literary highlights wordsworth and coleridge publish lyrical ballads in 1798. thus starting the...
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Literary Highlights
• Wordsworth and Coleridge publish Lyrical Ballads in 1798. Thus starting the Romantic Era.
• Romanticism arises as a response to social and economic changes caused by the Industrial Revolution.
• Keats, Byron, and Shelley write their greatest poems in the early nineteenth century.
The Romantic Period: 1798–1832Fast Facts
• English conservatives worry that revolutionary fever will cross the Channel to England.
• Because the French king has been overthrown by a democratic mob, the French Revolution is radical and frightening to English ruling classes.
History of the Times
• Until the violence and terror escalate, English liberals support the French Revolution’s ideals of “liberty, fraternity, equality.”
Key Concept: Revolution Spreads
Literature of the Times
• In reaction to the ugliness and turmoil of the times, writers turn to nature, the past, and a dream world of imagination.
Key Concept: Revolution Spreads
• Romantic period begins in 1798 with publication of Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems, a collaboration by two young poets, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.
• Included both Coleridge’s long narrative The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.”
• Both poems are now among the most important poems in English literature.
• Represented “a new kind of poetry”—spontaneous, emotional, self-revealing poems written in simple language about commonplace subjects.
Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems
Key Concept: Revolution Spreads
Literature of the Times
The Romantic poets
• were dedicated to political and social change
• believed in the power of literature
• thought imagination—not reason—was the best response to forces of change
• created private, spontaneous lyric poetry
Key Concept: Conservatives Clamp Down
Some Romantic Poets
But to the eyes of the man of imagination nature is imagination itself. As a man is, so he sees. . . . To me this world is all one continued vision of fancy or imagination.
—William Blake
George Gordon, Lord Byron
John Keats
Key Concept: Conservatives Clamp Down
William Blake
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Literature of the Times
• Romantic literature was dominated by poetry.
• Romantics thought poets were extraordinary people, necessary to humanity and society.
• Keats called poets “physicians,” Blake called them teachers, and Shelley thought they were the “unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
Key Concept: Conservatives Clamp Down
• The novel also thrived, however. Key novelists included Jane Austen, Maria Edgeworth, and Sir Walter Scott.
Comprehension Check
What new values and responses to change did the Romantic poets offer?
Key Concept:
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History of the Times
• Swelling urban populations create desperate living conditions.
• England is the first nation to experience the effects of the Industrial Revolution.
• The era’s misery and poverty are justified by an economic policy called laissez faire.
Key Concept: Industrialization Finds a Foothold
Industrial Revolution• Production moves from homes to factories in
the cities.
• Communal land is taken over by individuals.
• Landless poor migrate to cities for work.
• Machines work many times faster than human beings.
Key Concept: Industrialization Finds a Foothold
Comprehension Check
How did Gothic literature provide readers and writers in the Romantic period a new way to deal with the political and social upheavals around them?
Key Concept:
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Your Turn
Compose a brief description of Romantic writing.
The Romantic Period: 1798–1832Introduction to the Literary Period
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Consider using the following words in your description.
literary device spontaneous
differentiate inherent
form and/or function
Themes of Romantic Poetry
Forms of Romantic Poetry
Unit 4Literary Skills Focus Essays
Themes of Romantic Poetry
• Spread of democratic ideals through the American and French Revolutions and disillusionment after failure of French Revolution
• Reactions against harsh living and working conditions created for urban poor by the Industrial Revolution
• Fascination with nature and country life, which seemed a blissful retreat from city slums
Influences on Romantic Poetry
Themes of Romantic Poetry
• Invited readers to feel power and passion
A New Focus in Poetry
Romantic PeriodRestoration Era
• Order had just been restored.
• Society needed social change.
• Poets celebrated order, hierarchy, and enlightened rule.
• Poets wrote about personal feelings, supported individual rights, and used everyday language.
• Tried to capture personal experience
Romantic comes from the word romance.
Themes of Romantic Poetry
• A medieval romance is a tale of high adventure that idealizes knightly virtues and has supernatural elements.
• Romantic writers used elements of romance to go beyond Restoration Era formality and explore psychological and mysterious aspects of human experience.
A New Focus in Poetry
Romantic poets
• wrote about personal experiences and emotions, often using simple language
Themes of Romantic Poetry
• embraced imagination and naturalness instead of reason and artifice
• saw nature as transformative; focused on the ways nature and the human mind mirrored each other’s creative properties
Percy Bysshe Shelley
A New Focus in Poetry
Themes of Romantic Poetry
• Many say the Romantic movement began in 1798 when Wordsworth and Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads.
