Romanticism

Historical and Social BackgroundThe industrial townThe industrial town

The industrialization changed radically the landscape of Great Britain. In the first half of the XIX century the Midlands had already gained the name of “nack country”. It was an area of gloomy buildings, small towns full of smoke, streets that created a sense of confusion and dismay and canals to which the railway was added.The Industrial Revolution caused an uncontrolled growth of the city. Small towns called “mushroom towns” were constructed for the workers. They were called in this way because they sprang up suddenly and multiplied rapidly around the factories.For workers, living in the city meant long working hours and appalling living conditions. Industrial cities lacked elementary public services (water supply, sanitation, street-cleaning, open spaces). The air and the water were polluted by smoke and filth. The houses, built in endless rows, were over crowded.

BRITISH SOCIETY

POLITICAL REFORMS

Prosperity and confidence in 1700’sAmerican and French revolutionsdisappointment in bitter and violent ends - NapoleonIndustrial Revolutiondirty, unorganized cities emergehuge class shift

British Society• The population was

divided into three social classes:THE LANDOWNERS AND ARISTOCRACY:

this class had ruled the country for centuries and held most of the wealt.THE BUSINESSMEN AND INDUSTRIALISTS:

thanks to their hard work the british economy was thriving.THE MASSES: they worked in the factories and were poor.

Historical and Social Background

Political Reforms

The Factory Act of 1833 limited working hours and children under nine could not work.

In 1825 Trade Unions were recognized.Factory owners formed their own associations

Businessmen and industrialists were given the vote in 1832. A police force was established in 1829. A local government was established in every town. A system of national primary education was set up in

1834.Historical and Social

Background

The French Revolution• as the French Revolution started, the whole

idea of nationalism changed, and so did the romantic view; it consisted then in self-determination and a pride in the national origins and unity; they said that every human being should be pride of his origins and nation, but at the same time he should develop as an individual; they claimed that there should be a balance in the development of each person between the common interest of the nation and his own personal goals

• the accent was put on the national history and folklore, and furthermore, the values of tradition and customs were put at the center of the romantic movement

• inspired by this view upon the country, the peoples of Europe had the power to redraw the map of their continent and free themselves

English Romanticism can be understood as a return to Renaissance (to  the poetry of Spencer, Shakespeare and Milton). This return is anticipated by Cowper, Gray, Collins and Thomson.•CHARACTERISTICS:- Revival of instinctual life (reason was not so important).- The search of the love and the beauty.- Importance of Revolutions (American, French, the figure of Napoleon).- New role of imagination.- The realization of the sublime, the half way between real and supernatural world, time and space.- Nature as a source of inspiration.- Revaluation of myths.- Philosophers: J.J Rousseau is the first to use the word “romantique” in one of his works (“Reveries du promemuer solitaire”). Romance has french origins. Schlegel used the word “romantisch” speaking about creativity and sentimental themes, in a critic work “Sturm und Drang” (in English: “Storm and Stress”, in which  there is an exaltation of nature, uniqueness and freedom of the individual, ideal of genius).

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Selected Works & Analysis of

• FIRST GENERATION

• SECOND GENERATION

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• WILLIAM BLAKE

•WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

•SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE

Romantic Poets

William BlakeBlake’s life was spent in rebellion and the

restrictive influences of institutions such as government and the church. Blake was

aware of the negative effects of the rapidly developing industrial

and commercial society.

“The Lamb” And

“The Tyger” Menu Poets

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven

in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.”

William Blake was born in London, where he spent most of his life. His father was a successful London hosier and attracted by the doctrines of Emmanuel Swedenborg. Blake was first educated at home, chiefly by his mother. His parents encouraged him to collect prints of the Italian masters, and in 1767 sent him to Henry Pars' drawing school. From his early years, he experienced visions of angels and ghostly monks, he saw and conversed with the angel Gabriel, the Virgin Mary, and various historical figures. Independent through his life, Blake left no debts at his death on August 12, 1827. He was buried in an unmarked grave at the public cemetery of Bunhill Fields.

