Lecture 3: The Romantic Movement & the Coming of Age of the Novel (the return of literature after a period of upheaval & revolution) I. The Romantic Movement in Poetry A. Historical context Pre-Romanticism: 1780’s & 1790’s; Romanticism: 1800-1830’s -movement had roots in an age of REVOLUTIONS: -American Revolution 1775-83 (‘unalienable rights’ / “life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness.” -French Revolution 1789 / “liberty, equality & fraternity” (Reign of Terror from 1793 & rise of Napolean) English Romantic poets were enthusiastic defenders of revolutions, though later disillusioned by outcome in France.

- Industrial Revolution begins in England (big changes / organization of labour). - Growing distrust of industrializing society; belief in instinct & closeness to Nature, ‘in a state of greater simplicity’ (Wordsworth) - Reaction against formality, sophistication, conventions & elitism of 18th century - Development of an inner vision, with mystical/supernatural in search of ideal world / self-knowledge. - Used simpler language, often writing ‘songs’, more easily accessible, more universal

B. Pre-Romantic poets 1. William Collins (1721-1759) -poet of small production, went insane in his 30’s & died in asylum at 38 -ahead of his time in terms of sensibility and imagination -renewed a more Romantic version of the Ode (to peace, freedom, passion, etc.) – traditional allegory and personification, but very sincere and accessible -inspired by pastoral scenes and ruins of the past, a sense of mystery & awe (cf. Wordsworth) -key work: “Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands” (1749; 1788) – showed interest in supernatural and local folk legends.

2. William Blake (1757-1827) -considerable influence on movement & today -political radical, prophetic warnings of the dangers of new industrial world (its dehumanization) -poet, engraver & printer. 2 effects: 1. had a relative autonomy in his production 2. had first-hand experience with machine age / industrialization, with “the dark Satanic mills” of England.

-elaborated his own vision/ system based on opposition & dialectics -created own mythology, roughly based on Vengeful God from Old Testament & on his own cosmology, -world not split into Manichean camps of Good and Evil, but forces of Innocence & Experience, exemplified by poems “The Lamb” & “The Tyger” (see booklet) -innocent world of children was a state of grace; experience was a time of exploitation, corruption, misery & fear -worlds interpenetrate; poems mix rebellion & submission, vision & reason -key works: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1780), Songs of Innocence (1789), Songs of Experience (1794)

C. ‘First-generation’ Romantic poets: Wordsworth and Coleridge

-also known as the ‘Lake poets’ (Lake District, in the North of England)

-2 main figures: William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834).

-Lyrical Ballads (1798) - preface is a poetic manifesto on Romanticism

-goal: poetry focusing on ordinary people, in accessible language

-although they shared some ideas about poetry, their individual poetry was quite different:

1. William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

-celebrated the importance of Nature for man

as the best way to find one’s inner self, peace & beauty.

-described ideal pastoral scenes and

their effect on the human psyche

-early in life: an optimist seeking universal harmony

-“The Last of the Flock” (1798)- example of importance of Nature and of “humble and rustic life” (see booklet)

-“Line Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” (1798) – pastoral reverie as the poet looks on old ruins

-“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (1807) –describes an ideal vision of a field of daffodils, an image the poet recalls to find inner peace

2. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

-more interested in the supernatural, the mysterious

-like other Romantics, influenced by

German Romanticism and Germanic legends

-less anchored in the everyday; more symbolic,

mystical, and exotic.

-some poems derived from dreams while under the influence of opium:

-“The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” (1798): ballad on a curse that falls on a ship after the killing of an albatross: tale full of spirituality & ecology

“Kubla Khan” (1816) *booklet p. 23+: an epic poem envisioned under the influence of opium is cut short when the poet is interrupted by the intrusion of a ‘person from Porlock’

D. ‘Second-generation’ Romantic poets: Byron, Shelley, Keats

-disillusioned by revolution, but even more rebellious than previous generation

-3 major figures: Lord Byron (1788-1824), Percy Shelley (1795-1821),

and John Keats (1795-1821).

-all focused on Mediterranean & ancient Greek imagination, triggering many abstract thoughts and personal philosophy.

-also rejected conformism (Byron and Shelley), had an interest in revolutionary movements (Byron fought with Greeks against Turks), and in beauty and imagination (Keats: ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever’ in his Endymion 1818).

