The Romantic Period
1780 - 1832
Garden in Shoreham by Samuel Palmer, 1820s
Key Ideas …
Romanticism …
Rejected
Embraced

18th century classicism

Freedom of individual expression

The ordered rationality of the Enlightenment

Feelings of sincerity, spontaneity and originality

Impersonal and artificial feeling

Emotional directness

Aristocratic patronage

Emotional intensity

Mechanical convention

Power of the imagination

Conservative morality
Major Events
American and French revolutions (fighting for
democracy) influenced and inspired many people,
including literary figures
People in Britain who supported the ideals of the
Revolution were claimed as “English Jacobins”
After Britain went to war against France, those in
Britain who supported the revolution were
declared either unpatriotic or traitors
Key Terms …
Sublim
e
Transcend
Sensibil
ity
Pantheism
Economy
Britain relinquished control over its American colonies but
found a new empire in other parts of the world – it was
transforming into a global superpower; colonial trade was
an idea close to home for poets such as Coleridge
Began the period as an agrarian economy; by the end of the
period, became a rapidly industrialising nation
Population of England more than doubled, contributing to
the process of urbanisation
Industrial Revolution
Improved transport system, therefore improved
connectivity between people
Changing conditions of rural life due to the industrial
process
Philosophy
Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains. Rousseau
What shall I do when I have read all the books? Goodwin
O for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts. Keats
Philosophy
Copernicun revolution (Immanuel Kant) – both reason and experience are
necessary for human knowledge (using reason without applying it to
experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be purely
subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason). For example,
notions of God, freedom and eternity were unknowable ideas, but
necessary for us to make sense of reality
-
The Romantics favoured:
Concrete over abstract
Variety over uniformity
Nature over culture, convention and artifice
Freedom over constraint, rules and limitations
The unique individual to the average man
Free creative genius to prudent good sense
Feeling to thought
Emotion to calculation
Intuition to intellect
Natural Philosophy
Until the 1840's what we now call science was
"natural philosophy,"
Natural philosophy: arose before the development
of modern science; study of the natural and
physical universe; enquiry into the powers and
phenomena of the natural world, demonstrating
the splendours of God’s creation
Experience and argument attempting to explain or
describe nature
Science
Scientific agriculture
Major advances in mathematics, physics, chemistry, optics,
electromagnetism and biology – battled against natural
philosophy
Romantics often depicted as being opposed to Science but
many were deeply interested in scientific enquiry – what
they were against was the complete removal of mystery
and the divine from nature
Coleridge denied that matter and spirit were distinct
properties – leads to the idea of pantheism, where God is
imminent in nature and not transcendent; although
Coleridge was always tempted by the idea of pantheism, he
struggled to resist it
ENLIGHTENMENT
Rationalism
Isaac Newton
The physical world is
orderly, explicable,
regular, logical
Nature is subject to
laws which can be
expressed with
mathematical certainty
Man’s rational
capacity and the use
of science can
penetrate the
mysteries of nature
ROMANTICISM
Relativism
Isaac Newton
The universe is
organic, alive,
becoming, evolving,
expanding
An admiration for all
the potency and
diversity of living
nature
God in Nature; the
unseen world, the
supernatural, the
mysterious
Religion
Revival of evangelicals – committed to strict morality
Conflict between the belief of the origin of the world and
the idea of evolution
Institution of the established Church was under threat
Growth in religious sects – William Blake was attracted to
the writings of the Swedish mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg
Romantics generally rejected absolute systems, such as
religion, in favour of the idea that each person must create
their own system by which to live
During the romantic era, Religion was aestheticized
Romanticists felt free to draw on religious imagery and
allusion but without pressure to be conventionally pious
Religion continued …
Romantic literature
Romanticism is antithetical to eighteenth-century neoclassicism
Romantic poets: William Blake, William Wordsworth,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John
Keats and Lord Byron. These poets formed the literary
movement known as “Romanticism”, which marked a
profound shift in sensibility
The products of Romanticism tend to be radical or
revolutionary – (inspired by the French and American
revolutions)
Criticism of romantic writing: it deliberately ignores
material reality and social concerns in its pursuit of
transcendence and mysticism
Sensibility
Sensibility was considered a purely feminine attribute. During the
Romantic period, there was a strong differentiation between masculine
and feminine: women were the guardians of the private sphere
(including such things as morality and the home); men were the leaders
of the public sphere (political, civil and intellectual life)
Fears of sensibility were that it would lead to hysteria and disorder, the
over-cultivation of the senses at the expense of reason and judgement, it
might lead to men behaving like women and it might lead to sexual
impropriety and ruin
The idea of sensibility soon became politicised and
considered to be too closely associated with radical and
reformist ideas
In James Gilray’s satire “The New Morality”, British reformers
and radicals worship at the shrine of the new trinity
(Philanthropy, Sensibility and Benevolence)
Sublime
Picturesque
Sublime
Sublime continued …
The words “sublime”, “beautiful” and
“picturesque” were often used to describe
the landscape
Romantic poets found ordinary descriptions
of beauty as inadequate and too formulaic –
they focused instead on the sublime, where
an encounter with nature became a quasimystical or even religious experience
Romantic Poetry
1st generation of poets:
- Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge
2nd generation of poets:
- Shelley & Keats
Some contention between generations – 2nd generation
were born after the French Revolution and so reacted
against the elder poets
Wordsworth and Coleridge wrote poetry as a response to
the changing rural life; they describe the plight of people
on the margins of existence and the sufferings of the rustic
people as a result of the fall in rural earnings and rising
cost in provisions
Language
Romantic poets moved away from
structured forms of poetry which they saw
to be artificial
In the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads,
Wordsworth defended the rustic nature of
their subjects and the language used by the
poets, stating that it was the language really
used by men
The Lakes District, England
Inspiration for Wordsworth and Coleridge
Lake Windamere
Lakes District
Coniston Mountains
Coniston Mountains
“Dove Cottage”
Wordsworth’s grave
Grasmere
Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in
Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the Lake District.
The magnificent landscape deeply affected Wordsworth's
imagination and gave him a love of nature.
In 1795 he met Coleridge.
Encouraged by Coleridge and stimulated by the close
contact with nature, Wordsworth composed his first
masterwork, Lyrical Ballads, which opened with
Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner."
After the winter of 1798-99, which he spend in Germany
with Coleridge, he moved Dove Cottage, Grasmere, and in
1802 married Mary Hutchinson.
Coleridge
Born 1772 in Devon, England (the youngest son of a clergyman)
1795 wrote “The Eolian Harp” for Sara Fricker who he later married – this
was not a happy marriage
1797 met Dorothy and William Wordsworth and wrote “Kubla Khan”
1798 wrote “Frost at Midnight”
1799 published the “Lyrical Ballads” with Wordsworth which included “The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
1799 met Sara Hutchinson who became his lifelong love
1800 became addicted to opium
1804 separated from his wife and spent the following years in the
Mediterranean and London
1808 lived with Wordsworth in Grasmere
1810 quarrelled with Wordsworth and left the Lakes District forever; spent the
remaining years in London
1816 in an attempt to control his opium addiction he moved in with Dr James
Gillman in London where he lived for the remainder of his life
1834 died
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November, 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant
(2008) Wikipedia: Natural Philosophy, Wikimedia Foundation Inc. Accessed 11th
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Ross, K. (2007). Beginning of Modern Science and Modern Philosophy, Kelley L.
Ross. Accessed 12th November, 2008. http://www.friesian.com/hist-2.htm
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