Abstract

Violence, as exhibited by some romantic poets, works as the dormant, and sometimes explicit, whim to think of and go for. Violence may not only be a temporal tendency but rather a philosophical trend embraced by romantics so that they can offset deep frustration generated by failure to create a better world. Shelley, Blake and Lord Byron do not mind conveying a tendency to go violent in order to bring about a better world, while E.A. Poe gives abnormal images, to define man’s need to liberate himself from restrictions of time and place. Emotions, imaginations and the search for beauty that are, sometimes, seen embodied in their approach to liberty mark the touchstone that romantics felt attached to, which explains why the world needs a hero, a savior, the concept that romantics believed in.

This paper sets to investigate this issue of violence, its nature and how it functions in the works of selected romantic men of letters and how it can be affiliated to beauty and ethical and aesthetical values. Edgar Allan Poe will be dealt with along with fellow English romantic figures for, next to his romantic philosophy, he had a prominent tendency for functional violence coupled with aesthetical values.

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