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The Romantic Period (1786–1833) by Harley Henry – notes for p622–638

Introduction

1. “The divine arts of imagination: imagination, the real & eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.” ~William Blake

a. Do you agree that the imagination forms the “real world” and the visible world is just a shadow?

Timeline

I. Historical Events

a. 1786–1813 (foreign affairs)

i. French Revolution begins with the storming of Bastille, 1789

ii. French King Louis XVI beheaded; France declares war on England, 1793

iii. Napoleon conquers parts of Italy, 1800

iv. Thomas Jefferson elected President of United States, 1800

v. Act of Union creates United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, 1801

vi. English pauper children workday limited to 12hrs, 1802

vii. Louisiana Purchase in US, 1803

viii. Napoleon self-appoints himself Emperor in France, 1804

ix. Lord Nelson defeats Napoleon’s navy at Battle of Trafalgar, 1805

x. US bans importation of slaves from Africa, 1808

xi. English artisans called Luddites riot and destroy textile machines, fearing that industrialism threatens their livelihoods, 1811

xii. US declares war on Great Britain, 1812

b. 1814–1833 (Industrial Revolution)

i. British burn Washington, DC, 1814

ii. Allied British, Dutch, and German forces defeat Napoleon at Waterloo, 1815

iii. One of a series of ineffective Factory Acts prohibits employment of all children under 9yrs of age, 1819

iv. First steamship, the Savannah, crosses the Atlantic in 29 days, 1819

v. Antarctica sighted by Russian, British, and American ships, 1820

vi. George III, mentally unstable since 1810, dies, 1820

vii. First labor unions permitted in Great Britain, 1824

viii. Catholic Emancipation Act allows British Roman Catholics to hold public office, 1829

ix. Charles Darwin serves as naturalist on HMS Beagle during expedition along coast of South America, 1831

x. Reform Act extends voting rights in Britain to upper-middle class men, 1832

xi. Slavery abolished in Great Britain

II. Literary events

a. Robert Burn’s Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, 1786

b. William Blake’s Songs of Innocence, 1789

c. William Wordsworth and S.T. Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, 1798

d. Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent, the first historical novel in English, satirizes absentee landowners in Ireland, 1800

e. Lord Byron’s first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, 1812

f. Charles Dickens born, 1812

g. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, 1813

h. Edmund Kean debuts as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, 1814

i. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, 1818

j. John Keats writes his greatest poems between January and September 1819

k. Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, 1819

l. Noah Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828

m. Emily Dickinson born in Amherst, MA, 1830

I. The Wisdom of Youth

a. Wordsworth and Coleridge, 1798

i. Aged 27 (Wordsworth) and 25 (Coleridge)

ii. Sold some of their poems to raise money for a trip to Germany

iii. Each had already published books of poetry, but a new joint work was to be anonymous

iv. S.T. Coleridge, “Wordworth’s name is nothing…mine stinks.”

v. Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems appeared soon after they left for Germany

1. Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner

2. Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”

(a last-minute addition)

3. these two are now considered among the most important poems in English literature

vi. And so began “Romanticism” in England…

II. Turbulent Times, Bitter Realities

a. Historic markers of the Romantic period: the start of the French Revolution (1789) and Parliamentary reforms that laid the political foundations for modern Britain (1832)

b. Dominated by Six Poets

i. “First Generation” (born before Romantic period started)

1. William Blake

2. William Wordsworth

3. S.T. Coleridge

ii. “Second Generation” (began careers during second decade of 1800s but died before 1825)

1. Percy Bysshe Shelley

2. John Keats

3. George “Lord Byron” Gordon

c. England changed from an agrarian society to an industrial nation

d. A large and restless working class concentrated in teeming mill towns

e. Historical events (“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way….” Charles Dickens, introductory lines of A Tale of Two Cities)

i. Age of Revolution, started with America in 1776 then western Europe in early 1800s, releasing political, economic, and social forces that produced some of the most radical changes ever experienced in human life

ii. American Revolution lost for England her 13 colonies, a great economic loss, but also a loss of prestige and of confidence

iii. More radical French Revolution, started with the storming of the Bastille on 7/14/1789, had more serious repercussions

1. for English ruling classes, it represented worst fears: the overthrow of an anointed king by a democratic “rabble”

2. for English conservatives, it meant the triumph of radical principles that could spread across the English Channel

3. for democratic idealists and liberals like Wordsworth, it meant promise and hope for a better future, until the “September massacre” of 1792, where hundreds of French aristocrats were decapitated with a guillotine

