Romanticism
Historical and Social Background
The industrial town
The industrialization changed radically the
landscape of Great Britain. In the first half
of the XIX century the Midlands had already
gained the name of “nack country”. It was
an area of gloomy buildings, small towns
full of smoke, streets that created a sense
of confusion and dismay and canals to
which the railway was added.
The Industrial Revolution caused an
uncontrolled growth of the city. Small towns
called “mushroom towns” were constructed
for the workers. They were called in this
way because they sprang up suddenly and
multiplied rapidly around the factories.
For workers, living in the city meant long
working hours and appalling living
conditions.
Industrial
cities
lacked
elementary public services (water supply,
sanitation, street-cleaning, open spaces).
The air and the water were polluted by
smoke and filth. The houses, built in
endless rows, were over crowded.
BRITISH SOCIETY
POLITICAL REFORMS
Prosperity and confidence in
1700’s
American and French revolutions
disappointment in bitter and
violent ends - Napoleon
Industrial Revolution
dirty, unorganized cities emerge
huge class shift
British Society
•
The population was
divided into three social
classes:
THE LANDOWNERS
AND ARISTOCRACY:
this class had ruled the
country for centuries and
held most of the wealt.
THE BUSINESSMEN
AND INDUSTRIALISTS:
thanks to their hard work
the british economy was
thriving.
THE MASSES:
they worked in the
factories and were poor.
Historical and Social
Background
Political Reforms
 The Factory Act of 1833 limited working hours and children under
nine could not work.
 In 1825 Trade Unions were recognized.Factory owners formed their
own associations
 Businessmen and industrialists were given the vote in 1832.
 A police force was established in 1829.
 A local government was established in every town.
 A system of national primary education was set up in 1834.
Historical and Social
Background
The French Revolution
•
•
•
as the French Revolution started, the whole
idea of nationalism changed, and so did the
romantic view; it consisted then in selfdetermination and a pride in the national
origins and unity; they said that every
human being should be pride of his origins
and nation, but at the same time he should
develop as an individual; they claimed that
there should be a balance in the development
of each person between the common interest
of the nation and his own personal goals
the accent was put on the national history
and folklore, and furthermore, the values of
tradition and customs were put at the center
of the romantic movement
inspired by this view upon the country, the
peoples of Europe had the power to redraw
the map of their continent and free
themselves
English Romanticism can be understood as a return to Renaissance (to the poetry of
Spencer, Shakespeare and Milton). This return is anticipated by Cowper, Gray, Collins
and Thomson.
•CHARACTERISTICS:
- Revival of instinctual life (reason was not so important).
- The search of the love and the beauty.
- Importance of Revolutions (American, French, the figure of Napoleon).
- New role of imagination.
- The realization of the sublime, the half way between real and supernatural world,
time and space.
- Nature as a source of inspiration.
- Revaluation of myths.
- Philosophers: J.J Rousseau is the first to use the word “romantique” in one of his
works (“Reveries
du promemuer solitaire”). Romance has french origins.
Schlegel used the word “romantisch” speaking about creativity and sentimental
themes, in a critic work “Sturm und Drang” (in English: “Storm and Stress”, in
which there is an exaltation of nature, uniqueness and freedom of the individual, idea
of genius).
•WILLIAM
WORDSWORTH
•SAMUEL T.
COLERIDGE
Romantic Poets
I travelled among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor England did I know till then,
What love I bore to thee.
'Tis past, that melancholy dream!
Nor will I quit thy shore
A second time, for still I seem
To love thee more and more.
Among thy mountains did I feel
the joy of my desire;
And she I cherished, turned the wheel,
Beside an English fire.
Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed
the bowers where Lucy played;
And thine is too the last green field
That Lucy's eyes surveyed.
- I Travelled Among Unknown Men
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770, at
Cockermouth on the River Derwent, in the heart of the
Lake District that would come to be immortalized in his
poetry. The son of a lawyer named John Wordsworth, he
was the second of five children. His father was the
personal attorney of Sir James Lowther, Earl of
Lonsdale, the most powerful (and perhaps the most
hated) man in the area. His first formal education was at
Anne Birkett's school at Penrith, where one of his
classmates was his future wife Mary Hutchinson.
Wordsworth died on April 13, 1850.
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth’s
poetry emphasies the
value of childhood
experience an the
celebration of nature.
He glorifies the spirit of
man, living in armony
with his natural
environment, far from
the spiritually bankrupt
city. Him being
pantheistic identified
the nature with god.
Romanticism in Literature (cont.)
• There is pleasure in
beauty, Wordsworth
writes. And in this
sense, poetry should
gratify the senses.
• In striving to capture
the eternal beauty, the
poet gives rise to
romantic expression in
all human beings.
• Wordsworth is best known
as a nature poet who
found beauty, comfort and
moral strength in the
natural world. If he were
alive today he would
probably be a member of
an
organisation
that
campaigns to protect the
evironment. For him the
World of nature is free
from
corruption
and
stress, and offers man a
means of escape from
industrialised society.
Samuel T. Coleridge
Coleridge’s poetry often
deals with the
mysterious, the
supernatural and the
extraordinary. While
Wordsworth looked for
the spiritual in everyday
subjects, Coleridge
wanted to give the
supernatural a colouring
of everyday reality.
• Coleridge describes
the natural and
supernatural events
that occur during the
adventurous
voyage.The events of
the poem take place
in an eerie, ghostly
atmosphere and the
reader often feels he
is moving from a real
to an unreal world
and back again.
