Transcript Diapositiva 1 - Liceo Classico Dettori

 The term Romanticism derives from the French word
romance which referred to the vernacular languages
derived from Latin and to the works written in those
languages.
 Also in England , in the Middle ages, there were cycles of
“romances” dealing with the adventures of knights and
containing supernatural elements.
 Throughout the 18th century “romantic” was used to
describe the picturesque in the landscape. Gradually the
term came to be applied to the feeling the landscape
created in the observer, and generally to the evocation of
subjective and incommunicable emotions.
THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONS
The period from the declaration of American Independence (1776)
to 1830 was marked by great revolutions:
•The Industrial Revolution reshaped the social and political
background of Britain in fact the British colonies on the other side
of the Atlantic became a new and free nation; steam engines
increased production, steam locomotion on the railways distributed
the coal and iron, steam resulted in the change of location of
industry. The Industrial Revolution resulted in the rise of a middleclass business interest. They wanted more political power in order
to inf luence economic policy towards free trade and against the
protection of old industries like agriculture.
•The French Revolution spread its ideas of freedom and equality all
over Europe. English liberals approved of the attack on the
Catholic absolute monarchy. However, as a result of the Terror
support of the French Revolution, many former radicals became
conservative.
 At the end of the 18th century a new sensibility became
dominant which came to be known in literature as
“Romanticism”and presented itself as a reaction against the faith
in reason that had characterised the previous age, promoting
instead the supremacy of feelings and emotions.
 There was a great interest in humble and everyday life and in the
country as a place where man’s relationship with nature was still
intact , as opposed to the industrial town.
 A new taste for the desolate , the love of ruins, such as ancient
castles and abbeys came out to contrast the present reality. A
new interest in the popular traditions of the Middle Ages was
revealed in the so-called “Gothic Vogue”, that is the interest in
what was wild, irrational, supernatural , horrific.
 Nature was no longer seen as a philosophical idea,
something which man could rule by reason; slowly it
came to be felt as a real living being to be described as
it actually was.
 Nature was considered as a living force, as the
expression of God in the universe. It was the main
source of inspiration, a stimulus to thought, a source
of comfort and joy.
 Imagination gained a key role as a means of giving
expression to emotional experience not strictly
accountable to reason.
 The willingness to explore less conscious aspects of
feeling was accompanied by a serious concern about
the experience of childhood.
 In a romantic mind a child was purerer than grown-up
people because he was unspoilt by civilisation. His
uncorrupted sensitiveness brought him closer to God
and the sources of creation, therefore childhood was
admired and cultivated.
 Great emphasis was placed on the significance of the individual.
The Augustans had seen man as a social animal, in his
relationship with his fellows. The Romantics saw the individual
essentially in the solitary state; they exalted the atypical, the
outcast, the rebel.
 This attitude led ,on the one hand, to the cult of the hero- the
rebel in Coleridge, the Byronic hero, and on the other hand to
the view of society as an evil force.
 The current of thought represented by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(1712-1778) encouraged the notion that the conventions of
civilisation represented intolerable restrictions on the individual
personality and produced every kind of corruption and evil.
Consequently natural behaviour, unrestrained and impulsive, is
good, in contrast to behaviour which is governed by reason, and
by the rules and customs of society.
 Rousseau’s theories also influenced the “cult of the exotic”,
that which is far away both in space and in time. The
remote and the unfamiliar in custom and social outlook
was welcomed.
 The remotest parts of Europe and the Far East had the
appeal of being strange and unpredictable; danger and
disaster, adventure and the inexplicable became symbols
for other modes of human experience.
 The “noble savage” concept is specifically a Romantic one:
the savage may appear primitive, but actually he has an
instinctive knowledge of himself and of the world often
superior to that which has been acquired by civilised man.
 Romanticism in Europe developed in different ways and times
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according to the cultural, social and political situations of each
country.
In Germany, anticipated by the Sturm und Drang movement of
the 1770s, the romantic ideas of Schlegel appeared on the pages
of the review “Das Athenaum” in 1798;
In England, “The Lyrical Ballads” ( 1800)by William Wordsworth
and S. T. Coleridge were published. These contained a Preface by
Wordsworth which is considered the Manifesto of English
Romantic Poetry.
“De l’Allemagne “ (1810) by Mme De Stael, spread the romantic
principles in France , and the
“Lettera Semiseria” (1816) by Giovanni Berchet marked the
official beginning of the Romantic movement in Italy.
 English Romanticism saw the prevalence of poetry, which
best suited the need to give expression to emotional
experience and individual feelings.
 Imagination gained a primary role in the process of poetic
composition. The eye of the imagination allowed the
Romantic poets to see beyond surface reality and
apprehend a truth beyond the powers of reason.
Imagination allowed the poet to re-create and modify the
external world of experience.
 The poet was seen as a “visionary prophet” or a “teacher”
whose task was to mediate between man and nature, to
point out the evils of society, to give voice to the ideals of
beauty, truth and freedom.
 Breaking free from models and rules, the Romantic
poets searched for a new, individual style through the
choice of a language and subject suitable to poetry.
 More vivid and familiar words began to replace the
artificial circumlocutions of 18th century diction;
syntax made less concessions to the demands of rhyme
and metre ; symbols and images lost their decorative
function to assume a vital role as the outer, visible
vehicles of the inner visionary perceptions.
 As for verse form, there was a return to past forms such
as the ballad, the Italian terza rima and ottava rima,
the sonnet and blank verse
 He was born in London in 1757. Trained as an engraver
he practised this craft until his death. A political
freethinker, he supported the French Revolution. He
witnessed the evil effects of industrial development on
man’s soul and for him the role of the artist was to be
the guardian of the spirit and imagination.
 The most important literary influence in his life was
the Bible, because it presented a total vision of the
world and its history. He is considered the forerunner
of the Romantic Movement because he rejected
neoclassical literary style and themes.
 The great English Romantic Poets are usually grouped into two generations:
 The first generation, often called “The Lake poets”, included W. Wordsworth
and S.T. Coleridge. They were characterised by the attempt to theorise about
poetry. Wordsworth would write on the beauty of nature and ordinary things
with the aim of making them interesting for the reader; Coleridge instead,
should deal with visionary topics, the supernatural, and mystery;
 The second generation were George Gordon Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and
John Keats. They all died very young and away from home, in Mediterranean
countries. They experienced political disillusionment which is reflected , in
their poetry, in the clash between the ideal and the real. Poetry was no longer
regarded as an imitation of life, but coincided with the desire to challenge the
cosmos, nature, political and social order. Individualism as well as the
alienation of the artist from society, were stronger in this generation and found
expression in the different attitudes of the three poets: the anti-conformist,
rebellious and cynical attitude of the Byronic Hero,; the revolutionary spirit
and stubborn hope of Shelley’s Prometheus and, finally, Keats’s escape into the
world of classical beauty