Daniel Matilla

Literatura y cultura de la segunda lengua moderna 1 (Ingls)

Grado en LLMMCC
Nature and childhood in Romantic literature
That Romanticism implies nature is an evidence that we can appreciate
in nearly every poem of this period. Romantics evoke nature as a symbol of
freedom and truth. They treat to reconcile it, in an age starting to be far
from environment, with men. They start to give children a different status.
Now, they are not only little people, but are also growing, and need a
different treatment and a development. The child is considered closed to
nature because is not involved in the social structures. In this way, children
are called to be free in poetry and to achieve this calling poets usually relate
the sense of freedom that cause nature in them.
Blake, in his poem Chimney sweeper, shows this relationship between
children and nature freedom. In the poem, one of these chimney sweepers
has a dream in which an angel appears and take them to a plain where,
instead of working, children leap, laugh and run. The ideal, shining, green
nature appears here to give the impression of liberty, in contrast to the
dark, dirty and plenty of work reality in the city: he contrasts the ideal state
of a child, with the harsh reality, which creates a sense of pity.
Also Shelley shows this idea in Hymn to intellectual beauty. In that
work, he explains how the Spirit of Beauty gives men security and how the
lack of its presence makes them feel anxious, lost Here, beauty is always
represented by nature. He explains how, when he was a child, Sudden, thy
[Beautys] shadow fell on me, what, in my opinion, means that before he
has not this sense of beauty, so also has not this bad feelings with its
absence. That is: children, as a part of nature, dont feel its beauty but have
it.