-all three were young & rebellious; all three died very young

1. Lord Byron (1788-1824)

–died of fever at age 36

-legendary figure, romantic rebel & cynic

-attacked religious hypocrisy, convention

-Romantic notion of poetry as an emotional outlet & of rebel as a hero

-“Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” (1818) poem made him famous: melancholy of the Byronic hero, disgusted with modern society & with himself, wandering Europe

-drama: Manfred (1817): again the story of a tormented hero fighting God & society’s laws

2. Percy Shelley (1792-1822)

-drowned at age 30

-most lyrical of the generation; a revolutionary

& an atheist & an idealist

-believed in perfection & goodness of human nature, a world of love

“Queen Mab” (1813): poem condemns all institutions & laws (religious, political, moral)

“Prometheus Unbound” (1820): lyrical drama: Prometheus triumphs over Jupiter & brings new world of love & equality for all

Defence of Poetry (1821;1840): asserts moral role of poet as guide for mankind to spiritual, to beauty & love & truth

-his works grows more and more pessimistic in last Odes

3. John Keats (1795-1821)

-died of tuberculosis at age 26

-most passionate and sensuous of the generation

-believed in “Negative Capability” –

poet frees mind of opinions & ideas & fact/reason

& lets sensations, doubts & mysteries flow freely

-saw ‘beauty’ as the only source of truth & happiness, only vehicle for brotherhood

-His famous Odes:

“Ode to Psyche”, “Ode to a Nightingale”, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, “Ode on Melancholy”, “Ode to Autumn” 1819 – deal with the relationship between time & beauty & the timelessness of artistic beauty.

II. The Novel Comes of Age

Three leading genres: The Gothic Novel, the early Novel of Manners and the Historical Novel

-novel continued to develop after pause during revolutionary period

-some genres more influenced than others by Romantic movement, but all paved way to Victorian novel

A. The Gothic novel

-genre most influenced by Romantic movement

-set amid wild nature, in Gothic castles or convents

-emphasizes the mysterious and the supernatural

-stresses the emotions, the imaginative representation of the psyche.

Examples:

1. Frankenstein (1818) [booklet p. 26], by Mary Shelley (1797-1851), who was Percy Shelley’s second wife & wrote it at Lake Geneva during a rainy summer with Shelley & Byron. Started as a rainy-day game of writing horror stories, grew to be one of the greatest novels of the period – with political message on dangers of science supplanting Godliness, goodness & morality

2. The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), by Anne Radcliffe (1764-1823)

-more control of the devices of horror & mystery than her contemporaries

-what we consider today the epitome of the Gothic novel

-masterful early use of modern suspense, early example of the “page-turner”

-story of a heroic woman (Emily) held against her will in a mysterious castle in the wilderness

(a plot she uses repeatedly)

-her novels especially popular with middle-class women

B. The Early Novel of Manners

Rise of other female novelists who did not claim

to follow any of the movements of the time

1. Jane Austen (1775-1817)

-first major woman novelist

-parodied the Gothic style of Radcliffe in her Northanger Abbey (1818)

-focused on human interactions among English country gentry

-nearly every novel a BILDUNGSROMAN (story of initiation, coming of age) on young women entering society & finding a husband

-witty dialogue, clever use of situational irony and masterful plot manipulation

-openly mocks snobs and fools

-nearly all works published anonymously

key works: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813 – see excerpt in booklet), Emma (1816), Persuasion (1818)

2. Charlotte and Emily Brontë (1818-1848)

-on frontier between Romantic influence and Victorian novel

-Emily shows early use of time-shifts and

embedded narratives, anticipating technical work of Conrad

-Charlotte reworks the Gothic genre into a more modern love story

-both published their most famous works the same year:

a. Emily’s Wuthering Heights (1847) (see excerpt in booklet)

-passionate story of ill-fated romance of Catherine and her adopted step-brother Heathcliff

-passions dominate the characters in their drive to self-destruction .

