface to Lyrical Ballad Bloom & Trilling, p. 595 2 Preface Bloom & Trilling, p. 596 3 Biographia Literaria Bloom & Trilling, p. 649 4 A Defence of Poetry Bloom & Trilling, p. 751 5 The Romantic Manifesto Rand, p. 103 6 The Romantic Manifesto Rand, p. 122 7 Atlas Shrugged Rand, p. 282-283 8 Atlas Shrugged Rand, p. 1036

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