Chapter 3
The Romantic Period
(1798-1832)
By Song Xiaoqing and Qin Yuhua
English Department in Hetao University
English Literature
I. The Romantic Period:

The Romantic period is the period is
generally said to have begun in 1798 with
the publication of Wordsworth and
Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads and to have
ended in 1832 with Sir Walter Scott’s death
and the passage of the first Reform Bill in
the Parliament. It is emphasized the special
qualities of each individual’s mind.
English Literature
II. the historical and cultural background of
English Romanticism


a. Historically, it was provoked by the
French Revolution and the English
Industrial Revolution.
b. Culturally, the publication of French
philosopher Rousseau’s two books provided
necessary guiding principles for the French
Revolution which aroused great sympathy
and enthusiasm in England;
English Literature
c. England experienced profound economic
and social changes: the enclosure movement
and the agricultural mechanization; the
capitalist class grasped the political power
and came to dominate the English society.
English Literature
III. Basic Views:

Romanticism designates a literary and
philosophical theory which tends to see the
individual as the very center of all life and all
experience. It constitutes a change of direction
from attention to the outer world of social
civilization to the inner world of the human spirit.
The Romantics think literature most valuable as
an expression of this or her unique feelings and
particular attitudes, and valuing its accuracy in
portraying the individual's experiences.
English Literature
IV. Literature Characters:
The English Romantic period is an age of poetry
and also a great age of prose. The writers
employed the commonplace, the nature, and the
simple as their poetic materials in their poems.
Gothic novel, a type of romantic fiction that
predominated in the late eighteenth century, was
one phase of the Romantic Movement. Its
principal elements are violence, horror and the
supernatural, which strongly appeal to the
reader’s emotion.
English Literature
V. Romanticism:
It is a literary trend. It prevailed in England
during the period of 1798-1832. Romanticists were
discontent with and opposed to the development of
capitalism. They split into two groups.
Some Romantic writers reflected the thinking of
those classes which had been ruined by the
bourgeoisie called Passive Romantic poets
represented by Wordsworth, Coleridge and
Southey.
English Literature

Others expressed the aspiration of the
labouring classes called Active or
Revolutionary Romantic poets
represented by Byron and Shelley and
Keats.
English Literature
VI. Lake Poets:


1. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey. They lived
in the Lake District in the northwestern part of
England
2. They have radical inclinations in their youth,
but later turned conservative and received
favors from the Government.
3. They criticize the industrial capitalist society.
English Literature
VII. Main Writers:




A. William Blake(1757-1827): 威廉.布莱克
William Blake had been both a poet and an
engraver. Blake was the first important
Romantic poet.
1. Main works:
Poetical Sketches 《素描诗集》
Songs of Innocence 《天真之歌》It is a
lovely volume of poems
English Literature





Songs of Experience《经验之歌》 It paints
a different world, a world of misery, poverty,
disease, war and repression with a
melancholy tone.
Marriage of Heaven and Hell《天堂与地狱
的结合》
The book of Urizen 《尤来森之书》
The Book of Los 《洛斯之书》
Milton《弥尔顿》
English Literature
2.His works’ Characters

Childhood is central to Blake’s concern in
the Songs of Innocence and Songs of
Experience, and this concern gives the two
books a strong social and historical
reference. In the Marriage of Heaven and
Hell, he explores the relationship of the
contraries. Attraction and repulsion, reason
and energy, love and hate, are necessary to
human existence.
English Literature
3. Language Characters

He writes his poems in plain and direct
language. His poems often carry the lyric
beauty with immense compression of
meaning. He distrusts the abstractness and
tends to embody his views with visual
images. Symbolism in wide range is also a
distinctive feature of his poetry
English Literature
B. William Wordsworth(1770-1850)
威廉.华兹华斯

1.


William Wordsworth, the “Lake Poets,” is
the leading figure of the English romantic
poetry, the focal poetic voice of the period.
Main Works:
His Works divided into two groups: Poems
about nature and poems about human life.
Descriptive Sketches, and Evening Walk
《描写速记，黄昏漫步》
Lyrical Ballads. 《抒情歌谣集》
English Literature














The Prelude 《序曲》
Poems in Two Volumes《双卷诗集》
The Excursion《远足》
The Thorn《荆棘》
The sailor’s mother 《水手的母亲》
Michael《麦克尔》
The Affliction of Margaret《玛格丽特所受的折磨》
The Old Cumberland Beggar 《老坎伯兰的乞丐》
Lucy Poems 《露茜》
The Idiot Boy 《白痴男孩》
Man, the heart of man, and human life.
The Solitary Reaper 《孤独的收割者》
To a Highland Girl 《致高地姑娘》
The Ruined Cottage 《被摧毁的茅屋》
English Literature
2. Language characters

