The Romantic Movement

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The Romantic Movement

• 1785 - 1830

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2 Significant Historical Events

• American Revolution 1775 - 1783
• French Revolution 1789 -1799

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• 1789 assembly of the States-General storming of
  the Bastille (July 14)
• 1793 King Louis XVI executed England joins
  alliance against France
• 1793-94 Reign of Terror under Robespeirre

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• 1804 Napoleon crowned emperor
• 1815 Napoleon defeated at Waterloo
• 1798 Lyrical Ballads published

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England during Romantic Period

• Economic Changes
• Social Changes

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Economic change

• Industrial Revolution
• move away from agricultural society (wealth and
  power in land holding aristocracy
• industrial nation (power rests in large-scale
  employers)

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• creates cycles of inflation and depression
• creates Two Nations 2 classes of capitol and
  labor (rich and poor) non-communal

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Social Change

• Imported revolutionary ideology
• seen as threat to social structure
• ruling class responds with repressive measures

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• Napoleonic wars put end to reform for 3 decades
• Laissez-faire general welfare ensured by
  economic laws
• Women still inferior to men in all but domestic
  talents

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Romantic Poetry

• Lyric Poem
• main Romantic form
• I of poem has recognizable traits of poet
• history and philosophy
• Wordsworths Prelude specific example

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Concept of Poetry

• Until now poetry regarded as a high art form
• very contrived controlled to elicit certain
  effects/affects

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• Wordsworth poses that poetry arises from impulse
• Imagination has free activity
• based on instinct, intuition, the feelings of
  the heart over that of logic (head)

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Emphasis on nature

• Synonymous with nature
• Use of a natural scene as an impetus toward
  meditative insight

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• Landscape is endowed with human life, passion,
  and expressiveness
• Natural objects correspond to an inner or
  spiritual world (mostly symbolic)

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Focus on commonplace

• Elevated the humble rustic life, and the plain
  style of poetry
• Try to instill a sense of divinity in the
  everyday, commonplace, trivial, and lowly
• Power of the imagination is that it makes the
  old world new again

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Nonconformity

• Age of radical individualism
• higher belief in human potentialities powers
• mind is itself creator of the universe it sees
• human being refuses to submit to limitations
  therefore, the poets accepted no limitations in
  style and form

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• William Blake
• 1757 - 1827

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• Most eccentric of Romantic poets
• Engraver and poet
• Self-published poetry

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• Little recognition until 1960s
• psychedelic drug users bring him to prominence
• preached free love did not practice it

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• Born and raised in London
• Lived in urban middle class
• Studies formal art drawn to engraving

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• Very pious Protestant Christian
• Self-educated in poetry
• hated Virgil and Homer
• creates own mythology

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• Excelled in several poem types
• epic, satire, childrens literature, epigrams,
  hymns, and lyrics

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Blakes Philosophy

• 2 contrary states of human soul
• Warring contraries
• Exist in a sequence
• Ex. Songs of Innocence (1789) Songs of
  Experience (1791)

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3 ways to think of Blake

• revolutionary
• dialecticion
• ironist