- Auguries of InnocenceWilliam Blake

Back to Index Onward to ByronAnalysis of“Auguries of Innocence”

“Auguries of Innocence”Full Poem

The Lamb and The Tyger

Blake wrote two books: “ Songs of Innocence”and “Songs of Experience”.

In “The Lamb” from the Songs of Innocence Blake presented with an image of a gentle, benevolent, loving God.

In “The Tyger” from Songs of Experience, God is vindictive and terrifying.

I travelled among unknown men, In lands beyond the sea;

Nor England did I know till then,What love I bore to thee.

'Tis past, that melancholy dream!Nor will I quit thy shore

A second time, for still I seemTo love thee more and more.

Among thy mountains did I feelthe joy of my desire;

And she I cherished, turned the wheel,

Beside an English fire.Thy mornings showed, thy nights

concealedthe bowers where Lucy played;And thine is too the last green

fieldThat Lucy's eyes surveyed.

- I Travelled Among Unknown MenWilliam Wordsworth

William Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770, at Cockermouth on the River Derwent, in the heart of the Lake District that would come to be immortalized in his poetry. The son of a lawyer named John Wordsworth, he was the second of five children. His father was the personal attorney of Sir James Lowther, Earl of Lonsdale, the most powerful (and perhaps the most hated) man in the area. His first formal education was at Anne Birkett's school at Penrith, where one of his classmates was his future wife Mary Hutchinson. Wordsworth died on April 13, 1850.

Analysis of “I Travelled Among Unknown Men”

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Index

William WordsworthWilliam Wordsworth’s poetry emphasies the

value of childhood experience an the

celebration of nature. He glorifies the spirit

of man, living in armony with his

natural environment, far from the

spiritually bankrupt city. Him being

pantheistic identified the nature with god.

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud Menu Poets

Romanticism in Literature (cont.)

• There is pleasure in beauty, Wordsworth writes. And in this sense, poetry should gratify the senses.

• In striving to capture the eternal beauty, the poet gives rise to romantic expression in all human beings.

• Wordsworth is best known as a nature poet who found beauty, comfort and moral strength in the natural world. If he were alive today he would probably be a member of an organisation that campaigns to protect the evironment. For him the World of nature is free from corruption and stress, and offers man a means of escape from industrialised society.

Samuel T. ColeridgeColeridge’s poetry

often deals with the mysterious, the

supernatural and the extraordinary. While

Wordsworth looked for the spiritual in

everyday subjects, Coleridge wanted to

give the supernatural a colouring of everyday

reality.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Menu Poets

• Coleridge describes the natural and

supernatural events that occur

during the adventurous

voyage.The events of the poem take place in an eerie,

ghostly atmosphere and the reader often

feels he is moving from a real to an unreal world and

back again.

• GEORGE BYRON

• PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

• JOHN KEATS

Romantic Poets

George ByronByron was the

prototype of the Romantic poet. He

was heavily involved with contemporary

social issues. He like the heroes of his long narrative poems, was

a melancholy and solitary figure whose actions often defiend social convections.

Don Juan Menu Poets

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;

And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,That host with their banners at sunset were seen:

Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:

And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;

And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

- The Destruction of SennacheribGeorge Gordon Byron

The most notorious Romantic poet and satirist. Byron was famous in his lifetime for his love affairs with women and Mediterranean boys. He created his own cult of personality, the concept of the 'Byronic hero' - a defiant, melancholy young man, brooding on some mysterious, unforgivable in his past. Byron's influence on European poetry, music, novel, opera, and painting has been immense, although the poet was widely condemned on moral grounds by his contemporaries.Back to Index Onward to Poe Analysis of

“The Destruction of Sennacherib”

Don Juan• Don Juan is seduced by

the beautiful and older Donna Julia. She is typical of Byron’s splendid female

portraits: sensual and apparently innocent;

always on the verge of tears or ready to faint

and yet strong and aggressive. Above all,

she is much more intelligent and cunning than the average man (especially if he is a

husband). No character, not even Don Juan, is free of narrator’s irony.

