Transcript Introduction to the Romantic Age of English Literature

Introduction to the Romantic Age
of English Literature
Definition
• Contrary to what you may think,
the term Romanticism is not just
about romantic love (although love
is sometimes the subject of
romantic art).
Definition (continued)
• Romanticism is an
international artistic
and philosophical
movement that redefined the ways in
which humans in
Western civilization
thought about
themselves and their
world.
Historical Considerations
English Literary History
• Dates:
• English Literary History begins the Romantic
Period officially in 1798, with the publication
of Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and
Coleridge, and ends it in 1832, with the deaths
of Sir Walter Scott and the German Romantic
poet, Goethe.
Romanticism as an International
Movement
• Affected all of the arts (literature, music,
painting, philosophy)
• Began in the 1770s and extended through the
second half of the 19th century (1870).
Romanticism is characterized by these general features:
• Romanticism turned away from the eighteenth-century emphasis
on reason and artifice. Instead, the Romantics embraced
imagination and naturalness.
• Romantic-era poets rejected the public, formal, and witty works of
the previous century. They preferred poetry that spoke of personal
experiences and emotions, often in simple, unadorned language.
• The Romantics each used the lyric as the form best suited to
expressions of feeling, self-revelation, and the imagination.
• Wordsworth urged poets to adopt a democratic attitude toward
their audiences; though endowed with a special sensibility, the poet
was always "a man speaking to men ."
• Many Romantics turned to a past or an inner dream world that
they felt was more picturesque and magical than the ugly
industrial age they lived in.
• Most Romantics believed in individual liberty and sympathized with
those who rebelled against tyranny.
• The Romantics thought of nature as transformative; they were
fascinated by the ways nature and the human mind "mirrored" the
other's creative properties.
“The Age of Revolutions”
• Since the early Romantic period includes the
American (1776) and the French (1789) revolutions,
it has been called the “age of revolutions” (changes).
It was a time of massive energy (intellectual, social,
artistic). It set out to transform not only the theory
and practice of all art, but also the ways in which
human beings perceived the world. Some of its ideas
survive even to our present day.
The Role of Imagination
• Imagination now
replaces reason as the
supreme faculty of the
mind—hence the
flowering of creative
activity in this period.
For Romantic
thinkers, the
imagination was the
ultimate “shaping,”
or creative power,
the approximate
human equivalent to
divine creative
powers.
Imagination (continued)
• As the poet Wordsworth would suggest, humans
not only perceive and experience the world
around them; they also, in part, create it. The
imagination unites reason and feeling,
enabling humans to reconcile differences
and opposites—this reconciliation is a
central ideal for Romantics. Finally, the
imagination enables humans to “read “
nature as a system of symbols.
Nature
Celebration of Nature
• Nature often presented as a work of art
from the divine imagination
• Nature as a healing power
• Nature as a refuge from civilization
• Nature viewed as “organic,” (alive) rather
than “mechanical” or “rationalist”
• Nature viewed as a source of
refreshment and meditation
Nature VS Industry & Laissez Faire: The Industrial
Revolution was bringing about other changes:
•Goods that had been previously produced by
hand, were now being made in factories more
quickly and cheaply
•As factories were located in and near cities,
people seeking employment crowded into cities
and helped to cause overcrowding, pollution,
increases in crime
•Land that had been reserved for communal
farms, was divided, privatized, used for personal
hunting grounds or sold to industrialists to create
more factories
Continued
• Laissez Faire “let (people) do (as they please)”
is an economic policy which allows forces to
operate without government interference.
The result is the rich grow richer and the poor
suffer even more.
• Children are especially hard hit as they can be sold
to businesses: such as chimney sweepers and coal
mining companies.
• In 1802, the workday of a poor child was limited
to 12 hours
Symbolism and Myth
• Valued as the human means for imitating
nature in art
• Could simultaneously suggest many things in a
creative way
• Based on a desire to “express the
inexpressible” through the resources of
language
Emotion, Lyric Poetry, and the Self
• Greater emphasis on the importance of intuition,
instincts, and feelings
• Wordsworth’s definition of good poetry as “the
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” was a
turning point in literary history.
• Ultimate source of poetry found in the individual
artist and his/her traditions (present and past)
Value of the Written Art
• Source of illumination of the world within the self
• Led to a prominence for first-person lyric poetry;
the “speaker” became less a persona and more
the direct person of the poet. Ex. Wordsworth’s
Prelude and Whitman’s “Song of Myself”
• Also a wealth of autobiographical verse described
as poetry about someone else: Byron, Childe
Harold
Contrasts with Neoclassicism (the Age of
Reason)
• Shift in focus from rationalism to the
imagination
• Shift toward a more expressive orientation
toward the literary art
• Freedom of expression
• Freedom of the individual [and responsibility]
Individualism
• Summed up in opening statement of
Rousseau’s Confessions :
• “I am not made like anyone I have seen; I dare
believe that I am not made like anyone in
existence. If I am not superior, at least I am
different.”
The Romantic Hero
• As the Romantic writers
show us:
– 1. The hero as artist
– 2. The hero striving
beyond the moral
restrictions of society
– 3. The hero who
reappears from the
ancient classics
The Everyday and the Exotic
• Romantic writers embraced everyday realism
(poetry of Wordsworth)
• Also sought the folk legends of the past
• Promoted exotic ideas suggested by
technology and the imagination (a beautiful
soul in an ugly body, as in Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein or Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback
of Notre Dame).
The Romantic Artist in Society
• The Romantics were
often ambivalent
toward the “outside”
world. On the one
hand, they were socially
and politically
passionate—involved in
worthy causes and
social issues. On the
other hand, they
isolated themselves
from the public.
Human Rights
Environmental
Awareness
Spread of the Romantic Spirit
• All of the arts—from music, to painting; from
sculpture to architecture—were affected by
and continue to be affected by the
revolutionary energy underlying the Romantic
movement. Strains of Romanticism infuse
every age and every generation.
Works Cited
• Abrams and others. The Norton Anthology of
English Literature. 7th edition. NY: W. W.
Norton, 2000.
• http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/m
elani/cs6/rom.html