Transcript ROMANTICISM

ROMANTICISM
The Spirit of an
age
ROMANTIC PERIOD IN
ENGLISH LITERATURE:
1798-1830
1789 ? Songs of Innocence
1798 ? Lyrical Ballads
1800 ?
WORDSWORTH and
COLERIDGE TRIED TO
ARTICULATE THE SPIRIT
OF THE NEW POETRY IN
THE PREFACE TO
“LYRICAL BALLADS “
Wordsworth
Coleridge
“ LYRICAL
BALLADS”
THE MANIFESTO
OF THE
ROMANTIC
MOVEMENT
THE TERM “ROMANTICISM”
IS DIFFICULT TO DEFINE
FOR THE VARIETY OF
LITERARY ACHIEVEMENTS,
AND THE WRITERS OF THE
PERIOD WERE ONLY LATER
LABELLED “ROMANTIC.”
The period was
dominated by poetry
since it was the best
vehicle for the renewed
interest in imagination
and emotions.
POETRY WAS SEEN AS THE
“SPONTANEOUS OVERFLOW
OF POWERFUL FEELINGS”
THE ESSENCE OF POETRY
WAS THE EMOTIONS, &
IMAGINATION OF THE
POET (NOT THE OUTER
WORLD).
POETRY & THE POET
 FIRST-PERSON LYRIC POEM BECAME
THE MAJOR ROMANTIC LITERARY
FORM, WITH “I” OFTEN REFERRING
DIRECTLY TO THE POET
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF BECAME A MAJOR TOPIC OF
ROMANTIC POETRY.
 The poets began to give great
value to individual
consciousness, an interest in
psychological introspection
and meditation as a reaction
to the common sense and the
grow of a mass-society.
 POETS OFTEN SAW THEMSELVES AS
PROPHETS IN A TIME OF CRISIS,
REVISING THE PROMISE OF DIVINE
REDEMPTION IN TERMS OF A
“HEAVEN” ON EARTH.
POETIC SPONTANEITY,
FREEDOM
 INITIAL ACT OF POETIC COMPOSITION
MUST ARISE FROM IMPULSE
 A POET MUST BE FREE FROM THE RULES
INHERITED FROM THE PAST AND RELY ON
INSTINCT, INTUITION, & FEELING.
This spirit of revolt against all forms of
authority resulted in a kind of:
 TITANISM ( overstatement of passions)
 Exaltation of IRRATIONAL and MYSTIC
aspects of life and to a concern with the
SUPERNATURAL
 “ poetry for poetry’s sake”, a Greek ideal for
beauty
NATURE
 IMPORTANCE OF ACCURATE
OBSERVATION & DESCRIPTION OF
WILD NATURE, WHICH SERVES AS A
STIMULUS TO THINKING & TO THE
RESOLUTION OF PERSONAL
PROBLEMS & CRISES.
NATURE (cont.)
 LANDSCAPE WAS OFTEN GIVEN
HUMAN QUALITIES OR SEEN AS A
SYSTEM OF SYMBOLS REVEALING
THE NATURE OF GOD.
 NATURE WAS SEEN AS BRINGING
OUT HUMANITY’S INNATE
GOODNESS.
 Romantics see nature through lenses
of emotion, usually coloured with
melancholy.
 Nature is in contrast to the ugliness
of the towns of the time.
 Far from the pastoral conventions of
Augustan Age, it conveyed a new
sense of intimate communion
between nature and man.
The Romantic conception of nature was
influenced by 3 philosophical theories



Platonism or rather Renaissance
Neoplatonism, which saw this world as the
image of an ideal metaphysical world
Pantheism: Nature and the Universe is
moved by an immanent God, whose
presence is manifested in every stone and
tree.
German idealism: Fichte- Schelling- Hegel
regarded eternal reality as a sort of illusion
Shelling
 with his philosophy of art, seen as the
supreme moment when man, through
unconscious intuitions, can grasp the
truth behind reality, and his conception
of nature, seen as something alive,
sharing man’s own feelings, since they
are both driven by the same animating
principles.
GLORIFICATION OF THE
COMMONPLACE
 HUMBLE, RUSTIC SUBJECT MATTER &
PLAIN STYLE BECAME THE PRINCIPAL
SUBJECT & MEDIUM OF POETRY.
THE SUPERNATURAL &
STRANGE
 The universe was a living entity that could reveal
itself on two levels:
 The visible and the invisible ( the supernatural)
 MANY ROMANTIC POEMS EXPLORE THE REALM
OF MYSTERY & MAGIC; INCORPORATE
MATERIALS FROM FOLKLORE, SUPERSTITION,
ETC , OFTEN SET IN DISTANT OR FARAWAY
PLACES.
THE STRANGE
 RELATED TO THIS WAS A RENEWED
INTEREST IN THE MIDDLE AGES
(AND THE BALLAD FORM) AS A
BEAUTIFUL, EXOTIC, MYSTERIOUS
ERA.
THE STRANGE
 THERE WAS ALSO GREAT INTEREST IN
UNUSUAL MODES OF EXPERIENCE,
SUCH AS VISIONARY STATES OF
CONSCIOUSNESS, HYPNOTISM,
DREAMS, DRUG-INDUCED STATES, AND
SO FORTH.