I met a traveller from an antique landWho said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. . . Near them, on the sand,Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare.The lone and level sands far away.

- OzymandiasPercy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley was an English Romantic poet who rebelled against English politics and conservative values. Shelley was considered with his friend Lord Byron a pariah for his life style. He drew no essential distinction between poetry and politics, and his work reflected the radical ideas and revolutionary optimism of the era. Like many poets of his day, Shelley employed mythological themes and figures from Greek poetry that gave an exalted tone for his visions. Shelley died July 8, 1822.

Back to IndexOnward to

WordsworthAnalysis of “Ozymandias”

Percy Bysshe ShelleyShelley was the most revoluctionary and

non-conformist of the Romantic poet. He was

an individualist and idealist who rejected

the istitutions of, family,church,

marriage and the Christian faith and rebelled against all forms of tyranny.

Defence of Poetry Menu Poets

Defence of Poetry

• Defence of poetry contains some of the finest quotes about the anture of poetry and the role of the poet in the English language.

“A poet is the author to others of the highest wisdom, virtue, pleasure and glory”

John KeatsKeats’s life makes his literary achievements

even more astonishing. The main theme of his poetry is: the conflict betwenn

the real world of suffering, death and decay and the ideal

world of beauty, immagination and

eternal youth.

Ode on a Grecian Urn Menu Poets

Ode on a Grecian Urn• The Ode describes an ancient

greek urn decorated with classical motifs:A Dionysian festival with music and ecstatic dances, a piper under the trees in a pastoral setting, a young man in love pursuing a girl and almost reaching her, a procession of townspeople and priest leading a cow to the sacrifice.Keats is fascinated by the fact that art is able to present an ideal world because it can freeze actions and emotions: the lover depicted on the urn will never actually reach the girl he is following, the pipers will never end their song, the streets of the little town will always be desert and silent. The beauty of the girl, the ardent passion of her lover, the pleasure of the music and the boughs in bloom will never fade.

• Hugo was the one who wrote the literary manifesto of the romanticism in the preface to his tragedy called Cromwell

• he says that the new doctrine is the “liberalism in literature” and that “there are neither rules, nor models” for romantics

• as Hugo presents it, Romanticism evolves as an opposition to Classicism and Romantic Parnassianism, offering literature freedom of expression through the dismission of norms.

Hugo and the Romanticism

Classicism Romanticism

• presents an ideal, static,

objective world • has ideal categories and

eternal types of characters • has an abstract, equilibrated

and dominated by morals character

• simply observes the nature • preaches rationality • the rule of the 3 entities: of

time, space and plot     

• presents a universe determined by the movements of history, which is fantastical, subjective

• the nature overwhelms the character

• has a dynamic, sentimental hero, who is in a constant search for the absolute

• artists reinterpret the nature through their own subjectivity

• emphasizes sentiments, passions

• abolishes the rule of the 3 entities

Romantic character

• is an exceptional character put in exceptional situations(hero, genius)

• is confused, unsatisfied

• is continually fighting himself and his limits

• can belong to any social class

• has good and bad traits, like any human being

• the artist is the supreme being, who doesn’t have to comply to the rules

Characteristics

• promotes antithetical constructions, contrasts, extremes

• distinguishes artistic values in the less esthetical parts of reality and therefore anticipates the Symbolism which will found a true “esthetic of the ugly”

• symbols: the sky, the stars, the ocean, the sea, the lake, the spring, the woods

• rediscovers the folkloric creation, the history and the nature

• has a predilection for the fantastic, tragic, grotesque, macabre, mystery, occult, diseased and even satanic

• places the individual at the centre of all things, of life and of all experiences

