English Romanticism

1
English Romanticism

• (1798-1832)

The divine arts of imagination Imagination, the
real eternal world Of which this vegetable
universe Is but a faint shadow. -William Blake
2
Causes of English Romanticism

• Revolutions EVERYWHERE.
• Going from an agricultural society to an
  industrial one.
• Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems by
  Coleridge and Wordsworth
• Hope in the dawn of a new era brought about by
  peaceful change.

3
Hope turns into dismay

• Laissez Faire attitude
• placed on economics
• (child labor)
• England too stubborn
• for change, rationalism
• useless
• And a loss/abuse of nature

4
Qualities of English Romanticism

• Perception and wonder of a child
• Imagination, dream, and naturalness
• Nature mirrors the human mind and truth. Brings
  about transformation
• Questions tradition and authority while imagining
  happier, fairer, and healthier ways to live
• individual liberty
• Rejection of the public, formal and witty works
  of the Enlightenment. Personal, emotional,
  simple lyrical poetry

5
William Blake (1757-1827)

• Lived a relatively normal life in London.
• His work received little attention in his life.
  When noticed it was labeled as weird.
• Created paintings to accompany most of his poems,
  often the paintings were NECESSARY.
• Created the Songs of Innocence and Songs of
  Experience
• - Innocence genuine love and naïve trust
• - Experience disillusionment with man and
  society

6
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

• Wrote at a very young age, got expelled after
  writing an atheist pamphlet. Estranged from
  family.
• Rushed into courting and marriage. To marry Mary
  Godwin, daughter of famous radicals, he had to
  wait until his first wife Harriet drowned
  herself.
• The couple had a child and were very involved
  with the great thinkers of the time. Related,
  through marriage, to Lord Byron.
• Wrote numerous odes.

• Shelley drowned at the age of 29 with Sophocles
  and Keats in his pockets..
• He was sailing and refused help from sailors when
  the weather got bad,
• fascinated by the dark power of the storm.

7
Golden Age of RussianLiterature

• (19th century)

Men do not accept their prophets and slay them,
but they love their martyrs and worship those
whom they have tortured to death. - Fyodor
Dostoevsky
8
Subject and Style

• Not just one style or movement, but a period of
  the greatest classic literature to ever come out
  of Russia.
• Also a great period of Russian poetry.
• Novels were massive and ran the gambit of
  emotions of the real world.
• Most of this literature was Realist in subject,
  but also included mysticism, brooding
  introspection, social commentary, and melodrama.

9
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

• Not just a novelist, but a social and religious
  reformer respected all over the western world.
• Born to aristocracy, he became bored with his
  life and gambled away much of his fortune as a
  young man.
• Fought in the Crimean War which greatly
  motivated his writing.
• Educated his serfs, tried to live as holy a
  life as possible
• Spent his last thirty years attacking the
  Czarist government and the Orthodox Church.
• War and Peace - - Anna Karenina

10
Anton Chekhov

• 1860-1904 Born in Ukraine, grandchild of a
  serf who had bought his freedom
• Playwright and one of the originators of the
  modern short story.
• Father was religious fanatic, worked hard as a
  child.
• Funded medical schooling by selling comic short
  stories.
• Wrote very fast a short story in an hour.
• Relatively unknown until after WW1 when his
  works were translated to English.

11
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)

• Father was a financially successful doctor,
  pious mother took Fyodor on pilgrimages.
• Went to military academy for engineering and
  developed a love of Russian and French
  literature.
• Was arrested for being in a utopian socialist
  group, forced to be a foot soldier this greatly
  influenced his later works
• Considered the next Gogol, devoutly religious,
  but anti-semetic.
• His works are fictional yet autobiographical,
  pre-date Nietzschian and Freudian ideas, and
  tackle the themes of freedom of choice, good vs.
  evil, socialism, and finding hope/religion/God.

12
Victorian England

• (1832-1901)

Credit is a system whereby a person who can not
pay gets another person who can not pay to
guarantee that he can pay. - Charles Dickens
Repeat the mantra ORDER AND PROGRESS!
13
Riots and Reforms

• Englands upper class feared revolution in the
  30s and 40s.
• The rapid growth of industry brought the onset of
  slums and the poverty of the factory worker.
• The middle class was growing and felt like they
  had no real power. A Reform bill was passed to
  give all property-owning males the right to vote.
• A depression came in the 1840s when unemployment
  was high, bread unaffordable, and food shortages.
  Parliament was forced to repeal its tax on
  imported grains to prevent rioting.

14
Etiquette and Prudery

• The upper class differentiated themselves from
  the other classes through strict rules of
  propriety.
• Social etiquette, moral character, and gender
  roles were all required for one who wishes to be
  accepted to the finest social cliques.
• Strange rules of conduct
• No more than two vegetables should be
  served with an entrée.
• You may talk to friends in the vestibule
  of church, but not in the hall of worship.
• Never look over goods that you have no
  intention of buying
• Mourning garments should be made of
  parmatta silk or bombazine

15
PROGRESS PROGRESS PROGRESS!

• Industrialization
• Science
• - Huxley science education
• - Dependence on basic units
• - Darwin evolution
• - Space continuum w/ fields of energy
• - Conservation of energy
• The maintenance of ORDER.

16
Doubts and Literature

• Writers started questioning whether material
  comfort, rules and standards really satisfied
  human needs and wishes.
• They questioned the harm that comfort brought to
  the environment and how empty and foolish the
  upper class was.
• Authors, such as Charles Dickens, reflected on
  social issues in their novels and stories.
  Specifically, Dickens really emphasized the
  hollowness and superficiality of the wealthy.
• Decadence Movement a beautiful and interesting
  disease, also related to Aestheticism, this
  movement championed by authors like Oscar Wilde
  believed in art for arts sake. Write for the
  sake of creating something beautiful, not to
  champion any causes whatsoever. Thought social
  etiquette of the time was ridiculous and
  satirized it.

17
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

• Mother was a prominent poet, father a surgeon and
  a successful philanthropist.
• Oscar helped found the Decadence movement while
  studying in Oxford.
• Purely an aesthete, he lived for beauty and
  dressed rather flamboyantly. Gave lectures in
  the United States about the movement.
• Married and had two sons BUT he also started
  having homosexual affairs with a number of young
  men.

• His relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas
  brought his downfall. Alfreds father hated his
  sons lifestyle and decided to ruin Wilde. Wilde
  went through a very public trial and served two
  years hard labor. Wilde never fully recovered
  and died of meningitis in Paris a few years
  later.
• Much of his writing has subtle homosexual
  innuendo ie. Very close male friends who find
  women difficult or insufferable