Neo-Classicism vs. Romanticism
Commonplace (Cliché?) Comparisons
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Order
Calm
Harmony
Balance
Rationality
Materialism
Didactic
Socially conscious
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Spontaneity
Emotion
Subjective
Individual
Irrational
Imaginative
Personal
Emotion
Visionary
Transcendental
NeoClassical
vs
Romanticism
Commonplace Comparisons
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Society
Reason
Intellect
Extroversion, balanced,
didactic
The normative, the social, the
citizen.
Reason and social issues.
Poet’s skill and adherence to
formal rules and traditional
procedures.
Study of Classical Poetic and
Dramatic forms.
Interest in the verifiable, the
commonsensical, the familiar.
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Nature
Emotion
Senses and sensuality
Introversion, moody, self
interrogative
Genius, Hero, the Exceptional
Passions and inner struggles
Artistic Creativity and feeling.
Folklore, national and ethnic
origins.
Interest in the Medieval, the
Exotic, the Mysterious, the
Occult, the monstrous, the
remote.
Romanticism
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English Romanticism and German Romanticism.
Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress): Klopstock;
Goethe; Schiller—prelude to Romanticism.
Critique of Modernity: Alienation of modern men
from Themselves (division of labor); from
Community (competitiveness); from Nature
(scientific objectification).
August and Freidrich Schlegel; Friedrich von
Hardenberg (Novalis); Friedrich Holderlin; and
the philosophers Schleiermacher and Schelling.
The Poet as Bard
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Significance of Johann Gottfried Herder(17441803)
James McPhereson (1736-1796) and the cult of
Ossian: Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in
the Highlands of Scotland (1760)
Fingal (1761); Temora (1763)
The Poet as Prophet modeled after the old
Testament seers.
Wordsworth: The Prelude (1805)
Book III, Lines 82-167
Why should I grieve? I was a chosen Son.
For hither I had come with holy powers
And faculties, whether to work or feel:
To apprehend all passions and all moods
Which time, and place, and season do
impress
Upon the visible universe, and work
Like changes there by force of my own
mind.
The Prelude, Lines: 139-144
So was it with me in my solitude;
So often among multitudes of men.
Unknown, unthought of, yet I was
most rich,
I had a world about me; 'twas my
own,
I made it; for it only liv'd to me,
And to the God who look'd into my
mind.
151-167
If prophecy be madness; if things view'd
By Poets in old time, and higher up
By the first men, earth's first inhabitants,
May in these tutor'd days no more be seen
With undisorder'd sight: but leaving this
It was no madness: for I had an eye
Which in my strongest workings, evermore
Was looking for the shades of difference
As they lie hid in all exterior forms,
Near or remote, minute or vast, an eye
Which from a stone, a tree, a wither'd leaf,
To the broad ocean and the azure heavens,
Spangled with kindred multitudes of stars,
Could find no surface where its power might sleep,
Which spake perpetual logic to my soul,
And by an unrelenting agency /Did bind my
feelings, even as in a chain.
Biblical History
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Return to Christian mysteries: The Great
Code.
Christian history versus Classical History
Cyclical and Recurrent versus
Finite,Sequential, Symmetrical.
Innocence, the Fall ,Redemption.
The Apocalypse; Revelation
Poetry and the forging of a new mythology