Romanticism & painting

• Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People

Romanticism & sculpture

• François Rude, La Marseillaise

“Romantic”• From “Roman” – a poetic or prose heroic narrative, in late medieval literature• Term is revived to describe a “movement”or set of shared beliefs and themes…• …growing out of late 18th and early 19th C• …and present as a continuing influence or tendency

Four Principal Ideas• Nature• Equality/egalitarianism• Imagination • “Sensibility”

Nature• In Nature, Humanity is– Inspired– Informed– Redeemed– Transformed– Idealized

Equality• Egalitarian view of society• The “social union” among people• Nationalism (loyalty to “nation” v. “rulers”)• Revolution and reform• Humanity can be perfected

Sensibility”• Idealism• Intensity of emotions• Significance of actions• Worthiness of common person• Humanity’s best is glorified in the– Classical – Medieval

Imagination• Power of imagination to “transport”• Mind heals, condemns itself• Subjective nature of truth• Spontaneous response

Perhaps the most striking feature of the poets of the Romantic Movement is their attitude to nature. The solitude of real nature is alien, immeasurable, inhuman; the Romantic solitude is a vision of nature which reflects the solitude of the poet. The Romantic finds everywhere in nature his own image.-Stephen Spender

The [Romantic] poet. . .loves to escape from the heat and pressure of humanity, and so from himself as a social being, and to lose himself in the freedom of lonely places.- Joseph Warren Beach

What the Romantics beheld when they looked at life was a radical difference between the world of appearances and the world of reality. What seemed important in the world of appearances (the world as it looks to the ordinary man, the man of “common” sense) was revealed as unimportant or false when it was observed by the man of true imagination. ... Thus freed from unimaginative blindness, the Romantic saw Nature and Man in their true light, their essential character, and in their genuine worth. - Ernest Bernbaum

The most universal image [in Romantic poetry] is perhaps that of light, a fit symbol of spiritual illumination, of the transcendental vision, of the work of the imagination, of the ideal to which the poet aspires.- R.A. Foakes

Romanticism - Characteristics:

•The predominance of imagination over reason and formal rules

•Primitivism

•Love of nature

•An interest in the past

•Mysticism

•Interest in the Gothic

•Individualism

•Human rights

•Idealization of rural life

•Enthusiasm for the wild, irregular, Gothic or grotesque in nature

•Enthusiasm for the uncivilized or “natural”

Principles of Romanticism:

• Romanticism was a reaction against convention.• Romanticism asserted the power of the individual.• Romanticism reflected a deep appreciation of the

beauties of nature.• Romanticism emphasized the importance of the

subjective experience.• Romanticism was idealistic.

Romanticism was a reaction against convention:

• As a political movement, this reaction was reflected in the new democratic ideals that opposed monarchy and feudalism.

• In art, it meant a turn away from Neoclassicism and the ancient models of Greek perfection and Classical correctness.

• Philosophically, romanticism would contend with Rationalism—the belief that truth could be discerned by logic and reason.

Romanticism asserted the power of the individual:

• Romanticism marked an era characterized by an idealization of the individual.

• Politically, the movement influenced democratic ideals and the revolutionary principles of social equality.

• Philosophically, it meant that the idea of objective reality would give way to subjective experience; thus, all truth became a matter of human perception.

• In the art world, romanticism marked a fascination with the individual genius, and elevated the artist, philosopher, and poet above all others.

Romanticism reflected a deep appreciation of the beauties of

nature:• For the romantics, nature was how the spirit was revealed

to humankind.• The romantic philosophers believed in the metaphysical or

spiritual nature of reality.• They thought that a higher reality existed behind the

appearance of things in the physical world. • Nature appeared to people as a material reality; however,

because it evoked such strong feelings in humankind, it revealed itself as containing a higher, spiritual truth.

• Romantic artists tried to capture in their art the same feelings nature inspired in them.

Romanticism emphasized the importance of the subjective

experience:• The romantics believed that emotion and the senses could

lead to higher truths than either reason or the intellect could.

• Romantics supposed that feelings, such as awe, fear, delight, joy, and wonder, were keys that could unlock the mysteries of the world.

