Romantic AgeLecture

Wordsworth

Coleridge

Lyrical Ballads - 1798

Sir Walter ScottDied in 1832

First Reform Bill1. Sought to eliminate rotten boroughs

2. Redistributed parliamentary representation to new industrial cities and extend the vote*

* Half the middle class, almost all the working class, and all women remained without a franchise

Romantic vs. Romanticism

• The word romance originally referred to the highly imaginative medieval tales of knightly adventure written in the French derivative of the original Roman (or *Romance) language, Latin.

* Romance languages derived from Latin = Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Romanian

Declaration of the Rights of Man

Storming of the Bastille

September Massacres

Robespierre and the Reign of Terror

Napoleon Bonaparte

Prime MinisterBenjamin Disraeli

“I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.”

“Two Nations” – the two classes of

capitol and labor, the large owner

or trader and the possessionless

wageworker, the rich and the poor.

William Wordsworth1770 - 1850

“emotion recollected in

tranquility.”

“spontaneous overflow

of powerful feelings.”

“speak in a language

really spoken by men.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge1772 - 1834

Mysterious and demonic

poetry

George Gordon, Lord Byron1788 - 1824

The Byronic hero:

Heathcliff, Rochester,

Captain Ahab

Percy Bysshe Shelley1792 - 1822

Mad Shelley

Mary Shelley – Frankenstein

Mary Wollstonecraft – Vindication

of the Rights of Women

John Keats1795 - 1821

Keats died at the age

Of 25. Remember that WW did

not start writing in earnest until

he was 27. On his death bed,

Keats’s achievements greatly

exceed that of Chaucer,

Shakespeare, or Milton.

Poetic Theory and Poetic Practice

A. Spontaneity – WW described all good poetry as, at the moment of composition, “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”

B. Nature Poems – Nature poems are in fact meditative poems

I wandered lonely as a cloudI wandered lonely as a cloudThat floats on high o'er vales and hills,When all at once I saw a crowd,A host, of golden daffodils;Beside the lake, beneath the trees,Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shineAnd twinkle on the milky way,They stretched in never-ending lineAlong the margin of a bay:Ten thousand saw I at a glance,Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but theyOut-did the sparkling leaves in glee;A poet could not be but gay,In such a jocund company!I gazed—and gazed—but little thoughtWhat wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lieIn vacant or in pensive mood,They flash upon that inward eyeWhich is the bliss of solitude;And then my heart with pleasure fills,And dances with the daffodils.

C. The Commonplace – glorification of the common man and rustic life

D. The Supernatural – An interest in the realms of mystery and magic

E. Individualism, Infinite Striving, and Nonconformity – A higher estimate was put on human powers. A radical individualism surfaced

Gothic Architecture

Gothic Novel

Gothic Music

Gothic Fashion

Jane Austen & Sir Walter Scott

End of the Romantic Age

• Death of Sir Walter Scott – 1832• Passage of First Reform Bill – 1832• Queen Victoria’s reign begins – 1837