Revolution and Romanticism
In America and Europe
Chapter Overview
1. Emerging in the late eighteenth century (1700s)
and extending until the late nineteenth century
(1800s), Romanticism broke with earlier models of
thinking that were guided by rationalism and
empiricism.
2. After the American and French revolutions, faith in
social institutions declined considerably; no longer
were systems that were organized around hierarchy
and the separation of classes considered superior.
3. As manufacturing and industrialization developed,
resulting in a decline in the agricultural economy, a
"middle class" began to emerge in England and other
parts of Europe.
4. Breaking with the Christian belief that the self is
essentially "evil" and fallible, Romantic poets and
authors often explored the "good" inherent in
human beings.
5. As the middle class rose to ascendancy in the
nineteenth century, new approaches to science,
biology, class, and race began to shake middleclass society's values.
6. Imagination was seen as a way for the soul to link
with the eternal.
7. The new thematic emphases of poetry—belief in
the virtues of nature, the "primitive," and the
past—engendered a form of alienation that was
described in the "social protest" poetry of
Romantic poets.
Blake, Coleridge and Wordsworth
• http://nzr.mvnu.edu/faculty/trearick/english/rearick/introlit/RealEducat
ion/romantics.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism
• http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5670
• Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” (Norton)
“Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog” by Caspar David Friedrich
Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer
“Wanderer above the Sea of Fog” is true to the Romantic style
and Caspar David Friedrich's style in particular, It has Kantian
self-reflection, expressed through the wanderer's gazings into the
murkiness of the sea of fog. Some assert that the Wanderer
presents a metaphor for the unknown future. The critic Gaddis
(2004) feels that the impression the wanderer's position atop the
precipice and before the twisted outlook leaves "is contradictory,
suggesting at once mastery over a landscape and the
insignificance of the individual within it."[1] Some meaning of
this work is lost in the translation of its title. In German, the title is
"Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer." There are several things to note
about this German title. First of all, Wanderer exists as both the
word for "wanderer" and for the word "hiker." The character can
thus be seen as lost and trying to find purpose, or as a resolute
journeyman.[citation needed] The second subtlety is that the word
"Nebelmeer" translates as "Fogsea", or "the Fog Sea." The first of
these leads to a more abstract and philosophical view that
complements the "wanderer" translation of the first word. The
second is more concrete and challenging, complementing the view
of the determined hiker.
Some Romantic Authors in the
European Tradition
• JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU (17121778)
• JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
(1749-1832)
• FRIEDRICH HOLDERLIN (1770-1843)
• HEINRICH HEINE (1797-1856)
• VICTOR HUGO (1802-1885)
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
• “Every man has a right to risk his own life for the
preservation of it.”
• “Force does not constitute right... obedience is due
only to legitimate powers.”
• “Free people, remember this maxim: we may
acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is
once lost.”
• “I hate books; they only teach us to talk about
things we know nothing about.”
• Man is born free, and everywhere he is in
shackles.”
Confessions by Rousseau
• First autobiography of the modern
type.
• Rousseau's work is notable as one
of the first major autobiographies.
– Prior to his writing the Confessions,
the two great autobiographies were
Augustine's own Confessions and
Saint Teresa's Life of Herself. Both
of these works, however, focused on
the religious experiences of their
authors.
The Confessions was one of the first autobiographies
in which an individual wrote of his own life mainly
in terms of his worldly experiences and personal
feelings. Rousseau recognized the unique nature of
his work; it opens with the famous words:
• I have resolved on an enterprise which
has no precedent, and which, once
complete, will have no imitator. My
purpose is to display to my kind a portrait
in every way true to nature, and the man I
shall portray will be myself.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
• "Doubt can only be removed by action.”
• "Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest."
• "Only by joy and sorrow does a person know
anything about themselves and their destiny. They
learn what to do and what to avoid."
• "If children grew up according to early indications,
we should have nothing but geniuses."
• "If a man writes a book, let him set down only what
he knows. I have guesses enough of my own."
• "One must ask children and birds how cherries and
strawberries taste."
The Tragedy of Faust
• Faust is Goethe's most
famous work and
considered by many to be
one of the greatest works of
German literature.
• Tragic Play (Done in Two
Parts) but rarely performed
in its entirety.
FRIEDRICH HOLDERLIN
• "Being at one is god-like and good, but human,
too human, the mania /Which insists there is only
the One, one country, one truth, and one way."
• "I am mortal. I am born to love and to suffer."
• "What has always made a hell on earth has been
that man has tried to make it his heaven."
