The Age of Transition
(1760 – 1798)
A new sensibility:
ROMANTICISM
• Reaction against the faith in reason of the
Augustan Age
Classical features
Early romantic features
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- originality, creativity
- focus on the individual
- feelings, emotions
- free imagination
- interest in the Middle Ages
- exotic places
- nature as a real, living being
Imitation
‘social’ writer
Reason
Established rules
Classical Greece and Rome
Routine-life, domestic environment
Nature as an abstract,
philosophycal concept
INFLUENCES
• Sturm und Drang (70s): strongly
nationalistic literary movement
• Mme De Staël : De l’Allemagne
• J. J. Rousseau: the theory of the noble
savage  importance of childhood and
nature
Features
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Nature
Feelings and emotions
Strong individualism
Melancholy
The sublime
Discovery of the popular traditions of the Middle Ages
Taste for the desolate; love of ruines…
Imagination
Cult of the exotic
Nationalism/patriotism
C. D. Friedrich, The Monk by the Sea (1808-10)
C.D.Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea Fog (1818)
Historical background
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Under the reign of George III the main
events were:
1. The loss of the American colonies
2. The French Revolution
3. The Industrial and Agricultural
Revolutions
The loss of the American colonies
• The Americans: not represented in English Parliament
• 1773: Boston Tea Party: ‘no taxation without
representation’
• 1775: war broke out
• 1776: Declaration of Independence (Thomas Jefferson)
• G. Washington: 1st President
• 1783: Treaty of Versailles
• American society: a melting pot
• Birth of the ‘American Dream’
The Boston Tea Party
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A political protest whose demontrators, disguised as American Indians,
destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company. The
American colonies refused to pay taxes to the mother country (Tea Act,
1773) unless they had representatives in the British Parliament.
The thirteen American colonies declared their independence from the
British Empire. They formed a new nation: the United States of
America.
The French Revolution and
Napoleon
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Concepts of freedom, brotherhood, equality
Initial enthusiasm
Patriotic sentiments, nationalism
‘Terror’ period
Napoleon: at first England remained neutral but then,
worried about a possible French egemony in Europe, it
took part in the war against France.
• English navy very strong: Napoleon defeated in 1805
by admiral Nelson (Battle of Trafalgar)
Trafalgar Square in London
Admiral Horatio Nelson
The Industrial and Agricultural
Revolutions
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England became a manifacturing country
Increase in population
Demand for goods/clothes
Improvement of technology / inventions
Raw materials in the North
Transport: roads, railway, canals
New industrial towns (mushroom towns)
Urbanisations  lack of hygiene, overcrowded slums
Working conditions: alienation, heavy drinking, diseases.
Use of fertilisers, crop rotation, machines
Inhuman working conditions, machinery broken by workers then punished
by the Government
1799: COMBINATION ACTS (Trade Unions of workers = illegal)
1819: Peterloo Massacre
The spinning frame invented in
1764 by James Hargreaves
http://www.history.com/topics/industrial-revolution
Pre-Romantic Poetry
• GRAVEYARD POERTY: melancholy, a sombre mood,
interest in graves, death, ruins, desert places.
- Thomas Gray: Elegy written in a country churchyard
• OSSIANIC POETRY: new sources of inspitation found in
Nordic and Celtic culture.
- James Macpherson: Fragments of Ancient Poetry
Fragments of Celtic poetry attributed to OSSIAN, a
legendary warrior and bard of the 3rd century.