He can penetrate to the heart of things and
give the reader the very life of nature. And
he thinks that common life is the only
subject of literary interest. The joys and
sorrows of the common people are his
themes. His sympathy always goes to the
suffering poor.
English Literature

He is the leading figure of the English romantic
poetry, the focal poetic voice of the period. His is a
voice of searchingly comprehensive humanity and
one that inspires his audience to see the world
freshly, sympathetically and naturally. The most
important contribution he has made is that he has
not only started the modern poetry, the poetry of
the growing inner self, but also changed the course
of English poetry by using ordinary speech of the
language and by advocating a return to nature
English Literature
C. Samuel Taylor Coleridge(1772-1834) 塞
缪尔.泰勒.科勒律治

He advocated a more spiritual and religious
interpretation of life, based on what he had learnt
from Kant and Schelling.他倡导了以坎特与斯凯
灵理论的对人类精神化与宗教化的诠释。 He
believed that art is the only permanent revelation
of the nature of reality.他认为艺术是唯一一种能
永远揭示现实的形式。
English Literature
1. Main Works:










Lyrical Ballads. 《抒情歌谣集》
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner 《古航海家之
歌》，，
Kubla Khan 《忽必烈汗》
Christabel 克丽斯特贝尔
This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison
Frost at Midnight 《子夜寒霜》，
The Nightingale《夜莺》
Dejection, and Ode 《沮丧，一段颂歌》
Tragic Drama: Remorse 《忏悔》
Biographia Literaria 《文学传记》
English Literature
2. His actual achievement

His actual achievement as poet can be
divided into two remarkably diverse groups:
The demonic and the conversational. （神祗
诗与对话诗）。 The demonic group
includes his three masterpieces:“The Rime
of the Ancient
Mariner”“Christabel”“Kubla
Khan”Mysticism and demonism with strong
imagination are the distinctive features of
this group.
English Literature

His conversational groups include: Kubla
Khan, Christabel, The Ancient Mariner,
This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison, Frost at
Midnight
English Literature
3. Language characters

He was esteemed by some of his
contemporaries and is generally recognized
today as a lyrical poet and literary critic of
the first rank. His poetic themes range from
the supernatural to the domestic. His
treatises, lectures, and compelling
conversational powers made his one of the
most influential English literary critics and
philosophers of the 19th century.
English Literature
D. George Gordon Byron(1788-1824):
乔治.戈登.拜伦

He was born into an ancient aristocratic
family. He plunged himself into the
struggle for the national independence of
that country. on the whole, his poetry is
one of experience. His heroes are more or
less surrogates of himself.
English Literature
1. Main works:


Hours of Idleness,《懒散时光》
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers《英格兰诗人和苏格兰评论
家》








Cantos: four cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage 《恰尔德.
哈罗德游记》(brought Byron fame),
Oriented Tales《东方故事》
Donjuan《唐。璜》
Narrative poem: The Prisoner of Chillon, 《齐伦的囚犯》。
The Island《岛》
Drama: Manfred,《曼费雷佳》
Cain,《该隐》
Political satires: Vision of Judgment 《审判的幻境》
English Literature
2. His works’ characters

His persistence attacks at on “cant political,
religious, and moral”. His descriptions are
simple and fresh, often bring vivid objects
before the reader. “a stream sometimes
smooth, sometimes rapid and sometimes
rushing down in cataracts---a mixture of
philosophy and slang—of everything”.
English Literature

He was regarded in England as the
perverted man, the satanic poet; while on
the continent, he was hailed as the
champion of liberty, poet of the people. He
enriched European poetry with and
abundance of ideas, images, artistic forms
and innovations. 拜伦以丰富的思想，想象
力，艺术形式和创新欧洲的诗歌得到了发
展
English Literature
E. Percy Bysshe Shelley(1792-1822)波西.
比希.雪莱

He was born into a wealthy family at Sussex. Born
in family of the conservative man of the landed
gentry.
1. Main works:
The Necessity of Atheism《无神论的必然性》,
Queen Mab: a Philosophical Poem,《麦希女王：
一首哲理诗》
Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude《阿拉斯特或孤
独之精神》
English Literature







