English Literature

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English Literature

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Part ? The Romantic Period

• Romanticism in England

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Introduction

• At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries
  romanticism came to be the new trend in English
  literature. It rose and grew under the impetus of
  the Industrial Revolution and the French
  Revolution.

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• 1. Social Background
• 2. Radicalism
• a. Jea-Jacques Rousseau, a French philosopher,
  was one of the leading thinkers in the second
  half of the 18th century. In 1762 he published
  two books that electrified Europe -, in which he
  explored new ideas about Nature, Society and
  education. These ideas of Rousseau's provided
  necessary guiding principles for the French
  revolution, for they inspired an implacable
  resentment against tyrannical rule in France and
  an immense hope for the future. In 1789 there
  broke out the epoch-making French revolution.
• b. The news of the Revolution and the storming of
  Bastille aroused great sympathy and enthusiasm in
  the English liberals and radicals. Thomas Paine
  published The Declaration of Rights of Man in
  1774. Its motto is "liberty".
• c. William Godwin
• The controversies over the French revolution
  were finally raised to the height of philosophy
  by William Godwin . He wrote passionately against
  the injustices of the economic system and the
  oppression of the poor in his Inquiry Concerning
  Political Justice.

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3. Romanticism

• a. Romantic Movement in European Literature
• Following the Enlightenment and its impact on
  literature, there was Romantic Movement. It came
  earliest in Germany, a little later in England.
• The literature of Romantic Movement expressed a
  more or less negative attitude of the different
  social strata of the time toward the existing
  social and political conditions that came with
  the industrial revolution and the growing
  importance of the bourgeoisie. The romantics saw
  man essentially as an individual in the solitary
  state, emphasized the special qualities of each
  individual's mind. In essence it designates a
  literary and philosophical theory which tends to
  see the individual as the very center of all life
  and all experience. It also places the individual
  at the center of art, making literature most
  valuable as an expression of his or her unique
  feelings and particular attitudes, and valuing
  its accuracy in portraying the individual's
  experiences. It was in the very last years of the
  18th century and the first two decades of the
  19th that romanticism as a literary movement in
  England reached its full flowering, especially in
  the realm of poetry. Wordsworth and Coleridge
  were the major representatives of the movement.

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I. William Blake(1757-1827)

• 1. Life .
• 2. Literary works
• Songs of Innocence In this volume of poems, Blake
  declares he is writing "happy songs/Every child
  may joy to hear". Using a language which even
  little babies can learn by heart, Blake succeeds
  in depicting the happy condition of a child
  before it knows anything about the pains of
  existence. The poet expresses his delight in the
  sun, the hills, the streams, the insects and the
  flowers, in the innocence of the child and of the
  lamb. Blake, with his eager quest for new poetic
  forms and techniques, broke completely with the
  traditions of the 18th century. He experimented
  in meter and rhyme and introduced bold metrical
  innovations which could not be found in poetry of
  his contemporaries.

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• Songs of Experience paints a different world, a
  world of misery, poverty, disease, war and
  repression with a melancholy tone. A number of
  poems from the Songs of Innocence also find a
  counterpart in the Song of Experience. For
  instance, the "Infant Joy" is matched with the
  "Infant Sorrow" and the pure "lamb" is paired
  with the flaming "Tyger". The two books hold the
  similar subject-matter, but the tone, emphasis
  and conclusion differ.
• Childhood is central to Blake's concern in these
  two volumes of poetry, and this concern gives the
  two books a strong social and historical
  reference.

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• Marriage of Heaven and Hell(1790) The book marks
  his entry into maturity. In this poem, Blake
  explores the relationship of the contraries.
  Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love
  and hate, are necessary to human existence. Life
  is a continual conflict of give-and-take, a
  pairing of opposites, of good and evil, of
  innocence and experience, of body and soul.
  "Without contraries, there is no progression."
  The "marriage" to Blake, means the reconciliation
  of the contraries, not the subordination of the
  one to the other.

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• Blake writes his poems in plain and direct
  language. His poems often carry the lyric beauty
  with immense compression of meaning. He distrusts
  the abstractness and tends to embody his views
  with visual images. Symbolism in wide range is
  also a distinctive feature of his poetry.

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?. William Wordsworth

• representative poet, chief spokesman of Romantic
  poetry
• (1) Life a. love natureb. Cambridge c. tour
  to France d. French revolution e. Dorathy
  f. The Lake District g. friend of Coleridge
  h. conservative after revolution.

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• (2) worksa. the Lyrical Ballads (preface)
  significanceb. The Prelude a biographical
  poem.c. the other poems

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• (3) Features of his poems.a. ThemeA constant
  theme of his poetry was the growth of the human
  spirit through the natural description with
  expressions of inward states of
  mind.b. Characteristics of style.His poems are
  characterized by a sympathy with the poor, simple
  peasants, and a passionate love of nature.

