ROMANTICISM???????

Rationalism vs. Empiricism • Rationalism

• -We know the world through our reason

• -Science and mathematics of the time supports this

• Empiricism• We know the world through our

senses

• Our mind is a ‘blank slate’

KANT

-German philosopher

-Combines Rationalism (reason) with Empiricism (senses).

-We receive information about the world through our senses.

-But, through reason, our mind has a ‘structuring capacity’ which frames how we see the world.

In Kant’s words……-Mind is not a ‘passive wax’.

What does this allow us to explore?

Certain Key Ideas and Values of Romanticism:

-Imagination

-Nature and the Sublime

-Individualism and Subjectivity

-Interaction with one’s context

Mary Wollstonecraft-and Travel Writing

-Mary Wollstonecraft; -relatively early Romantic thinker and writer-experienced the French Revolution first hand-claims to be a rationalist

‘Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark’

Travel Writing-very important and popular in Romantic context

-by it’s nature, supports Kant’s ideas suggesting that we understand the world through the combination of our senses and our reason.

Imagination• The imagination is of great value and concern for Romanticism.

• Idea: Each person’s imagination is shaped by their senses and their reason.

• In the travelogue:• Mary Wollstonecraft also values the imagination as made clear through protective

imagery:

• ‘I must fly from thought, and find refuge from sorrow in a strong imagination’

• But, through a reference to ‘noble materials’ she does realize that one’s imagination comes about through the combination of sense and reason‘and these beings, composed of such noble materials of thinking and feeling…’

• It is this imagination which MW believes is necessary to our complete understanding of the world: ‘‘Without the aid of the imagination all the pleasures of the senses must sink into grossness…”

She also advocated the use of reason through her passionate tone

‘….speaking from their feelings, rather than reason: and is this astonishing …’

NatureNature is of great value and concern for Romanticism.

Idea: Nature is a source of inspiration and a stimulus for further thought.

In the travelogue:

On her travels, Mary Wollstonecraft does spend time simply observing nature through superlatives:

‘most picturesque bay I ever saw’

‘I contemplated all nature at rest’

• But, she also uses nature as a ‘jumping off point’ for her own thinking

‘…growing intimate with nature… give(s) birth to sentiments dear to the imagination, and inquiries which expand the soul…’

• Interestingly, Mary Wollstonecraft also makes a comment on poets and how they go about creating.

• ‘a contemplative man, or a poet, in the country…feels and sees what would escape vulgar eyes, and draws suitable inferences.’

• Similar to Coleridge idea from class.

SublimeThe sublime is of great value and concern for Romanticism.

Idea: Sublime is awe-inspiring as it inspires thought.

In the travelogue:

Although claiming to be a rationalist, Wollstonecraft experiences the sublime:‘mounting the most terrific precipice, we had to pass through a tremendous defile, where the closing chasm seemed to threaten us with instant destruction… Still it was sublime’ (use of rhetoric of sublime).

Paradox highlights paradoxical nature of sublime: ‘The emotions that trembled on the brink of ecstasy and agony gave a poignancy to my sensations…’

• But through her reflections she acknowledges that the sublime is actually stimulating her own thought:

‘…excited that tender melancholy which, sublimating the imagination, exalts, rather than depresses the mind’.

• Her mind understands the sublime in the sense that it inspires the idea of total freedom:

‘Every cloud that flitted on the horizon was hailed as a liberator,’

Subjectivity And IndividualismSubjectivity and Individualism is of great value and concern for Romanticism.

Idea: The different ‘structuring power’ of the mind leads to individual subjective experience.

In the travelogue:

-Nature of travelogue, writer recounts their own subjective experience and gives their individual and subjective views.

-Clear from Wollstonecraft’s use of ‘Advertisement’ before text:

‘In writing these desultory letters, I found I could not avoid being continually the first person- ‘the little hero’ of each tale.’

• We see her value subjectivity and individualism through her musings about nature and use of first person pronouns:

• ‘I have to tell you, that, at the sight of Dover cliffs, I wondered how any body could term them grand; they appear so insignificant to me, after those I had seen in Sweden and Norway’

• Combination of senses and reason again evident in MW’s description of what kind of subjectivity she values:

• ‘As in travelling, the keeping of a journal excited to many useful enquiries.’

Engagement with Context• Engagement with one’s social and political context is of great value and concern for Romanticism.

Idea: Through the combination of sense and reason, the mind is active. Therefore one can and should engage with their context.

In travelogue:

Mary Wollstonecraft uses her experiences of the foreign worlds around her to actively question her context through passionate diction:

‘…I reflect on the dependent and oppressed state of her (daughter’s) sex- Hapless woman! What a fate is thine!’

‘Besides, the French revolution has not only rendered all the crowned heads more cautious… but has so decreased every where a respect for nobility….

How does Wordsworth Support?• Wordsworth is the more typical

‘Romantic’ whose idea is that poetry is the ‘spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling’*

• ‘Letters’ influenced Wordsworth:‘It(‘Letters’) influenced Romantic poets such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who drew on its themes and its aesthetic’ **

One finds that he does in fact support the idea of the combination of sense and reason.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud• Nature• nature is beautiful and valued as seen personification of daffodils• ‘Ten thousand (daffodils) saw I at a glance, tossing their heads in sprightly dance’

• -slight suggestion that nature can be used as stimulus for later thought personification of heart‘In vacant or in pensive mood… And then my heart with pleasure fills/And dances with the daffodils’

Subjectivity and Individualism: Because Wordsworth is himself reflecting on a scene, his subjectivity and individualism is the focus of the poem:‘I wandered… I saw… saw I at a glance….I gazed….show to me…. I lie…my heart’ (excessive use of personal pronouns)

Ode: Intimations of Immortality

• Imagination: • -religious imagery suggests that through growth we lose our childhood

connection with nature and imagination:• ‘there was a time when meadow, grove and stream… To me did seem

Apparell’d in celestial light…’ (religious imagery) • ‘The things which I have seen I now can see no more’

• As poem progresses Wordsworth realises that imagination develops from an initial childhood dependence on senses to an adults combination of senses and reason.

• ‘Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass… we will grieve not, rather find/Strength in what remains behind… in years that bring the philosophic mind’

ROMANTICISM????

• -Questions how we know the world

• Therefore questions how writers and poets ‘create’

• The idea that we know the world through our senses and reason is powerful

• Essentially, Romantic texts encourage readers to feel, think and question for themselves