INDIVIDUALISM
HUMAN BEINGS WERE SEEN:
 AS ESSENTIALLY NOBLE & GOOD
(THOUGH CORRUPTED BY SOCIETY)
 AS POSSESSING GREAT POWER &
POTENTIAL THAT HAD FORMERLY BEEN
ASCRIBED ONLY TO GOD.
INDIVIDUALISM
 THERE WAS A GREAT BELIEF IN DEMO-
CRATIC IDEALS, CONCERN FOR HUMAN
LIBERTY, & A GREAT OUTCRY AGAINST
VARIOUS FORMS OF TYRANNY.
INDIVIDUALISM
 THE HUMAN MIND WAS SEEN AS
CREATING (AT LEAST IN PART) THE
WORLD AROUND IT, AND AS HAVING
ACCESS TO THE INFINITE FACULTY
OF IMAGINATION.
INDIVIDUALISM
 MANY WRITERS DELIBERATELY ISOLATED THEMSELVES FROM SOCIETY
TO FOCUS ON THEIR INDIVIDUAL
VISION.( isolation in Nature)
 THEME OF EXILE WAS COMMON, THE
NON-CONFORMIST ROMANTICS WERE
OFTEN SEEN AS GREAT SINNERS OR
OUTLAWS .(revolt aganst society)
Striving for the infinite
 The desire to create myths
 The Romantics were aware that
the search for infinity was
destined to fail, but this
impossible task was the artist’s
mission
The language
 It should be written in a “selection of language
really used by men” instead of ”Artificial Diction“
 There was a return to earlier verse forms:
 Blank verse ( Wordsworth and Shelley):
unrhymed iambic pentameter
 The sonnet ( Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats)
 The Spenzerian Stanza ( Keats)
 The Italian Terza Rima ( Shelley)
 The Italian Ottava Rima ( Byron)
 The Folk ballad Stanza ( Keats, Coleridge)
There were several important differences
between first generation of Romantics and
the younger second generation:
Age and political convictions:
 Wordsworth and Coleridge were critical of many
existing social conventions
 Byron, Shelley and Keats were all exiles , exiled
from moral, social and political habits prevailing in
English life.
 The second generation kept their revolutionary
spirit to the end.
 Byron and Shelley thought that all authority
should be cast aside and leave man free . Keats
exiled more in spirit than in body, dedicated
himself to a search for timeless beauty
Before analyzing one of
Wordsworth’s poems:
DAFFODILS
 Let’s have a look at the video
Wordsworth : “ DAFFODILS”
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and
hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Wandered may suggest:
 The isolation and alienation of the poet
 it emphasize his loneliness, and how he
feels no connection with anyone around him
 That indicates that he didn't have a
destination or purpose , he was just
wandering about, almost as if in search of a
friend
A simile: “ as a cloud”
 Floating lonely as a cloud symbolizes a
separation from the natural world
 he states that he "floats on high o'er vales
and hills." ,he is far above the hills and
vales, not connected to them. He is apart
and separate, and not included.
 But also the union between man and nature
 Idea of freedom
 The habit to dream/ imagination
“When all at once I saw ….golden
daffodils”
 he re-establishes a connection with nature as he
moves through the field of daffodils
a crowd, a host….. Fluttering and dancing
 The daffodils are alive and personified endowed
with a life and a soul of their own
 They are able to feel joy and to transmit it
golden…..
 Giving them a higher connototion
“ A CERTAIN COLOURING OF IMAGINATION”
“ A CERTAIN COLOURING
OF IMAGINATION”
“ ordinary things should be
presented to the mind in an
unusual way”
“Beside the lake, beneath the
trees,”
 The daffodils are not described, but
the poet puts them in relationship
to nature
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
The thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
 Earth and heaven are united in the
beauty of the daffodils
 No more solitude, but a deep union
with nature
The waves beside them danced; but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
A poet could not but be gay,
 Only a poet can find himself in a state of
creative joy
 the importance of the poet's role in society
during the Romanticism period. Romantics
such as believed it was the poet's
responsibility to demonstrate humanity's
connection to nature and relay the message
to society.
I gazed—and gazed—…
 This repetition conveys the impression of
the poet breathless, unable to move in front
of such a beauty
…but little thought
 The thought came later
wealth
 = happiness with the contact with nature.
This joy is now the opposite of the
loneliness in the first stanza, his life is
awakened to new life by the daffodils
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils
when on my couch I lie
 When the poet sees the daffodils he little
tought what they meant to him.
 The thought came later, remembering the
daffodils and using imagination
 Only Imagination enables man to enter into
and give life and significance to the world
 When at home, in a pensive mood,
remembering the sensations felt, you are
able to feel emotions
LANGUAGE
 “ Language really used by men”
 In the first 3 stanzas he uses the past
simple, while in the last one he uses the
Present Simple.
 The change of tenses underlines the gap
between the past experience and its
remembrance in the poet’s ecstatic vision
WHAT IS POETRY?
 The spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings = emotions
 It comes from “ emotions
recollected in tranquillity”