Reflection- Fireside Poets

The Fireside poets seem to be completely different from the other writers that we have encountered. This could be because they are all from completely different time periods. The first time period that we came upon was the Puritan/Pilgram period, then the Rationalism period, and finally now we are on the Romanticism period.

All of these different periods have there own kind of writing style. I will start with the Puritan/Pilgram writing style. The Purtian/Pilgram writing style was basically all about religion. Everything that consisted in each story had to do with religion. Just like Bradstreet, "Thou hast an house on high erect, Framed by that mighty Architect, With glory richly furnished, Stands permanent though this be fled" (Bradstreet 91). As you can see, Bradstreet just like all the other Puritan/Pilgram writers basically talked about God and religion. Like she says here, she is talking about God in her story. This could somewhat be taken as a part of the Romanticism period because it is poetry, but there is one key aspect as to why this should not be a part of the Romanticism period. The reason being is that they are talking about religion and God and the Romanticism period talked about nature, and love.

The next period was the Rationalism period. The Rationalism period was a time of inventors, writing, and logic and reasoning. One key person of this period was Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Franklin played a big part in all of the aspects of the Rationalism period. He was the guy who came up with the thirteen virtues, tested them on himself, and then let them out to the world. He was a big inventor of the Rationalism period. During the Rationalism period people were accepting the fact of other religions. Franklin wanted to learn as you can tell in his autobiography. When Franklin said, "...they had reason to wish and pray for a return of the theocracy, or government of God. Christians in these times have other ideas, when they speak of the kingdom of God..." (Franklin 112). This is just showing the religions starting to be accepted during this period. The Rationalism period is different from the Romanticism period because the Rationalism period based everything on logic and reasoning while the Romanticism period focused more on inner feelings.

The last period is the Romanticism period. I have basically already talked about what the Romanticism period was about. One of the poets from the Romanticism period was Ralph Waldo Emerson. It showed a great amount of nature and love in the story. It seemed like it was his inner feelings speaking and that's what the Romanticism writing style was like. So just to give an overview as to what this blog was about was that the Puritan/Pilgram era was soley based on God and religion. The Rationalism period was based on logic and reasoning, and the Romanticism period was about nature and love. Anyway, these are the three time periods as to what we have studied in class and how each and every one has been different from the other.

Bibliography

Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Henry Altemus. 1895. Print.

Bradstreet, Anne. "Upon the Burning of Our House." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 91. Print.