Imagination: The Inspired Guide
• The Romantics are often considered nature poets.
• However, they are really “mind poets” who sought to understand the bond between humans and the world of the senses.
Themes of Romantic Poetry
The Romantics saw imagination as the link between mind and nature. • To them, imaginative experi-ences were especially moving, perhaps superior to human reasoning.
• The mysterious forces of Nature inspired them.
• All six of the major Romantic poets had their own ideas about imagination, but all believed that it could be stimulated by nature and the mind.
Imagination: The Inspired Guide
Themes of Romantic Poetry
If imagination is the Romantic poet’s guide to truth, Nature is the wise teacher that can deliver the lesson.
Nature: The Wise Teacher
• Romantic poets considered themselves especially sensitive.
• They wanted to help people see the world in all its beauty, sadness, and tenderness.
Themes of Romantic Poetry
For the Romantic poets, nature was a balmto soothe the relentless hounding of an industrialized world.
• Poets tried to translate scenes of natural beauty into words so that readers might know the power of natural forces to shape thought and feeling.
• The poets had a strong sense of nature’s transformative properties.
Nature: The Wise Teacher
Themes of Romantic Poetry
The Romantics’ interest in natural images and themes was reflected in Gothic literature.
Eerie settings
Supernatural events
Questions about humans’ ability to manipulate nature
Novels such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein appealed to the imagination through
Nature: The Wise Teacher
Themes of Romantic Poetry
Romantic poets favored idealized rural settings.
Experience: The Worthy Subject
However, some celebrated the people who lived in crowded cities.
They promoted rights to
Healthful living conditionsRelief from political or economic oppression
Self-expression
Themes of Romantic Poetry
Some Romantics dreamed that poetry could offer an example of model behavior to improve horrific social conditions:
Undemocratic governments
Dangerous factories
Child labor
Laissez-faire economic policies that left businesses unregulated Child workers in coal mine
Experience: The Worthy Subject
EMOTIONS
RULE
Because the Romantic poetry valued individual experience, the rationalism previously admired was replaced by a trust in one’s emotions. The literature in England prior to this movement was witty, intellectual, and social. Romanticism rejects the social ‘us’ and embraces the ‘me’! Intuitions, feelings, and emotions ruled. Man’s heart was a more valued guide than his head. So, another characteristic of Romantic poetry is this enlightenment by emotion.
Themes of Romantic Poetry
Faith in Senses and Feelings
Another characteristic of Romantic literature is the inclusion of supernatural elements.
Perhaps, for the Romantics, Nature was so powerful that it could not be contained. Nature takes on a mysterious, sometimes even scary quality in literature of the Romantics. Supernatural elements play a large part in these works.
Themes of Romantic Poetry
Belief in the Supernatural
The Romantics searched for personal experiences and strove to communicate their power in meaningful ways. To achieve this, the Romantic writers employed simple and direct language. This was another way to reject the Neoclassical movement that hoped to emulate the ancient writers in lofty styles and language. Think of it this way… our most personal conversations, our most private, do not need elevated language to impress or ring true. This simple language is another Romantic characteristic.
Themes of Romantic Poetry
Use of simple language
Ask Yourself
1. Where did Romantic poets look for inspiration? Why?
2. Why do you think Romantic poets wrote about nature during a time of change?
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Themes of Romantic Poetry
Forms of Romantic Poetry
• Expresses the emotions and concerns of an individual as well as of society
• Varies the structure of traditional forms to suit a poem’s purpose
• Focuses on a poet’s personal connection to nature
Characteristics of Romantic Poetry
Function over Form
Romantic Poets
• Poetry was a playground of feelings.
• Form seems more important than function.
• Poets experimented with forms and expressed feelings in natural language.
18th Century Poets
• Poetry was a strictly defined literary genre.
• Poets used formal language and structured traditional forms such as odes and sonnets.
• Function seems more important than form.
The Romantics took poetry in a new direction.
Forms of Romantic Poetry
Ask Yourself
1. What was more important to Romantic poets, form or function? Why?
2. What topics did Romantic poets pursue? Why?
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Forms of Romantic Poetry
Early Romantic Poets
William Wordsworth• Lyrical Ballads, with a Few
Other Poems• “Lines Composed a Few
Miles Above Tintern Abbey
Samuel Taylor Coleridge• The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner• Kubla Khan
Late Romantic Poets
Percy Bysshe Shelley• “Ozymandias”• “Ode to the West Wind”• “To a Skylark”
John Keats• “On First Looking into
Chapman’s Homer”• “Ode to a Nightingale”• “Ode to a Grecian Urn”
Read Assigned Poems and Prepare for Literature Group