• GEORGE
BYRON
• PERCY BYSSHE
SHELLEY
Romantic Poets
George Byron
Byron was the
prototype of the
Romantic poet. He was
heavily involved with
contemporary social
issues. He like the
heroes of his long
narrative poems, was a
melancholy and solitary
figure whose actions
often defiend social
convections.
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
The most notorious Romantic poet and satirist.
Byron was famous in his lifetime for his love
affairs with women and Mediterranean boys. He
created his own cult of personality, the concept of
the 'Byronic hero' - a defiant, melancholy young
man, brooding on some mysterious, unforgivable
in his past. Byron's influence on European poetry,
music, novel, opera, and painting has been
immense, although the poet was widely
condemned on moral grounds by his
contemporaries.
Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.
And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!
- The Destruction of Sennacherib
George Gordon Byron
Don Juan
• Don Juan is seduced by
the beautiful and older
Donna Julia. She is
typical of Byron’s splendid
female portraits: sensual
and apparently innocent;
always on the verge of
tears or ready to faint
and yet strong and
aggressive. Above all, she
is much more intelligent
and cunning than the
average man (especially
if he is a husband). No
character, not even Don
Juan, is free of narrator’s
irony.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare.
The lone and level sands far away.
- Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was an English Romantic
poet who rebelled against English politics and
conservative values. Shelley was considered with
his friend Lord Byron a pariah for his life style.
He drew no essential distinction between poetry
and politics, and his work reflected the radical
ideas and revolutionary optimism of the era.
Like many poets of his day, Shelley employed
mythological themes and figures from Greek
poetry that gave an exalted tone for his visions.
Shelley died July 8, 1822.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Shelley was the most
revoluctionary and nonconformist of the
Romantic poet. He was
an individualist and
idealist who rejected
the istitutions of,
family,church, marriage
and the Christian faith
and rebelled against all
forms of tyranny.
Defence of Poetry
• Defence of poetry contains some of the
finest quotes about the anture of poetry
and the role of the poet in the English
language.
“A poet is the author to others of the
highest wisdom, virtue, pleasure and
glory”
Perhaps the most striking feature of
the poets of the Romantic Movement
is their attitude to nature. The
solitude of real nature is alien,
immeasurable, inhuman; the
Romantic solitude is a vision of
nature which reflects the solitude of
the poet. The Romantic finds
everywhere in nature his own image.
-Stephen Spender
The most universal image [in Romantic
poetry] is perhaps that of light, a fit
symbol of spiritual illumination, of the
transcendental vision, of the work of the
imagination, of the ideal to which the
poet aspires.
- R.A. Foakes
Principles of Romanticism:
• Romanticism was a reaction against convention.
• Romanticism asserted the power of the individual.
• Romanticism reflected a deep appreciation of the
beauties of nature.
• Romanticism emphasized the importance of the
subjective experience.
• Romanticism was idealistic.
• Romanticism was egalitarian
Romanticism was a reaction against
convention:
• As a political movement, this reaction was
reflected in the new democratic ideals that
opposed monarchy and feudalism.
• In art, it meant a turn away from Neoclassicism
and the ancient models of Greek perfection and
Classical correctness.
• Philosophically, romanticism would contend with
Rationalism—the belief that truth could be
discerned by logic and reason.
Romanticism asserted the power of
the individual:
• Romanticism marked an era characterized by an
idealization of the individual.
• Politically, the movement influenced democratic ideals and
the revolutionary principles of social equality.
• Philosophically, it meant that the idea of objective reality
would give way to subjective experience; thus, all truth
became a matter of human perception.
• In the art world, romanticism marked a fascination with the
individual genius, and elevated the artist, philosopher, and
poet above all others.
Romanticism reflected a deep
appreciation of the beauties of
nature:
• For the romantics, nature was how the spirit was revealed
to humankind.
• The romantic philosophers believed in the metaphysical or
spiritual nature of reality.
• They thought that a higher reality existed behind the
appearance of things in the physical world.
• Nature appeared to people as a material reality; however,
because it evoked such strong feelings in humankind, it
revealed itself as containing a higher, spiritual truth.
• Romantic artists tried to capture in their art the same
feelings nature inspired in them.
Romanticism emphasized the
importance of the subjective
experience:
• The romantics believed that emotion and the senses could
lead to higher truths than either reason or the intellect
could.
• Romantics supposed that feelings, such as awe, fear,
delight, joy, and wonder, were keys that could unlock the
mysteries of the world.
• The result was a literature that continually explored the
inward experiences of the self.
• The imagination became one of the highest faculties of
human perception, for it was through the imagination that
individuals could experience transcendent or spiritual
truths.
Romanticism was idealistic:
• On one hand, romanticism was philosophically rooted in
idealism.
• Reality existed primarily in the ideal world—that is, in the
mind—while the material world merely reflected that
universe.
• In other words, the ideal world was “more real” than the
real world.
• On the other hand, romanticism was literally idealistic; it
tended to be optimistic in its outlook on life.
• Political and social romantics asserted that human beings
could live according to higher principles, such as the
beliefs in social equality, freedom, and human rights.
Romanticism was egalitarian
• The Romantics believed that all men were created equal and
that their experiences had equal or universal merit
• The Romantics believed that people in society had certain
rights to health and freedom and should be treated equally
• They believed in the “social union” among people, that there
should be no seperation based on race, creed, or power.
• Nationalism (loyalty to “nation” v. “rulers”)
• Revolution and reform, humanity can improve itself both
individually and collectively
• Humanity can be perfected