Transcript The Romantic spirit
1798
,
publication of the
Lyrical Ballads
The Romantic spirit
Performer - Culture & Literature
Marina Spiazzi, Marina Tavella, Margaret Layton © 2012
The Romantic spirit
1.
The word ‘Romantic
’
The Romantic Age
the period in which new ideas and attitudes arose in
reaction to the
dominant
18 th -century
ideals of order, calm, harmony, balance, rationality Caspar David Friedrich,
Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog,
1818
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The Romantic spirit
2.
Romanticism vs Enlightenment
• • • •
Enlightened trends
Emphasised reason and judgement.
Focused on society as a whole.
Followed authority.
Interested in science and technology.
• • • • •
Romantic trends
Emphasised imagination and emotion.
Valued individuals.
Looked for freedom.
Represented common people.
Interested in the supernatural.
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The Romantic spirit
3.
English Romanticism
English Romanticism
a revolt of the English imagination against the neoclassical reason.
influenced by the French Revolution and the English Industrial Revolution.
• • • The Romantics: expressed a
negative attitude towards the existing social or political conditions
; placed
the individual
argued that
poetry
at the
centre of art
should be ;
free from all rules
.
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The Romantic spirit
4.
The Romantics ’ key ideas
• • Focus on the beauties of
nature
, seen as a living being.
Use of creative
imagination
.
• • • Exaltation of
emotion
over reason and
senses
over intellect.
A
new view of the artist
as an individual creator. Fascination with the irrational, the
past
, the
mysterious, the exotic
.
John Constable,
The white horse,
1819, New York, Frick Collection
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The Romantic spirit
5.
The Romantic nature
• • • • • •
Opposed to reason
.
A
substitute for traditional religion
.
A vehicle for self-consciousness.
A
source of sensations
.
A provocation to a state of imagination and vision.
An expressive language
: natural images provide the poet with a way of thinking about human feelings and the self.
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J. M. Turner
, Landscape with Distant River and Bay
,
c. 1840 50; Musée du Louvre, Paris
The Romantic spirit
6.
The Romantic imagination
• A
creative power
superior to reason.
• Shaped the poets ’ fleeting visions into concrete forms. • A
dynamic
,
active
, rather than passive
power
. • Allows human beings to ‘read’
nature as a system of symbols
.
J.M.W. Turner,
Rain, Steam, and Speed – The Great Western Railway,
1844, London, The National Gallery
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The Romantic spirit
7.
The Lake poets
Wordsworth and Coleridge were known as Lake Poets because they lived together in the last few years of the 18 th century in the district of the great lakes in Northwestern England. In 1798, they published the
Lyrical Ballads ,
the manifesto of English Romanticism .
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The Romantic spirit
8.
The manifesto of English Romanticism
The Preface
to the
Lyrical Ballads 1798
The poet Themes Language
Linked to nature, emotions, feelings
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Interested in the lives of the humble Nature, memory, children Simple, common used to liberate imagination
The Romantic spirit
9.
The second generation of Romantic poets
• • • Percy B.
Shelley
, George
Byron
and John died very young and away from home;
Keats
experienced political disillusionment reflected in their poetry; were linked to individualism, escapism.
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The Romantic spirit
10.
The Romantics on nature
Wordsworth Coleridge NATURE Byron Shelley Keats
a source of joy inspiration and knowledge a mother and a moral guide a universal force the representation of God ’s will and love the companion of his loneliness the counterpart of his stormy feelings when it was violently upset a source of enjoyment and inspiration the creative mind benefits from the beauty of the natural landscape pervaded by a guiding power leading man to love a kind of muse to the poet ’s artistic quest
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The Romantic spirit
11.
The Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815)
• • • In the Napoleonic era: the British navy dominated the sea; the French army dominated the European continent; the great hero of the British navy was Admiral Horatio Nelson defeated the French-Spanish fleet off Cape Trafalgar on the Atlantic coast of southern Spain in 1805.
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The Romantic spirit
11.
The Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815)
The total defeat of Napoleon in 1815 at the battle of
Waterloo
in Belgium where the British troops, commanded by Arthur Wellesley, overcame the French.
Their consequences
1.
the acquisition of the Cape of Good Hope, Trinidad, Singapore, Ceylon and Malta was of strategic interest; 2.
enormous financial costs; 3.
Britain was on the verge of starvation, bankruptcy and evolution.
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The Romantic spirit
12.
The Luddites
Poverty Deteriorating working conditions Mechanical looms and spinners replacing skilled craftsmen led to outbursts of machine-breaking culminating in the ‘
Luddites Riots ’
of 1811-1812. They caused so much alarm that the government made machine-breaking punishable by death.
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The Romantic spirit
12.
The Luddites
In 1819, during a peaceful public meeting in Manchester, soldiers fired into a crowd and eleven people were killed the so-called ‘
Peterloo Massacre
’
.
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The Romantic spirit
13.
The Regency
The period between 1811 and 1820: the Regency.
The Prince Regent , later to become George IV, acted as monarch during the illness of his father George III (1760-1820). In 1830 William IV succeeded his brother and his short reign saw a new political awareness leading to the new age of reforms.
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