• "What is the wisdom of a book compared with the
wisdom of an angel?
• "I call on Fate to give me back my soul."
HEINRICH HEINE
• “Like a great poet, Nature knows how to produce
the greatest effects with the most limited means.”
• “Woman is at once apple and serpent”
• “Oh, what lies there are in kisses.”
• “Wherever they burn books they will also, in the
end, burn human beings.”
• “God will forgive me; that’s his business.”
• “Experience is a good school, but the fees are
high.”
VICTOR HUGO
• "Music expresses that which cannot be said and
on which it is impossible to be silent.”
• "A library implies an act of faith.”
• “A compliment is like a kiss through a veil.”
• “I'm religiously opposed to religion”
• “Hope is the word which God has written on the
brow of every man.”
• “It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.”
Et nox facta est (Let there be Night)
Although both Victor Hugo's Et
nox facta est and John Milton's
Paradise Lost, paint a picture of
Satan, Hugo's work explores the
defiant psychology of Satan.
Whereas Milton draws attention
to cosmic drama on a large
scale, Hugo creates a narrower
focus, thereby creating a
poignant as well as nightmarish
vision of Satan
Novels by Victor Hugo
Realism, Naturalism, and
Symbolism in Europe
Vol. E 1800-1900
Chapter Overview
1. Nourished by the political and social aspirations
of the middle class, nationalism and colonialism
came to dominate the nineteenth century in
Europe.
2. Though its first literary use was in Germany at
the turn of the nineteenth century, the term realism
did not become a commonly accepted literary and
artistic slogan until French critics began to use it
in the 1850s.
3. Though the realist program made innumerable
subjects available to art, it narrowed the themes
and methods of literature.
4. Contrary to what they might think, realist writers
did not make a complete break with past literary
conventions, nor did they follow "to the letter" the
theories and slogans they propounded.
5. As prose looked outward at the world around it,
poetry looked inward at its very construction as
language.
6. Inspired by Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil,
Symbolism's manifesto appeared in 1886, thereby
not including the great midcentury poems by
Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, and MallarmÈ.
After the Revolution
• The upheavals following the French Revolution
overturned the old order of Europe.
• The Holy Roman Empire and the Papal States
were dissolved.
• Nationalism and colonialism came to dominate the
nineteenth century in Europe especially because
the growing middle class found they could gain
both economically and socially.
• After centuries of dreaming, political unification
was achieved in both Germany and Italy.
• The Industrial Revolution transformed
living conditions.
• Though wealth and prosperity were more
widespread than in centuries past, many
Europeans lived and worked in wretched,
often inhumane conditions.
Realism
• Though its first literary use was in Germany
at the turn of the nineteenth century,
• However, the term realism did not become a
commonly accepted literary and artistic
slogan until French critics began to use it in
the 1850s.
• Realism is frequently confused with
naturalism, an ancient philosophical term
for types of secularism.
•The realists used inductive, observational, and
"objective" methods in an effort to capture a truthful
representation in literature of reality, especially
contemporary life and manners.
•The personality or style of the author was to recede
behind the fiction.
•Analogous movements occurred elsewhere in
Europe:
–the Young Germany movement,
–the "natural" school of Russian fiction, and
–Italian verismo.
• These critical programs were eventually accepted
in English-speaking countries such as England and
the United States.
Realists
• In their work, realist authors tended to be highly
critical of political and social situations.
• Though the realist program made innumerable
subjects available to art, it narrowed the themes
and methods of literature.
• Realism condemned the fantastic, the historical,
the remote, the idealized, the unsullied, and the
idyllic.
• Realism was less successful in its effort to capture
objective and impersonal truth than it was in its
efforts to reinvest art and literature with social
accountability and to challenge the conventions of
Romanticism.
• Contrary to what they might think, realist writers
did not make a complete break with past literary
conventions, nor did they follow "to the letter" the
theories and slogans they propounded.
• At least half of Gustave Flaubert's works were
Romantic fantasies of blood and gold, flesh and
jewels.
• Though Leo Tolstoy's
work is more concretely
real, it is also very personal
and autobiographical.
• Fyodor Dostoevsky was a
writer of high tragedy in
which ordinary reality was
transformed into a symbol
of the spiritual world.
• Henrik Ibsen wrote historical and
fantastic dramas before turning to a
more symbolist style.
• Anton Chekhov's attitude toward his
characters is more detached and
"objective" than that of his fellow
Russian writers Dostoevsky and
Tolstoy.
• With the exception of one early
novel, Chekhov wrote only short
stories and plays.