The Romantic Period 1660 1798

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The Romantic Period(1660 1798)

• With an Examination of Wordsworth, Coleridge,
  Blake, Byron, Shelley and Keats

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History of the TermRomantic

• Originally a romance was any lengthy prose or
  verse work written in a Romantic language.
• Romance came to mean the tales written during
  the medieval period specifically concerned with
  knights, chivalry and courtly love.
• Romanticism refers to a literary movement
  characterized by
• The idealization of nature
• Freedom of thought and expression (poetry most
  exalted form)
• Heavy reliance on the imagination and
  subjectivity (who you are as person)

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Origins of Romanticism

• The origin of Romanticism lies in the philosophy
  of Frenchman Jean Jacques Rousseau
• Rousseau championed individualism and freedom of
  thought I felt before I thought.
• Romantics were inspired by the French Revolution
  in 1789
• Concerned with the idea of liberty, the rule of
  reason, and human rights
• Individual rights key to personal freedom
• Inspired poets to right about love freely
  without the need for oppressive government

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Individualism

• The belief that regardless of ones class or
  lineage, who you were as a person was the most
  important thing
• Concentration on the idea of selfhood and
  subjectivity
• Before 18th Century few people spent time
  thinking about their own individual identities.
  They were what they were born into nobles,
  merchants, peasants - this dictated who you
  could love
• Believed that society was evolving into a
  utopiaan ideal place of perfection and
  everything they did including love was to
  reclaim a kind of paradise on earth
• Follow the mind of your heart

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Style in Romantic Works

• The second preface to Lyrical Ballads by
  Wordsworth and Coleridge served to affirm the
  importance of feeling and imagination.
• Wordsworth stated, Poetry originates from
  emotion recollected in tranquility.
• Wordsworth and Coleridge also disclaimed
  conventional forms popular during the Neoclassic
  Period.
• Blank verse superseded the rhyming couplet.

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Changes of Romanticism

• Feeling and Imagination vs. reason and logic
• Sensibility and Passion vs. science and satire
• Mixed Genres vs. Aristotles three unities (time,
  place and action)
• Spontaneity and Lyricism vs. regular meters and
  strict forms
• Grotesque and Complex Forms vs. accepted and
  simple forms
• Idiosyncratic and concerned with Rosseaus
  common man

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Nature ,Children the Sublime

• Nature was crucial to understanding the
  individual and the way they loved
• Delight in unspoiled scenery and the innocent
  rural dwellers was central to Romanticism
• Sublime inspiring awe or deep emotions felt
  from the beauty in nature
• James Thomsons The Seasons (1726-1730) is
  often cited as a formative work in this regard.
• Much of William Wordsworths poetry conveys the
  Platonic notion that humans forget all their
  knowledge at birth and spend the remainder of
  their lives recollecting, rather than learning.
• Wordsworth celebrates the child, who enjoys an
  ecstatic communion with nature, and hopes that in
  adulthood people can eventually recover this
  ecstasy by heeding intuition.

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Sensibility and Love

• Concerned with the idea of sensibility or what we
  would call sensitivity
• Being sensitive to ones emotions was a way to
  become more human. You could love better if you
  were in touch with your sensitive side.
• Of all the emotions the Romantics celebrated,
  love was the most popular
• Celebrate love as the birth right of every human
  being.
• It was the most exalted form of human feelings
  and was the foundation to a successful marriage

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The Melancholy Strain

• In the mid 18th century, many poets incorporated
  a melancholy tone to their poems in response to
  changing lives and times.
• Sense of depression, sadness solitude about the
  world and your place in it
• Keats Ode to Melancholy (1820)
• This strain developed into a separate theme that
  was prevalent in many American writers works
  (Hawthorne, Poe and Melville).

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The 5 Big Romantics to Know about

• William Wordsworth
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Lord Byron, George Gordon
• William Blake

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William Wordsworth

• A lover of nature, toured many places renown for
  their scenic beauty
• An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches (used
  conventional forms not well received)
• Lyrical Ballads (1798) revolt against artificial
  classicism the source of poetic truth is the
  direct experience of the senses
• Tintern Abbey
• Ode Intimations of Immortality-contained in
  Poems in Two Volumes (1807)
• The Prelude (1850)-an introspective account of
  his poetic development

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• Lyrical Ballads (1798)
• Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• Kubla Khan
• Christabel
• Major literary critic

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Percy Bysshe Shelley

• Radical nonconformist expelled from Eton College
  at Oxford
• Friends with William Godwin (marries his daughter
  after his first wife commits suicide)
• To a Skylark (1820), To the West Wind (1819),
  and The Cloud (1820)-simple lyrics
• I arise from dreams of thee To Constantia
  Singing love lyrics
• Ozymandius-sonnet
• Adonais-an elegy for John Keats
• Shelley wrote several longer works, began a
  critical work (A Defence of Poetry), and
  political tracts
• Shelley died at age 30 while sailing in a storm.

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Lord Byron, George Gordon

• Childe Harolds Pilgrimage (famous verse
  narrative)
• Developed the Byronic Hero
• he young man of stormy emotions who shuns
  humanity and wanders through life weighed down by
  a sense of guilt for mysterious sins of his past.
• Manfred (verse drama)
• Don Juan (verse mock epic on contemporary English
  Society)
• Fought for Greek independence

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William Blake

• Poet, Engraver, Illustrator
• Poetical Sketches (1783)
• Songs of Innocence (1789)
• Songs of Experience (1794)
• the two contrary states of the human soul, are
  contrasted in such companion pieces as The Lamb
  and The Tyger
• Nonconformist radical
• Wrote a number of prophetic books condemning
  political and social tyranny in the mid 18th
  century (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)
• Blake insisted without contraries no progress
  could be made.

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John Keats

• I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the
  hearts affections, and the truth of
  imagination.
• Highest form of meaning in pure beauty
• Keats is best known for his skill with poetic
  imagery and sound
• Endymion (1817)-metaphor for poet seeking
  inspiration
• Eve of St. Agnes (1820)-connected with Keats
  love for Fanny Brawne
• Hyperion (unfinished)-an epic of the fall of
  the Titans to the Olympian Gods metaphor for
  grief teaches human compassion
• Ode to a Grecian Urn Ode to Psyche Ode to a
  Nightingale-inspiration from art and nature
• Ode to Melancholy To Autumn-inspiration from
  human passions

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Examples From Your Text

• Describe the use of nature imagery - what are
  the recurring patterns or themes?
• How is love depicted in the poems?
• She walks in beauty Bryon pg 57.
• Bright Star and La Belle Dames Sans Merci
  Keats pgs. 9 and 94
• Loves Philosophy Shelly pg. 13
• She Dwelt among the Untrodden ways Wordsworth
  pg. 67.

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