John Keats and Jean Jacques Rousseau
Loneliness and Suffering: Romanticism in "Ode on Melancholy" by John Keats and "Confessions" by Jean Jacques Rousseau
Between the period of 18th and 19th centuries, Western civilization bore witness to important social movements that significantly influenced the culture of human societies extant during these periods. In terms of literature and philosophy, 18th century gave birth to the age of Enlightenment, while the 19th century paved the way for Romanticism, movements that influenced people's contemplation of the future of humanity, realities, and self-realizations in life.
John Keats and Jean Jacques Rousseau are examples of philosophers and writers who subsisted to the principles of Romanticism and the Enlightenment. As reflected in their writings, each have discussed the prevalent thoughts of their time: Rousseau promoted the intellectual development that flourished during the Enlightenment, while Keats contemplated life through emotional expressions that dominated Romanticism.
In Keats' "Ode on Melancholy," and Rousseau's "Confessions," however, there is a distinct stream of Romanticist though in their writings. Despite Rousseau's rational contemplation of life, readers witness him as an emotional being as he recounted his path towards achievement of intellectual development in "Confessions," which was created and published a century prior to Keats' literary work. Moreover, apart from the dominance of Romanticism in both writers' works, they have also shown marked similarity in the themes in discussing life: both had utilized loneliness or melancholy as imperative experiences to one's life before truly experiencing happiness and contentment in life. This paper, thus, posits that Keats' "Ode on Melancholy" and Rousseau's "Confessions" reflected the Romantic sentiment that human suffering is an essential experience for humankind so that it would achieve happiness and intellectual development, which are products of an individual's self-actualization in life. In...
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