4. Napoleon Bonaparte rose to power as dictator then emperor in 1804, being worse than the executed king before him

iv. Out of fear due to French Revolution, England instituted severe repressive measures

1. outlawed collective bargaining and kept suspected spies or agitators in prison without trial

2. declared war on France in 1803 ( first victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, and then in 1815, final victory at the Battle of Waterloo

3. conservatives thought they saved their country from a tyrant and chaos; early supporters of the Revolution felt betrayed

a. Waterloo was the defeat of one tyrant by another

III. The Tyranny of Laissez Faire

a. Industrial Revolution

i. Goods before this time were handmade at home

ii. Now mass production in factories by machines made these goods faster

iii. Factories made city populations rise creating desperate living conditions

iv. Communal land once shared by small farmers was taken over by individual owners, many of whom transformed their lands into private parks; others divided land neatly into privately held fields

v. Because land was no longer communally owned, many became landless people, who migrated to cities looking for work or went on dole (welfare)

vi. Laissez faire (“let (people) do (as they please)”)

1. economic forces operate freely without government interference

vii. Rise of child labor in city factories

viii. Frustrated by England’s resistance to change to improve conditions, Romantic poets turned from the formal, public verse of the 18th century to a more private, spontaneous lyrical poetry

1. expressed belief in the imagination rather than mere reason (the best response according to Romantics to the forces of change)

2. “…spiritual love acts not nor can exist / Without imagination, which, in truth, / Is but another name for absolute power / And clearest insight, amplitude of mind, / And Reason in her most exalted mood.” Wordsworth’s Prelude

IV. What does “Romantic” mean?

a. “Romantic” comes from “romance,” one of the most popular genres of medieval literature

b. Romantic writers used romance in an attempt to go back beyond the refinements of neoclassical literature to older types of writing that they saw as more “genuine”

c. Allowed writers to explore psychological and mysterious aspects of human experience

d. Today, “romantic” is used as a negative label to mean sentimental or lovey-dovey and mistakenly think Romantic poets popularized our modern notion of “romance”

e. “Romantic” as a historical term

i. signifying a fascination with youth an innocence, with growing up by exploration and learning to trust our emotions and our sense of will and identity

ii. as applied to a stage in the cyclical development of societies, when people need to question tradition and authority in order to imagine better, happier, fairer, healthier ways to live; associated with idealism

iii. acquiring a stronger and stronger awareness of change in order to adapt to it

V. Poetry, Nature, and the Imagination

a. 1800: Worsdworth writes in the Preface to the expanded collection of his and Colridge’s Lyrical Ballads: he was writing a new kind of poetry that he hoped would be “well adapted to interest mankind permanently,” the subject matter being different from the likes of Dryden and Pope, who used poetry to satirize

i. good poetry was “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”

ii. such poetry should use simple, unadorned language to deal with commonplace subjects for a particular purpose

iii. form should be lyric that lends itself to spontaneity, immediacy, a quick burst of emotion, and self-revelation

iv. Wordsworth focused on rural life instead of city life because “the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms on Nature” in the country

v. There is nature, and there are human beings to experience nature

1. Romantics as “nature poets,” not writing charming scenes of forests, mountains, and streams, but experiencing the beauty and majesty of nature

2. nature wasn’t hostile but mysterious, intriguing the human mind to act

3. Wordsworth: “the mind of man [is a natural] mirror of the fairest and most interesting properties of nature.”

vi. Imagination as very powerful or moving

1. it is not just a faculty of the mind but a kind of desire, a motive that drives the mind to learn and to know things it cannot learn by rational and logical thinking

2. in addition to being a “mirror of nature,” the imagination moves the mind in mysterious ways to imitate the powers of its Maker, to co-participate in the creative power of reality, especially through poetry

VI. The Irresistible Bad Boy: the Byronic Hero

a. “Mad, band, and dangerous to know.” Lady Caroline Lamb, speaking of Lord Byron

b. “A man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection.”