Poem: Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,《颂智力之美》
Mont Blanc《蒙特。布兰卡》
Julian and Maddalo《朱利安和马达罗》
The Revolt of Islam《伊斯兰的叛变》
the Cenci《晨西》
Prometheus Unbound, 《解放了的普罗米修斯》
Four—act drama: Prometheus Unbound. The play
is an exultant work in praise of humankind’s
potential, and Shelley himself recognized it as “the
most perfect of my products.”
English Literature










Adonais,《阿多那伊斯》
Hellas,《赫拉斯》
Prose: Defence of Poetry 《诗辩》
Lyrics: genuine society,“Ode to Liberty”,《自由颂》
“Old to Naples”《那不勒斯颂》
“Sonnet: England in 1819”
The Cloud,《云》
To a Shylark《云雀颂》
Ode to the West Wind 西风颂
Political lyrics: Men of England《致英格兰人民》
Elegy: Adonais《阿多那伊斯》 is a elegy for John
Keats’s early death
English Literature
2. Personal Characters

He grew up with violent revolutionary ideas under
the influence of the free thinkers like Hume and
Godwin, so he held a life long aversion to cruelty,
injustice, authority, institutional religion and the
formal shams of respectable society, condemning
war, tyranny and exploitation. He expressed his
love for freedom and his hatred toward tyranny in
several of his lyrics such as “Ode to Liberty”,“Old
to Naples”“Sonnet: England in 1819”
English Literature

Shelley is one of the leading Romantic poets,
and intense and original lyrical poet in the
English language. Like Blake, he has a
reputation as a difficult poet: erudite,
imagistically complex, full of classical and
mythological allusions. His style abounds in
personification and metaphor and other
figures of speech which describe vividly
what we see and feel. Or express what
passionately moves us.
English Literature
F: John Keats(1795-1821)
约翰.济慈:






He was born the son of a livery-stable owner
who died when the boy was nine
Main Works:
Poems:
On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer
《初探恰普罗译荷马》
“Sleep and Poetry ”《睡与诗》
Endymion 《安狄米恩》
English Literature
Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and
Other Poems.《拉米亚，伊莎贝拉。圣。亚
尼节前夜及其他诗歌》including:
Ode on a Grecian Urn, 希腊古瓮颂”
Ode on Melancholy, 忧郁颂
Ode to a Nightingale夜莺颂
Ode to Psyche普赛克颂”
Lyrics: To Autumn秋日颂(歇颂)
Unfinished: Hyperion希波里恩（海波里安）

English Literature
2. Language Characters

His poetry is always sensuous, colorful and rich in
imagery, which expresses the acuteness of his
senses. Sight, sound, scent, taste and feeling are all
taken in to give an entire understanding of an
experience. He has the power of entering the
feelings of others.—either human or animal. His
poetry, characterized by exact and closely knit
construction, sensual descriptions, and by force of
imagination, gives transcendental values to the
physical beauty of the world.
English Literature
G. Jane Austen(1755-1817)
简.奥斯丁

She was born in a country clergyman’s family.
1. Main Works:
Novel: Sense and Sensibility 《理智与情感》；
Pride and Prejudice；《傲慢与偏见》
(the most popular)
Northanger Abbey 《诺桑觉寺》
Mansfield Park .《曼斯菲尔德花园》
English Literature





Emma 《爱玛》
Persuasion 《劝告》
The Watsons 《沃特生》
Fragment of a Novel 《小说片段》
Plan of a Novel 《小说的安排》
English Literature
2. Personal Characters

She holds the ideals of the landlord class in
politics, religion and moral principles; and
her works show clearly her firm belief in the
predominance of reason over passion, the
sense of responsibility, good manners and
clear—sighted judgment over the Romantic
tendencies of emotion and individuality.
English Literature
3. Her Works’ Characters

Her works’ concern is about human beings in their
personal relationships. Because of this, her novels
have a universal significance. It is her conviction
that a man’s relationship to his wife and children
is at least as important a part of his life as his
concerns about his belief and career. Her thought
is that if one wants to know about a man’s talents,
one should see him at work, but if one wants to
know about his nature and temper, one should see
him at home.
English Literature

Austen shows a human being not at
moments of crisis, but in the most trivial
incidents of everyday life. She write within a
very narrow sphere. The subject matter, the
character range, the social setting, and plots
are all restricted to the provincial life of the
late 18th century England. Concerning
three or four landed gentry families with
their daily routine life.
English Literature
Her novels’ structure

It is exquisitely deft, the characterization in
the highest degree memorable, while the
irony has a radiant shrewdness unmatched
elsewhere. Her works’ at one delightful and
profound, are among the supreme
achievements of English literature. With
trenchant observation and in meticulous
details, she presents the quiet, day-to-day
country life of the upper-middle-class
English.