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ContextIndustrialisation and Politics in the 1790s27552658128000The Industrial Revolution, which began in England in the 1790s, is arguably the greatest social transformation a society has ever undertaken. Workers emigrated from the countryside to find new work in urban factories, which lead to unprecedented social changes. Industrial housing, in which entire families would sometimes share a single room, was built to meet the new demands of industrial work. The biggest economic differences between rural work and the new factory work was that the factory workers were paid hourly wages and did not own a share of the factories. Work in the countryside was undertaken by the community for landowner, while most families earned additional money by ‘cottage industry’. This was when the whole family contributed in producing a product, such as wool, with simple homemade tools such as spindles. The invention of large scale wool production made these small family businesses obsolete and essentially wiped out the tradition. See Wordsworth’s poem ‘The Brothers’ in the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads, for an elegiac portrait of cottage industries. New, huge industrial towns, such as Manchester, had large and increasing populations, but also had inadequate health and social care. The social infrastructure inherited from the early 18th century was wholly unsuitable for these new industrial towns, and this lead to widespread poverty and suffering. Rural poverty was also rife, as Wordsworth describes in ‘The Last of the Flock’, where a farmer is forced into poverty to feed his family. The new class of factory workers were also underrepresented in parliament. Manchester had no MP to represent it in parliament, which meant that the workers had no formal political voice. On the other hand ‘rotten boroughs’, which were tiny communities sometimes consisting of only several families, were represented in parliament by men who had essentially inherited their positions MPs, since votes were literally bought and sold. This combination of poverty for the emerging working class and the outdated English democratic system which did not represent people properly led to the ‘reform movement’, of which Wordsworth was initially a part. The reform movement sought to change the way Britain was run by reforming the political, legal and economic systems. People campaigned for right to vote for all men, as only men with a certain amount of money were allowed to vote. This inevitably led to only the wealthiest people being granted political representation.Wordsworth’s contribution to the reform movement was to write poetry which depicted scenes of suffering brought about by a corrupt and unfair society. He is particularly interested in illustrating the innocent, pure and acquisitive minds of children, which Wordsworth thought demonstrated that a people are naturally moral and spiritually inclined but are corrupted as they get older. Although many of Wordsworth’s poems illustrate the suffering he witnessed at home and in London, it also shows people who are content with their lives such as the old man in ‘Animal Tranquillity’. The poem’s emotional content intends to emotionally engage the read, so that she can empathize with people who are abused by corrupt political and economical systems. Since it was illegal in the 1790s to explicitly criticize the government, Wordsworth used simple stories to illustrate his political opinions. He also uses the genre of descriptive poetry, featuring natural scenes, to reveal his philosophical thoughts.The Enlightenment in EuropeOne of the ways of defining Romanticism is by contrasting and comparing it to a previous intellectual movement called the Enlightenment. From 1750 to the early 1790 there was a surge of writing by philosophers in Britain Germany and France who debated issues such the existence of free will and God, and what principles an ideal society should be founded upon. The Enlightenment stressed the use of reason as the superior tool of resolving these issues. Rational thought, focusing on logic and scientific observations were preferred over sensations and personal emotions. 1778057785005511802920365Immanuel Kant 00Immanuel Kant Philosophers such as the Scotsman David Hume explained human behaviour not through a soul or mind, but through the body. He was deeply sceptical regarding the existence of God and criticized religious faith as delusive and exploitive. Immanuel Kant, a German Enlightenment Philosopher, on the other hand retained his Christian faith, but argued that God and the soul existed in a separate dimension from our world of sense perception. So in one case religion and the emotional and spiritual life was reduced to physical explanation. David Hume famously claimed that all books about abstract metaphysical issues such as God should be ‘consigned to the flames’ (i.e. burned, because they were useless). On the other hand God and the soul were banished from the world. It was claimed we could not have intellectual access to God and our soul. Either way, the Enlightenment sought to emphasise rational thinking, such as mathematics and science, over our emotions. Rational thought and empirical sciences revealed the truth about the