• The result was a literature that continually explored the inward experiences of the self.

• The imagination became one of the highest faculties of human perception, for it was through the imagination that individuals could experience transcendent or spiritual truths.

Romanticism was idealistic:

• On one hand, romanticism was philosophically rooted in idealism.

• Reality existed primarily in the ideal world—that is, in the mind—while the material world merely reflected that universe.

• In other words, the ideal world was “more real” than the real world.

• On the other hand, romanticism was literally idealistic; it tended to be optimistic in its outlook on life.

• Political and social romantics asserted that human beings could live according to higher principles, such as the beliefs in social equality, freedom, and human rights.

Philosophical Roots of Romanticism

• The French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778) argued that civilization was creating a race that was out of step with nature.

• Civilization stripped people of their natural instincts.

• “Everything is good when it leaves the creator,” he argued, “everything degenerates in the hands of men.”

• Rousseau believed human beings had innate intuitive powers; that is, they instinctively knew how to deal with the outside world.

• He felt that so-called “primitive” people, those who lived closer to and in harmony with nature, had a greater, more refined intuition than “civil” human beings.

• Rousseau believed that there were basic principles, such as liberty and equality, which were innate to human beings.

• Civilization and governments, however, had conditioned man to endure life without them.

• Rousseau’s ideas were influential to many, from the American and French revolutionaries to romantic writers.

• His ideas of nature and intuition were taken even further in the philosophy of Kant.

Philosophical Roots of Romanticism (cont.)

• Philosophy before Kant was largely based on rationalism and empiricism.

• Rationalism was the belief that knowledge of the world could be obtained only through reason.

• Reason could know reality independently from sense of experience; that is, logic, not emotion led to truth.

• Empiricism was the exact opposite. English philosophers, such as John Locke and David Hume, argued that sense was the only way of arriving at knowledge. To get at the truth, one had to go by experience—by scientifically weighing the evidence.

Romanticism in the Visual Arts

• In the visual arts, English artists such as J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) and John Constable (1776-1837) established the visual romantic genre through their landscapes of sea and countryside.

• Using rich, almost impressionistic colors and tones, they painted with a deep appreciation of the beauties of nature.

• Both reflected the contemporary literary and romantic movements in Europe.

• Their art conveyed the romantic ideal; that is, they supported the romantic belief that reflections on the beauty of nature could initiate a heightened personal awareness of the senses, and thus approach the spirit of the divine.

Romanticism in Literature

• In literature, romanticism was dominated by the English poets William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834).

• In 1798 Coleridge and Wordsworth published a joint volume of poetry called Lyrical Ballads and in doing so launched the English Romantic Movement.

Romanticism in Literature (cont.)

• In his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth professes all the basic principles of romanticism: he announces the break with tradition; he exults the power of the romantic poet to give voice to individual feeling; he speaks of the power of nature to show the way of the spirit; he praises the faculty of the imagination to give voice to the subjective experience; and he speaks of the ennobling effects poetry has on the moral condition of humankind.

Romanticism in Literature (cont.)

• Wordsworth felt the imagination could take the experiences of everyday men and women and turn them into art.

• By thus highlighting the ordinary, Wordsworth points to the deeper spirit that lives in all things; the problem, as he sees it, is that human habit has made these wonders too familiar.

• Unlike Coleridge, who saw the imagination as the “living power and prime agent of all human perception,” Wordsworth felt language and poetry were secondary to the actual experiences of human beings. In other words, it was the object of poetry to uncover these realities, not to pose as realities themselves.

• Wordsworth defends the romantic poet’s reliance on personal feelings and, like Rousseau, claims that human beings have become too distant from their nature.

• Civilization has stolen their insight into nature away. In other words, the over-stimulation of the senses (even in an age without video games) keeps men and women from appreciating the quiet beauty of nature, and with it the opportunity for meditative thought and introspection.

• “Voices and Visions”• “Literature and Anthology in the

English Language”

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