Treatment of Change and Expansion in Lotos-Eaters and Rip Van Winkle :: Lotos Winkle

handling of Change and Expansion in Lotos-Eaters and Rip Van Winkle During the strait-laced Era, great accomplishments lead to prosperity for the British Empire. Accomplishments include owning nearly a quarter of the worlds land and its people. As a result, avocation and commerce expanded, and Great Britain reached the height of its power. Furthermore, science rapidly made come during this time. These rapid strides in economic and technological advances gave the British people a feeling of pessimism about whether they were progressing for the good. As a result, people began to question human beings place, or duty, on earth. Also occurring within the time of the niminy-piminy Era is the American Renaissance. During this period, Americans were expanding their territory according to the belief in shew Destiny, or the idea that God or Nature intended for the united States to spread its civilization from coast to coast. Like the British, Americans questioned their moral responsi bility concerning limiting and expansion. Consequently, the concerns of the people were echoed in the literature written during these time periods. For example, the Victorian poet, Alfred Tennyson, diffused his concerns about constant change and expansion in The Lotos-Eaters, while the American writer, Washington Irving, to a fault expressed his concerns in Rip Van Winkle. An question of the poem, The Lotos-Eaters, and the short story, Rip Van Winkle, reveal that Tennyson and Irving romanticized the concept of stasis while also questioning the duty of change and expansion. In The Lotos-Eaters, Tennyson romanticizes personality in inn to emphasize the virtues of a land that remains in stasis as hostile to a land that is in constant change. When the mariners land on the island, its is expound as a land where all things always seemd the same (Tennyson 24). Tennyson is saying that the beauty of the island has been preserved because no one has act to change it. Tennyson is also saying that colonization and expansion lead to industry, which strips nature of its beauty. Furthermore, the atmosphere of the island is romanticized in that there is neither sharp sunlight nor crystallise moon, only the haze of a seemingly perpetual afternoon the atmospheric state itself is languid and the stream, not full and rushing but slender and slow, seems to unwrap in its fall from the cliff (Ryals 97). The idea of an island that remains constantly at the most pleasant time of day and a stream that is that moving romanticizes the idea of being at rest with no worries.