i. This reckless, wounded manhood described by Thomas Babington Macaulay became known as the Byronic hero

ii. George Gordon, Lord Byron, both in his life and poetry, created the hero who was devastatingly attractive yet fatally flawed—the classic bad boy

iii. A rico suave, he also had a clubfoot that embarrassed him terribly, and complicated romantic entanglements made him a social outcast

iv. His circle of friends were also passionate yet flawed individualists, intellectually searching, incapable of compromise, forever brooding over some mysterious past sin, painfully yet defiantly alone

c. Rash rebels hailed or resurrected in reaction to a neoclassical world in which order and restraint ruled the day

d. Embodied the deep pessimism of early 19th century life

e. Failure of French Revolution dampened idealism throughout Europe

f. American heirs of the Byronic hero: the cult heroes, rebels without a cause

i. Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1954)

ii. James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

iii. To a certain extent, Stargirl

iv. Explore personal freedoms and reject confining conventions by questioning accepted social behavior

v. These heroes are invariably lonely and misunderstood

vi. Because this freedom often compels them to perform dangerous acts, lives of these heroes can be much too short

1. Lord Byron died of a fever at age 36 while fighting for Greek independence; James Dean died at 24 in an automobile accident

VII. Idea of the Poet

a. 1802: Wordsworth asked, “What is a poet?” he answered, “A man speaking to men.”

b. Most Romantic poetry has a “speaker” speaking to something—a young Highland girl, a baby asleep in a cottage, a skylark, a Greek vase, a season of the year

c. It asks us to imagine this speaking is taking place and consider what kind of speaking is taking place—is the speaker praising or confessing or complaining or worshipping or expressing envy?

d. The speaking is more emotional, passionate, from the heart—we not “hear” lyric poetry so much as we “overhear” it—eavesdropping on a private conversation that comes from the heart of the speaker

e. To be successful, the speaker and the speaking must be convincing through an artful illusion of voice conveying certain truths or ideas

f. Poetry is to be about human experience, about the fundamental relationship between the mind (including the heart and imagination) and other people and things

VIII. The Romantic Poet

a. While Wordsworth says “a man speaking to men,” it’s clear he did not mean that the poet was just a man: The poet is a special person “endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm, and tenderness…a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind”

b. William Blake: the poet was the bard, an inspired revealer and teacher

c. S.T. Coleridge: the poet “brings the whole soul of man into activity” by employing “the synthetic and magical power…the imagination”

d. P.B. Shelley: poets are “the unacknowledged legislators of the world”

e. John Keats: a poet is a “physician” to all humanity and “pours out a balm upon the world

f. Wordsworth: Nothing “can breed such fear and awe / As fall upon us often when we look / Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man— / My haunt, and the main region of my song.”

g. The poet is someone human beings cannot do without

IX. The Lure of the Gothic

a. An offshoot of Romanticism: the eerie and supernatural—known as Gothic

b. S.T. Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

c. The intention of the Gothic? To make readers’ blood run cold.

d. 1747: Horace Walpole began building what he called a “little gothick Castel”

i. a more conventional choice of the son of the wealthy, powerful Prime Minister Robert Walpole would have been a mansion in the popular neoclassical style (like the White House, inspired by ancient Roman and Greek models and emphasizing balance and symmetry)

ii. in stark contrast, the Gothic revels in rustic irregularity: quirky battlements (medieval-style fortifications with openings for defenders) or overgrown landscaping

iii. Walpole’s home, aka Strawberry Hill, was to be gloriously imperfect: when its odd, medieval battlements collapsed, the ruin only enhanced its charm and intensified its melancholy atmosphere

e. Walpole built a Gothic ruin; in 1764 he filled it with monsters: The Castle of Otranto uses ghosts, living statues, and an eerie forest to illustrate a royal family’s collapse, and the Gothic novel was born

f. Contemporary tastes saw Gothic architecture reflecting wild, unpredictable aspects of nature; its ruins reflected human aspirations and failures

g. A melancholy painting or a desolate landscape could enhance spiritual awareness

h. Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794): “that delicious melancholy which no person who had felt it once, would resign for the gayest pleasures. They awaken our best and purest feelings; disposing us to benevolence, pity, and friendship.”

i. Gothic was one way in which people of the age expressed helplessness about forces beyond their control: frightening revolutions in Europe and industrialization’s unsettling economic changes.

j. The sensational trappings of Gothic novels we know today were less important than its ability to let readers, if only for a moment, share their fears about the age’s suffering, injustice, and other unseen “evils.”

Consider this…

The introduction to the great Romantic period in English literature in your textbook is illustrated with pieces of fine art, many of them painted by famous Romantic artists of England and continental Europe. Look over these paintings and take notes on their subjects. (Note their titles.) What exactly does each one make you see? What emotions does each evoke? Do any of the paintings seem mysterious? Which of these paintings or painters might provide material for further research?

The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And, as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

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