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

Ayn Rand - A False romanticistic The Romantic period at its height all-encompassing over just a bit more than a light speed, from the last menti one(a)d half of the eighteenth century through to nearly the end of the ordinal century. During this period, a new 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 umteen believed that is, the movement was beginning to wind down in time with the ebbing of the industrial and urban boom in much the same musical mode that the movement grew out of the initial period of industrial and urban growth. Thus, it would be easy to classify the Romantic movement as inherently tied to its cultural context. The difficulty, then, comes when poets and authors outside of this time period-and indeed in contexts quite distinguishable then those of the original Romantic poets-beg in to label themselves as Romantics. The twentieth century author Ayn Rand, author of works such as The Fountainhead, Anthem, and Atlas Shrugged, is one such example of a self-labeled Romantic. In 1971 Rand published a parade of essays in a book she titled The Romantic Manifesto. This series of essays, with topics ranging from amative art to the disposition of a novel, carefully lays out Rands conception of love story and her place within it. The question one must ask, then, is how does Rand manage to indite 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 answer would seem to be that Rands conception of Romanticism must be diametrically opposed to that of... ...us, while one may befool valuable insights about some of the potential flaws of the Romantics ideals and philosophy through a comparison with Rand, in the end it truly is a compariso n of Rand and the Romantics, non a comparison of Rand and her fellow Romantics. Works Cited rose, Harold and Lionel Trilling, eds. Romantic Poetry and Prose. spic-and-span 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 lyric 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