Romantic Poetry

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

Introduction:

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

•Where did it come from?

•What is it?

•Why was it appealing?

•Why is it still relevant today?

Where Did it Come From?

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

•Printing Press 1450

•Leads to more demand for literacy

•More Literacy means more people who are educated

•This leads to a movement known as the Enlightenment

The Enlightenment:

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

•Rejection of the social status quo – people begin questioning everything from power struggles to human existence on earth

•People began to use reason to understand humanity and not simply accept the way things were

•Leads to revolutionary thoughts

•French Revolution 1789-1799 – rejection of the absolute monarchy by the lower class

The Enlightenment:

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

•The Enlightenment and French Revolution built on the notion of the natural order

•That is, where does one fit on earth?

•Most people have always believed in some kind of natural order, but now people began to question where they fit in it.

•Great Chain of Being is one example of the natural order

The Enlightenment:

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

•According to Ian Johnston people have always believed that:“The Earth and everything on it, including human beings, were part of that universal order. And the major purpose of human life was to recognize or learn something about that given order and to live one's life in accordance with it. Of course, there [have always been] competing visions of what that given order might be and about how we come to know enough about it in order to derive a sense of purpose about our lives. Some argued, as we know, that divine revelation in the Bible, as interpreted by the Roman Catholic Church, was the only true source of knowledge about the order of world; others argued that reasoned inquiry through deduction provided the only reliable sense of how the world was; still others argued for observation and experiment; and still others argued that tradition was the surest knowledge about the world and human purposes in it. Some stated that the order of the world was entirely mechanical, others that it was primarily spiritual. And so on.”

Where Did it Come From?

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•For many of the Romantics, their movement was a rejection of this concept of the natural order.

•They felt the concept of a natural order was meaningless

•They felt the world had no order to be discovered and that order was simply imposed on the world by humans in an effort to understand it.

Where Did it Come From?

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

•This imposition of order, however, was a creative act

•“It was a product of the creative powers of the mind transforming the given chaos of the world into an emotionally coherent vision. It was, above all, an imaginative act.” (Johnston)

Where Did it Come From?

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

•Another way to think of this is to consider a quotation from George Elliot’s Middlemarch:“An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me this pregnant little fact. Your pier-glass or extensive surface of polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that little sun. It is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially, and it is only our candle which produces the flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with an exclusive optical selection. These things are a parable. The scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person now absent.” (Chapter 27)

•The scratches are random, but only when you begin to examine them closely and imaginatively do you find, or make, order. This is creativity.

Where Did it Come From?

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

•Or think back to Hamlet when he is speaking to the players:

Suit the action to the word, theword to the action; with this special o'erstep notthe modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone isfrom the purpose of playing, whose end, both at thefirst and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, themirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature,scorn her own image, and the very age and body ofthe time his form and pressure. (Shakespeare 3.2.18-25)

Where Did it Come From?

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

•Or when Hamlet is speaking to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and he says:

There is / nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it / so (2.2.268-270).

•According to the Romantics, everything in life is based on the Ways of Knowing we have and the reality we construct.

How We Know - Epistemology

Reason

Em

otion

Perception

Lang

uage

Areas of KnowledgeAreas of Knowledge

The

Arts

Eth

ics

His

tory

Hum

an

Sciences

Natural

Sciences

Math

You

Where Did it Come From?

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

•The “big six” male poets:

William Blake (1757-1827)

Where Did it Come From?

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

•The “big six” male poets:

William Wordsworth

(1770-1850)

Where Did it Come From?

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

•The “big six” male poets:

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

(1772-1834)

Where Did it Come From?

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

•The “big six” male poets:

George Gordon Byron VI

(or Lord Byron) (1788-1824)

Where Did it Come From?

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

•The “big six” male poets:

Percy Bysshe Shelley

(1792-1822)

Where Did it Come From?

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•The “big six” male poets:

John Keats (1795-1821)

Where Did it Come From?

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•The “big six” male poets never met together and, if they had, would probably not have been friends.

•They were very different in temperament, preoccupation, and sensibility, not to mention the generation gap that would have kept them apart.

•Most of them would have rejected the term “romantic” – it was simply applied to them.

•It was the “line of attack” that unified them.

What is it?

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•Romantic Era poetry seeks to find order in the world and considers this search to be a creative act.

•But this is something you must do on your own. If you simply adopt someone else’s view of the illumination of the world, you will be spiritually dead.

•This is where the Romantics differ from the Enlightenment thinkers – they believe in the power of imagination over reason.

Why Was it Appealing?

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

•Since imagination was the new way to interpret the world, and creative imagination was the only true source of finding order in the world, the poet, rather than the philosopher or theologian became the interpreter of the world.

•This also meant that anyone who had imaginative powers could take charge of their own lives and find meaning. They no longer had to rely on others (i.e. religious figures) to tell them their place and meaning.

Why Was it Appealing?

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

•Yet for those in power, they began to view “poets” as a threat. They felt that they were anti-social and trying to bring society to a ruin.

•The Tragically Hip summarize this in their song “Poets”:

Don't tell me what the poets are doing , Don't tell me that they're talkin' tough. Don't tell me that they're anti-social Somehow not anti-social enough.…Don't tell me what the poets are doing ,Those Himalayas of the mind. Don't tell me what the poets been doing In the long passes over time. …Don't tell me what the poets are doing On the street and the epitome of vanity. Don't tell me how the universe is altered When you find out how he gets paid.

Why Was it Appealing?

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

•The romantics believed that a better world was possible and, moreover, that it could be attained not in the afterlife, but in the real, material world that they inhabited.

•They believed in a promised land that could be reclaimed from the fallen world, here and now – or at least in the very near future.

Suffering

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•Everyone in life suffers, and until the Romantics presented new ideas about suffering, most people resigned to the story of Job to know why humans had to suffer.

•Why do you believe we suffer? Is it necessary?

Why Was it Appealing?

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

•To that extent, there is something very unconventional about their poetry; it undermines the central tenets of Christian theism in the hope that we need not wait until the afterlife to experience a promised land.

•Many of the Romantics, particularly Wordsworth, believed in the redemptive potential of the human mind.

Why Was it Appealing?

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

•Many believed the aspirations for human salvation must be rooted firmly in human suffering – that is, you must suffer in order to find the promised land even on earth.

Why Was it Appealing?

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

•Although it is difficult to find solid connections with the big six, there are distinctive points that bind them together.

•For example, the unquenchable aspiration for universal betterment and the reclaiming of paradise.

•In order to reclaim paradise, many romantic writers looked to nature and the natural elements to find their paradise on earth.

•They called for a return to nature.

Why is it Still Relevant?

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

•The idea of a return to nature has influenced the way we raise our children to this day.

•Wordsworth, more than anyone else, put forward the notion that the best gift we can give to our children is a host of joyous young memories especially memories of nature which will guide them throughout life.

•This idea is found in our education systems where outdoor play and exploration of parks is still encouraged.

Why is it Still Relevant?

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

•Even as adults, we enjoy nature and vacations.

•Often we feel the need to “get away from it all” and go to a beach or the cottage. These, in essence, are returns to nature.

Conclusion

Mr. MehrotraENG 4U0

•In our world of instant messaging and gratification, the idea of a return to nature often seems unnecessary.

•However, we all crave simplicity and nature in our lives (i.e. vacations)

•This is yet another point of studying literature and poetry: it reminds us what is truly important while attempting to discover what it means to be human.