the romantic period 1785-1830. monarchies and empires
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The Romantic Period
1785-1830
Monarchies and Empires
France: The House of Bourbon
France: The House of BourbonBourbon Dynasty
1643 - 1715 Louis XIV (the Sun King) 1715 - 1774 Louis XV (the Beloved)
1774 - 1792 Louis XVI
First Republic 1792-1804 [Louis XVII]Bonaparte Dynasty First Empire
1804-1815 Napoleon
Bourbon Dynasty Restored1815-1824 Louis XVIII
Spain: The House of Bourbon
Russia: The Romanovs
England: The House of Hanover
ROMANTIC REVOLUTIONS
American Revolution1775-1783
1763: Britain began to impose taxes upon the colonies which were viewed as illegal Broad intellectual and social shifts
republican ideals: liberty and rights as central values, makes the people as a whole sovereign, rejects aristocracy and inherited political power, expects citizens to be independent and calls on them to perform civic duties, and is strongly opposed to corruption.
liberal democracy: representative democracy (with free and fair elections) along with the protection of minorities, the rule of law, a separation of powers, and protection of liberties (thus the name liberal) of speech, assembly, religion, and property.
Colonies’ alliance with France 1776: Declaration of Independence 1787: Constitution and Bill of Rights
Tom Paine1737-1809
Quaker Met Ben Franklin in London –
who advised him to move to America
1776: Common Sense: attacked British monarchy and argued for American independence
1787: Returned to Britain 1791: The Rights of Man: proposed
universal male suffrage, progressive taxes, family allowances, old age pensions, maternity grants and abolition of House of Lords
1792: Became a French citizen and elected to National Convention – opposed execution of Louis XVI
1794: Age of Reason: questioned truth of Old Testament and Christianity
1802: returned to America Auguste Milliere, Thomas PaineNational Portrait Gallery, London
French Revolution and Napoleon1789-1815
1789: Fall of Bastille and Declaration of the Rights of Man 1792: September Massacres of imprisoned nobility 1793: The Reign of Terror
Execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette France declared war against Britain
1794: Fall of Robespierre 1804: Napoleon crowned Emperor of France 1815: Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo
Jean-Pierre Louis Laurent Houel (1735-1813), Prise de la Bastille ("The storm of the Bastille").
Eugene DelacroixLiberty Leading the People
1812: Napoleon in his study
1800: Napoleon at St. Bernard 1804: The coronation
Images of NapoleonByJacques LouisDavid
1797:The Young General
Jacques Louis David, 1805-07 The coronation of the Emperor Napoleon I
Edmund Burke1729-97
Anglo-Irish statesman and philosopher
1756: A Vindication of Natural Society: A View of the Miseries and Evils Arising to Mankind: treatise on anarchy
1757: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful: treatise on aesthetics
1765-94: Whig member of House of Commons
Opposed absolute monarchy and supported American colonies against the king
1790: Reflections on the Revolution in France: saw French Revolution as a violent rebellion against tradition which would end in disaster.
Joshua Reynolds, Edmund BurkeScottish National Portrait Gallery
Mary Wollstonecraft
1759-97
Professional writer, philosopher and feminist
1790: Vindication of the Rights of Men: response to Burke in defense of the ideals of the French Revolution
1792: A Vindication of the Rights of Women
1794: An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution
1796: Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
1797: married William Godwin
Died of childbirth fever 1798: William Godwin
published Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Official British Reaction to the French Revolution
Curtailment of civil liberties and harsh repression suspension of the writ of habeus corpus advocates of political change charged with
treason 1791: Rejection of a bill to abolish the slave
trade 1793: declaration of war against France
Napoleonic Wars1805-1815
William Sadler, The Battle of Waterloo
Industrial Revolution
Power-driven machinery replaced hand labor 1765: James Watt – the steam engine
Industry moved from homes and workshops to factories
Population moved from agricultural countryside to industrial cities
Enclosure of “commons” into privately owned estates
Laissez faire economic policy – free operation of economic laws –governmental non-interference 1776: Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
CLASSICISM vs. ROMANTICISM
Neo-Classicism vs Romanticism
Greek/Roman influence Emphasis on Society Age of Reason
Rationality Philosophy Deism
Euro-centric Cities Enlightenment
Science
Medieval/Oriental influence Emphasis on Individual Age of Passion
Emotion Imagination Spirituality
Interest in the Exotic Nature: pastoral and wild Revolution
