One literary movement that helped inspire “Thanatopsis” is <a data-internal-link data-link-type="Literary Device" href="https://www.supersummary.com/romanticism/">Romanticism</a>, which affected literature, painting, music, and other arts during the late 18th to mid-19th centuries. Some characteristics of Romanticism include its profound appreciation of nature’s beauty, its examination of humanity, and its search for transcendent or sublime experiences that fill the observer with awe. “Thanatopsis” embodies several elements of Romanticism. The poem celebrates nature as a repository of wisdom—it is there to cater to human emotions by reacting appropriately to times of happiness and sadness, decorate their world before and after death, to teach them the right way to view mortality, and to become the great tomb for humankind. The poem’s repeated attempts to quantify and describe the uncountable number of dead that the earth is home to is a way to evoke the sublime—in this case, the poet wants his reader to be awed by the sublimity of seeming infinity. At the same time, Bryant is also drawing on another, more loosely organized literary movement: an offshoot of Romantics nicknamed the Graveyard Poets. Writers in this grouping largely focused on death and its physical manifestations, dwelling on the idea of human life as transitory and on the inevitability of death.

Literary Context

Historical Context

Literary Area of Study

American Literature

Society

Community

Book Events

Earth Day

Values & Ideas

Fate

Life & Time

Mortality & Death

Required Reading Lists

Literary Movement

Romanticism / Romantic Period

Poetry

Romantic Poetry

Natural World

Science & Nature

Short Poems

William Cullen Bryant

Adult

Poem

Fiction

Guide

Study Guide

title

content

Overview

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Thanatopsis

Background

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