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• Example
• I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
• Theme Through describing a scene of joyful
  daffodils recollected in memory, the poet hopes
  to put illustrate his theory of poetic
  inspiration ---spontaneous overflow of powerful
  feelings, which originates in emotion recollected
  in tranquility

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• Image dancing daffodils
• fluttering, dancing, tossing, dance,
  danced, dances
• sprightly, glee, gay, jocund, pleasure
• Metrical pattern a short lyric of 4 sestets (a
  quatrain-couplet) of iambic tetrameter lines
  rhyming ABABCC.

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?. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• poet and critic(1) Life a. Cambridge
  b. friend with Southey and Wordsworth c.
  taking opium.(2) works.The fall of
  RobespierreThe Rime of the Ancient MarinerKubla
  KhanBiographia Literaria

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• (3) Biographia Literaria.(4) His criticismHe
  was one of the first critics to give close
  critical attention to language. In both poetry
  and criticism, his work is outstanding, but it is
  typical of him that his critical work is very
  scattered and disorganized.

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?. George Gordon Byron

• (1) Life a. Cambridge, published poems and
  reviews b. a tour of Europe and the East c.
  left England d. friend with Shelley e. worked
  in Greece national hero f.  radical and
  sympathetic with French Revolution.

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• (2) Works.Don JuanWhen We Two PartedShe Walks
  in Beauty

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• (3) Byronic Hero.Byron introduced into English
  poetry a new style of character, which as often
  been referred to as Byronic Hero of satanic
  spirit. People imagined that they saw something
  of Byron himself in these strange figures of
  rebels, pirates, and desperate adventurers.(4)
  Poetic style loose, fluent and vivid

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?. Percy Bysshe Shelley

• poet and critic(1) Life a. aristocratic
  family b. rebellious heart c. Oxford d.
  Irish national liberation Movement e. disciple
  of William Godwin f.  marriage with Harriet,
  and Marry g. left England and wandered in
  EUrope, died in Italy h. radical and
  sympathetic with the French revolutioni.  Friend
  with Byron(2) works two types violent
  reformer and wanderer
• Prometheus Unbound

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• (3) Characteristics of poems.a. pursuit of a
  better society b. radian beauty c. superb
  artistry imagination.(4) Defense of Poetry

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• Ode to the West Wind
• Theme This is one of Shelleys best known
  lyrics. The poet describes vividly the activities
  of the west wind on the earth, in the sky and on
  the sea and then expresses his envy for the
  boundless freedom of the west wind and his wish
  to be free like it and to scatter his words among
  mankind. The celebrated final line of the poem,
  If winter comes, can Spring be far behind? has
  often been cited to illustrate Shelleys
  optimistic belief in the future of mankind.
• In the 1st stanza, Shelley uses the seasonal
  cycle in nature as a continuing process of
  universal death and regeneration

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?. John Keats.

• (1) Life a. from a poor family b. Cockney
  School c. friend with Byron and Shelley d.
  attacked by the conservatives and died in Italy

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• (2) works.
• Ode to the Nightingale
• Ode on a Grecian Urn
• Ode to Psyche
• Ode to Melancholy

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?. Water Scott

• (3) Characteristics of poemsa. loved beauty b.
  seeking refuge in an idealistic world of
  illusions and dreams.

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• Novelist and poet(1) Life a. Scotlandb.
  university of Edinburghc. poem to noveld.
  unsuccessful publishing firme. great
  contribution historical novel.(2) three groups
  of novels(3) Features of his novels.(4) his
  influence.

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?. Jane Austen

• (1) Life a. country clergyman b. uneventful
  life, domestic duties (2) works.

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• (3) features of her writings.Austens novels are
  britened by their witty conversation and
  omnipresent humour. Her stories are skillfully
  woven together her plots never leave the path of
  realism, and have always been sensible. Her
  language shines with an exquisite touch of lively
  gracefulness, elegant and refined, but never
  showy. She herself compared her work to a fine
  engraving made up on a little piece of ivory only
  two inches square. The comparison is true. The
  ivory surface is small enough, but the lady who
  made the drawings of human life on it was a real
  artist.(4) rationalism, neoclassicism,
  romanticism and realism.

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?. Charles Lamb

• essayist and critic(1) life a. poor familyb.
  friend of Coleridge c. sister Maryd. worked
  in the East India Housee. a miserable
  lifef.  a man of mild character. g. a
  Romanticist of the city.

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• (2) works Essays of Elia. Three groups.(3)
  Features.       a. The most striking feature of
  his essays is his humor.       b. Lamb was
  especially fond of old writers.       c. His
  essays are intensely personal.       d. He was a
  romanticist.