Social Justice
NATURENeo-Classical Romantic
Universal Subject to human control Gardens Source of peace and
tranquillity Untamed nature:
dangerous/evil
Particular Beyond human control Mountains, oceans,
forests Source of inspiration and
spirituality Untamed nature:
exhilarating/sublime
Gainsborough, St James Park
Friedrich, Solitary Tree
LOVENeo-Classical Romantic
Universal Subject to human control Marriage
Social Contract Economic Contract Attraction between social
and intellectual equals Source of peace and
tranquillity
Particular Beyond human control Passion
Individual choice Search for soul-mate Forbidden attractions:
social, exotic, incestual Source of inspiration,
exhilaration and despair
Gaspar NetscherA Musical Evening
Caspar David Friedrich, Woman at Sunrise
William BlakeThe Enslavement of Experience
The Transcendance of Imagination
Neo-Classical
Artist Social Arbiter of Taste Elitist Moral Intellectual Critic
Louis Michel van Loo Portrait of Diderot
Romantic Artist
Loner Unconventional Amoral Genius Prophet
George Gordon Lord Byron
Lyric Poetry Search for an authentic language of feeling rather than
artifice Wordsworth: “the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings recollected in tranquility” 1st person voice of the poem – during this period usually
associated with the poet – sometimes biographical and confessional
Revived older poetic forms: blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter the sonnet the ballad the ode
The Poet as Rock Star
Keats Coleridge
WordsworthByron
Shelley
The Poet as Rock Star
Leopardi Heine
PushkinNovalis
Romantic Prose Genres
Literary criticism The Novel
Historical novels Novels of manners Novels of sensibility Gothic novels
Autobiography
Literary Criticism Literary critics became
the arbiters of taste Debate over the artistic
value as well as the utilitarian value of critical literature
1802: Edinburgh Review
1809: Quarterly Review
William Hazlitt
Charles Lamb
Thomas DeQuincy
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Historical Novels
Novels that reconstruct a past age, often when two cultures are in conflict
Fictional characters interact with with historical figures in actual events
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) is considered the father of the historical novel: The Waverly Novels (1814-1819) and Ivanhoe (1819)
Jane Austen and the Novel of Manners
Novels dominated by the customs, manners, conventional behavior and habits of a particular social class
Often concerned with courtship and marriage
Realistic and sometimes satiric Focus on domestic society rather
than the larger world Other novelists of manners:
Anthony Trollope, Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Margaret Drabble
Novels of Sentiment Novels in which the characters, and thus the
readers, have a heightened emotional response to events
Connected to emerging Romantic movement Laurence Sterne (1713-1768):
Tristam Shandy (1760-67) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832):
The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) Francois Rene de Chateaubriand (1768-1848):
Atala (1801) and Rene (1802) The Brontës: Anne Brontë Agnes Grey (1847)
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847), Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847)
Laurence Sterne bySir Joshua Reynolds
The BrontësCharlotte (1816-55), Emily (1818-48), Anne
(1820-49) Wuthering Heights and Jane
Eyre transcend sentiment into myth-making
Wuthering Heights plumbs the psychic unconscious in a search for wholeness, while Jane Eyre narrates the female quest for individuation
Brontë.info: website of Brontë Society and Haworth Parsonage
The Victorian Webportrait by Branwell Brontë of his sisters,
Anne, Emily, and Charlotte (c. 1834)
Gothic Novels
Novels characterized by magic, mystery and horror
Exotic settings – medieval, Oriental, etc. Originated with Horace Walpole’s Castle
of Otranto (1764) William Beckford: Vathek, An Arabian
Tale (1786) Anne Radcliffe: 5 novels (1789-97)
including The Mysteries of Udolpho Widely popular genre throughout Europe
and America: Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland (1798)
Contemporary Gothic novelists include Anne Rice and Stephen King
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
1797-1851 Inspired by a dream in reaction to a
challenge to write a ghost story
Published in 1817 (rev. ed. 1831)
A Gothic novel influenced by Promethean myth
The first science fiction novel
Autobiography The term was first used by the poet Robert Southey
in 1809 in the English periodical Quarterly Review Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions
(1781-88) Dorothy Wordsworth, The Grasmere Journals
(1799+) Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an Opium
Eater, 1822 Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of rederick
Douglass, An American Slave, (1845)