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).

•WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

•SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE

Romantic Poets

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.

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.

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.

• 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

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.

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.

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.

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

• 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”

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 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

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 egalitarian

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.

Romanticism was egalitarian

• The Romantics believed that all men were created equal and that their experiences had equal or universal merit

• The Romantics believed that people in society had certain rights to health and freedom and should be treated equally

• They believed in the “social union” among people, that there should be no seperation based on race, creed, or power.

• Nationalism (loyalty to “nation” v. “rulers”)

• Revolution and reform, humanity can improve itself both individually and collectively

• Humanity can be perfected