-confrontation of two classes, two principles, two views of love & faithfulness, etc.

b. Charlotte’s Jane Eyre (1847)

-romantic story of an abused orphan, adopted into a cruel family, mistreated at school, who becomes a teacher and then a governess in a country estate, fall in love with her master Edward Rochester… much like Austen, a bildungsroman where a good marriage (though not a typical one) is seen as the ideal ending for a woman’s story

C. The Historical Novel

-relied much more heavily on mixing fact and fiction,

an outgrowth of early novels of 18th century

-appealed to a much more masculine audience

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)

-fascination with Scottish past, its folklore, historical figures

-masterful recreation of atmosphere of the past, of scenery and language

-remarkable characterization & verisimilitude

-wanted to portray both the public and private side of great figures

Waverly (1814): on the 1745 Jacobite rebellion in Scotland

IvanHoe (1819): rivalry in England between Saxons and Normans under Richard I

-was also into epic poetry (eg, “The Lady of the Lake” & “Marmion” but again a focus on history and folklore

II. The Rise of a National Literature in the United States

-link between Romantic Movement in England & the American Renaissance

-many ideas of Romantic poets exported and modified in US

(notably by Emerson)

-similarly, sub-genres such as the Gothic novel were appropriated and modified by American writers.

Historical and social background: the US in the early 19th century

-country in constant expansion at time; Louisiana Purchase in 1803, constant immigration and migration

-frontier wouldn’t be declared ‘closed’ & ‘settled’ until 1890

-by the mid-19th century, cities would become the industrial centres, drawing many poor immigrants for labour and urbanizing the population.

-spectacular development of US & its natural landscapes inspired American thinkers and writers; it was time to mark a cultural split from the mother country in language and literature

-still, it took a long time to break from British influence & literature imported from England

-during the first half of the 19th century, there were two main subgenres that were ‘typically American’:

A. The Frontier Adventure…

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851):

-first professional writer in the US, aka “the American Scott”

-adventure novels on the exploration of the frontier

-key works: The 5 Leatherstocking Tales, including The Last of the Mohicans (1826) & The Deerslayer (1841), starring frontiersman Natty Bumppo

-focuses on conflicts with Indians, with settlements destroying the prairie; shows a envious oneness with Nature in Indians but an unsympathetic savagery

-forerunner to lonely, adventurous and virile American hero facing a moral dilemma

B. A Distinctly American Gothic…

1. Washington Irving (1783-1859):

-first American writer to gain international fame

-works show passage from 18th century rationalism

to 19th century Romanticism

-attracted to folk stories and the supernatural

-founding member of the “Knickerbocker School” of wits who wrote satirical accounts of history and humorous essays

-most famous tales show deep imagination and American reworking of Gothic tradition, or German folklore adapted to the New World:

-“Rip Van Winkle” (1819) & “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820)

2. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849):

-undervalued in the US throughout the 19th century

but praised abroad (esp. in France)

-influence of both English Romantic movement and

English Gothic tradition undeniable

-during lifetime, more infamous for his bad temper, his alcoholism, his opium use and his scandalous marriage to his 13-year old cousin Virginia (who died at age 24)

-made a scant living as a journalist

-today the most popular American writer of period, esp. among students

-Poe greatly influenced the French Symbolist poets such as Baudelaire and Mallarmé.

-a pioneer of many genres and sub-genres:

1. his poetry focused on sound (assonance, consonance, rhyme, repetition), often written as elocution exercises; main theme: the death of a beautiful young maiden, “the most poetical subject in the world”

2. he wrote many tales rather than novels, and thus began the American tradition of short story writing

3. most remembered for his horror tales: using Gothic settings (castles, stairways, etc.) and devices (corpses, nightmares, gruesome killings), but focused on the psychology and questionable sanity of the narrator (Poe’s ‘fancy-me-mad narrator’) e.g., “The Black Cat”, “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843)

4. Poe also wrote 3 ‘tales of ratiocination’ in which super sleuth Auguste Dupin solved crimes that baffled the prefect of police—e.g., “Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841).

5. Even wrote an early work of science-fiction (“The Balloon Hoax” 1844) – a fake article about a man traveling around the world in a balloon

3. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864):

-romantic writer stressing imagination & emotion &

sharp criticism of America’s Puritan heritage

(cf. his forefather John Hathorne & Salem Witch Trials)

-romanticism stressing the supernatural & Gothic atmosphere

-unlike Poe, he used specifically American landscapes

-helped forge an ‘American Gothic’

-tales often rely heavily on allegory, symbol

-many of his most famous works set in the time of the witch-trials:

“Young Goodman Brown” – a young Puritan leaves his wife Faith to meet with the devil in the woods…

The Scarlet Letter (1850): Hester Prynne is sentenced to wear the scarlet letter ‘A’ on her chest as she has had a child out of wedlock & will not reveal the father’s name… (excerpt in booklet)