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Tenets Of Romanticism In William Woodsworth's The Solitary Reaper

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Analysis of “The Solitary Reaper”
The poem “The Solitary Reaper” by William Woodsworth exemplifies Romanticism through the observations of a traveler. Several tenets of Romanticism are expressed such as the appreciation of nature, isolation, simplicity, and the importance of feeling something through a traveler’s account and appreciation of the song of the reaper. Woodsworth supports these tenets of Romanticism through the connection of the reaper to nature and her lonely and simple life using imagery, metaphor, diction and rhyme scheme and the emotions displayed by the traveler through tone and tone shifts.
The speaker compares the reaper’s singing to two birds, a nightingale and a cuckoo-bird, to show the extent of his praise for the reaper’s singing. He describes her singing as “No Nightingale did ever chaunt / More welcome notes to weary bands” (9-10) and “A voice so thrilling ne 'er was heard / In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,” (13-14). The speaker repeats the metaphor of comparing her singing to a bird to emphasize a connection between the reaper and nature as represented by the birds. Through this characterization, the speaker demonstrates that a person living a life …show more content…

In the first stanza, the speaker repeats several synonyms of isolation such as “single”, “solitary”, and “alone” and states that she was “singing by herself” (1-6). Despite being so lonely, the reaper sung to herself a beautiful song as the speaker indicates through his praiseful tone. Through her loneliness, the reaper is able to better interact with nature as she is not affected by outside influences such as society and mankind. The speaker acknowledges this and the importance of her isolation to the beauty of her song as he observes her distantly and warns the reader to not interrupt her (4). By emphasizing her loneliness, Woodsworth is demonstrating another tenet of Romanticism, the importance of isolation in connecting with

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