Download - Romanticism in British Literature
Ms. Mengouchi
Romanticism in British Literature
SensibilityInnocenceImaginationInspirationIndividuality
IdealismIntuitionNatureFreedom from tradition
KEY CONCEPTS:
Denis Diderot future is built on reason: man is born to think for himself. His works were banned by the government.
Jean Jacques Rousseau: feeling over thought, to feel is to exist .
American revolution inspired new ideas of equality and liberty in Europe
Influences
Both (Diderot and Rousseau) believed that control and authority are repressive and thought that man needs freedom.
Rousseau: Man was born free and everywhere he is in chains
Civilized man is born and dies a slaveMan is innately good, but science is wicked and
civilization is harmful and all cultures are corrupt
Called for the end of civilization « Nature never deceives us, it is we who deceive ourselves »
Jean Jacques Rousseau
FRENCH REVOLUTION: Political upheaval in France inspired dreams of liberty.
1793 Louis XVI is executed by the Guillotine
French Revolution inspired ideas of freedom and liberty to the British
1780 French Revolution
Romanticism revolted against Industry, commerce, rationality, science, the new technology-oriented world.
Revolted against the repressive organized lifestyle of the modern world.
Revolution against authority and hierarchy
There are two Generations:
First Generation Romantics: William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
They are known as the Lake poets because they originate from Lake District
They were against change, wanted a return to poetry, imagination and legend. (Nostalgia for the past) They wanted a return to the magical and Mysterious.
Major Figures
The Second Generation Romantics:
John Keats, P. B. Shelley, Lord Byron
They defied the standards of society, revolted against and transgressed the laws.
Sought to give meaning to life
They were self-sufficient and individualistic
Their poetry was self regarding and subjective.
They were envoloped in passion and emotion, incorporating so much more intuitive thought, the supernatural, the exotic.
Sought satisfaction and made it unreachable.
German literary figure, one of the fathers
of Romanticism.
1774 The Sorrows of Young Wherther
A love story between Wherther, a poet,
and Charlotte, a married beauitful woman.
The book encouraged society to prefer
love rather than class, lineage, and money.
In Romanticism it is noble to follow one’s
heart
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Imagination is the source of artSought freedom: he thought
the system enslaved him.Chose poetry and painting to
express his uncommon ideas. Life is a prison, will and
imagination are locked out of imposed systems
Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American Revolutions.
William Blake 28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827
Blake and Wordsworth had a grief for children who had to work
Blake wrote The Chimney SweeperSpontaneous childhood visions are the
source of adult Inspiration1726 Rousseau: Wisedom of little children,
spontaneity, adults are repressive (like reason)
Industrialization Vs Child innocenceThere is human nature in child innocence,
and rational corruption in adult disciplineInnocence is a source of creativity and
genius
William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850
Revolution promised freedom for the future of humanity: « Human nature seems born again »
The dream of a new world is broken by the turn of events in France
Conflict between France and Britain.
Wordsworth became wanderer in search of peace.
Landscape restored his faith in human nature.
Poetry about human passions
Celebrated nature (daffodils, oak trees, rivers, butterflies…)
Hated anything mechanical and industrial
Preferred simplicity and nature rather than industry.
In Bristol he wrote poetry with Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Both saved Romanticism from the chaos of the French revolution.
Both made a bond to change the world through poetry
The Lyrical Ballads 1798-1800A collection of poems written by both W. Worsdworth
and Samuel T Coleridge.
This collection is considered as the bible of Romanticism for it contains its main principles.
They wrote with the same purposes of the French revolution
People cease to be subjects and become citizens
Topics were the same as earlier poetry (rural poor, beggars, deserted mothers) but what made it different was its depth of moral and psychological complexity
Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772 –1834He gave lectures on Revolution
after the French Revolution
Wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in which a voyager shots an Albatross and his ship was followed by ghosts. A warning that man should respect other creatures.
Through this poem, the search of freedom led Romantics to the Natural world
Coleridge explored the limits of human imagination which inspired him Kubla Khan (1797) –Opium—
For Coleridge, Mind is a mystery discovered through imagination
Imagination is the human soul, able to create a new world.
God and religion are not at the centre of the world.
John KeatsHe experienced the horror
of conducting operations without anesthesis
Wrote people’s pain in poetry
A poet is a sage, humanist physician to all men. (words are medicine)
Percy Bysshe ShelleySought the meaning of
life and claimed that it was found in Atheism.
Had different love affairs, sought self gratification.
By violating social conventions, Shelley pioneered a notion of Free Love
Driven by Individual will and feeling
Lord Byron The great object of life is
sensation
1812 Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage a poem of a wanderer looking for an exotic experience
Impossibility of satisfation both of Byron and his character Childe.
Desire for extreme experience
Heightened sensation
Mary Shelley
She was poet and Novelist
Wrote Frankenstein
Gothic sotries of ghosts and beasts, supernatural, mystery, antiquity
Fear of the supernatural
Gothic Architecture
ConclusionTHE FIVE Is OF ROMANTICISM:
o INNOCENCE AND YOUTH: YOUTH IS NOT CORRUPTED
thus free from the evils of society
o IMAGINATION: A SOURCE OF INFORMATION which
deserves exploration
o INSPIRATION: BY NATURE. Nature is more valuable than
towns and cities. People are free from judgement and from negative influences
o INTUITION: INNER VOICE
o INDIVIDUALISM: A DIVINE SPARK IN EVERY HUMAN
BEING
References:Wordsworth, William, Coleridge, Samuel
Taylor. Lyrical Ballads and Other Poems. London: Wordsworth Editions, 2003. Print.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scck3YCiRxg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liVQ21KZfOI
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiRWBI0JTYQ