Transcript Introduction to the Romantic Movement

The Romantic Movement
1798 - 1832
The Romantic focus on the imagination
was a direct reaction to eighteenthcentury rationalism, and specifically
against the French Revolution and the
Industrial Revolution.
The Major Romantic Poets:
1. William Blake
2. William Wordsworth
3. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
4. Percy Bysshe Shelley
5. Lord Byron
6. John Keats
The Romantic Movement, #1
Concern for human society marks the early English
Romantics, who describe a time when England will
be free from oppression and injustice, and all men
will enter into a new age and a new heaven on earth.
Some poets despise the ugliness of the expanding
urban poverty and urges a return to a spiritual home
in nature. They question conventions and authority
in order to imagine a better, fairer and healthier
way to live. Focus upon personal and spiritual
emancipation/freedom.
The Romantic Movement, #2
Romantic poetry frequently focuses on
images of nature, which is viewed as a force
that expresses sympathy with human beings.
Nature was believed to be our “spiritual
home.”
Romanticism also features melancholy
settings, such as deserted castles or
monasteries on lonely hillsides.
The Romantic Movement, #3a
Despite the variety of opinion and style
within English Romantic poetry, one idea
remains central to the movement: Individual
experience is the primary source of truth
and knowledge.
All feelings are valid; all emotions are true.
The Romantic Movement, #3b
Romanticism stressed strong emotion and the
individual imagination as the ultimate critical
and moral authority. The Romantic poets,
therefore, felt free to challenge traditional
notions of form. They likewise found
themselves abandoning social conventions,
particularly the privileges of the aristocracy,
which they believed to be detrimental to
individual fulfillment.
Thomas
Gainsborough,
Cottage Girl With
Dog and Pitcher,
1785
Thomas Gainsborogh’s An Extensive Landscape With Cattle
And A Drover
The Honorable Mrs. Graham,
Thomas Gainsborough, 1788
While the literature of the
Enlightenment focused on
the hero and the highranking socialite, the
Romantics celebrated the
commoner, the laborer, and
the “underprivileged.”
Eighteenth-century
aesthetics had favored the
highly ornate and artificial
(as epitomized by Baroque
music and architecture), but
the Romantics strove to
emphasize beauty in
simplicity and in genuine
nature.
Peter Ackroyd’s documentary film “The Romantics”
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdEPEqqviZk&playnext=1&list=PLsA1gKzSp95OKMLfwM5CCJ0dvIvL4a9i&feature=results_main (part one)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqhKYlEUvEU&list=PLsA1gKzSp95OKMLfwM5CCJ0dvIvL4a9i (part two)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rja9-CLj0hg&list=PLsA1gKzSp95OKMLfwM5CCJ0dvIvL4a9i (part three)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beQdcwTqcyU&list=PLsA1gKzSp95OKMLfwM5CCJ0dvIvL4a9i (part four)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beQdcwTqcyU&list=PLsA1gKzSp95OKMLfwM5CCJ0dvIvL4a9i (part five)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6onRFORs9E&list=PLsA1gKzSp95OKMLfwM5CCJ0dvIvL4a9i (part six)
Each video is about eight minutes long.
Poet Lesson Presentation Schedule
R/F:
M:
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W:
R:
F:
M:
T:
Planning workday in classroom
(textbooks/laptops available)
Workday/conference/rehearse
with Mrs. Peters
Blake
Wordsworth
Keats
Coleridge
Byron
Shelley
Stages of a successful lesson:
• Anticipatory activity: Opening discussion
question/art/survey/game/etc.
• Biography of poet/photos/poet’s Romantic philosophy
• Provide preface and page # to poem before oral
reading
• Read poem aloud clearly---stanza by stanza
• Pause after each stanza to ask questions for
understanding---WAIT TIME/SURVEY CLASSROOM
for responses
• Closure activity: Quiz/writing activity/game to gauge
understanding
• REMEMBER: YOU and YOUR CLASSMATES WILL
BE TESTED ON THE MATERIALS presented within
your presentation!
Frankenstein characters
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Victor
The Creature
Robert Walton (ship pilot who writes letters)
Henry Clerval (Victor’s BFF)
M. Krempe (Victor’s professor at Ingolstadt)
M. Waldman (Victor’s professor at Ingolstadt)
Elizabeth (Victor’s adopted sister and ?)
Alphonse Frankenstein (Victor’s father)