Universe.4587240609600050317402562860David Hume00David HumeThe Romantic poet John Keats put forth the archetypal Romantic repudiation of the Enlightenment faith in reason, by claiming in his poem Lamina that science ‘clipped the angel’s wings’, and proposed ‘confusion upon mathematics’! But the Romantic movement in Britain, which was most active from 1790 to the 1820s, is not just a reaction against the Enlightenment, as it is also an extension of it. Although the Romantics strongly disagreed with the Enlightenment’s poor valuation of emotions, they shared to some degree its two main aims. The first of which is to project an image of what an ideal society would be like, the second of which is the rejection of an unreflective religious faith. What Wordsworth and David Hume would have had agreed upon is the importance of investigating the causes of human behaviour and debating the principles a society should be founded upon. This shared commitment to speculative philosophy shows that Romanticism is both a reaction against, and an extension of, the Enlightenment. The Romantics and the Enlightenment philosophers both shared a faith that human nature was perfectible, and that an ideal society could be created as long as the theories behind the societies were sound.The French RevolutionFrance’s royal family was one of the most ancient and venerable monarchies in Europe. It had a special relationship with the Catholic Church and some of its traditions had not changed in hundreds of years. France was an absolute monarchy. This means that the King was a sort of dictator. He could build lavish palaces such as Versailles and live in luxury. The way the country was run was heavily biased towards the wealthy, and was corrupt from top to bottom. Important social positions such as judges, generals and bishops were literally bought in an informal auction, as opposed to being awarded to people who deserved them because of their talents. Political power was circumscribed to the aristocrats, while the people who worked on their land, the peasants of France, were obliged to pay taxes to nobles who had inherited rights to exploit them.In the 1790s France’s absolute monarchy collapsed. Although this was a complicated process and the complete picture can never really be traced, the primary reasons royal authority collapsed was massive national debt, famine and a decrepit army. The French revolution began as a middle class revolution, which means that it was lead and organized by wealthy non-nobles such as merchant and lawyers. They had earned their money by business and hard work and wanted fairer political representation, including exclusive social positions such as magistrates. 4641215116840Louis XVI in 1778, portrait by Joseph Duplessis00Louis XVI in 1778, portrait by Joseph DuplessisThe revolution was originally meant to be peaceful. France’s absolute monarchy at first was changed to a constitutional monarchy, which is similar to the English political system. Louis XVI was going to remain as King but loose most of his powers, like an English King. Unfortunately the fear of a counter revolution, a foreign invasion by the major European powers, or a civil war, led the Parisian revolutionaries to panic. Louis XVI had already tried and failed to escape, which both undermined his authority as a constitutional King and caused concern that he would flee to raise an army and reverse the revolution. In 1792 Louis XVI was executed, much to the horror of many English radicals who were sympathetic to the revolution, but were shocked by the use of violence.After the French executed their King, Britain declared war on France, which led to France invading and eventually conquering much of Europe with their brilliant revitalised army under the great general Napoleon. From 1792 until 1815 France was at war with most of Europe and Britain. The British establishment feared that there would be a similar revolution in England, which encouraged them to spy on radicals such as Wordsworth. Although the French revolution began peacefully, a lack of communication and empathy between different parts of society lead to escalating violence, which ended in Napoleon declaring himself the absolute ruler of France. France had begun the revolution with deposing one absolute ruler, but ended with a new one. Napoleon was defeated in 1815 and the French monarchy was restored. The French Revolution was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment, primarily the faith that rational organization can lead to a reformed and ideal society. The reality of the French revolution suggests that something vital was missing from the Enlightenment view of the world, and this is what the Romantics, with Wordsworth effectively as leader, tried to supply. Their answer was emotional empathy and the imagination, which they cultivated by contemplating the beauty of nature, the innocence of children and the spiritual depth of the individual. The initial enthusiasm Wordsworth felt over the French revolution is reflected in his poetry of the Lyrical Ballads and the 1807 poems. They reflect the belief that human nature can be improved by education and communion with nature. The Literary World of the 1700sThe 18th century is generally considered the Augustan or the Neoclassical period of English Literature. What critics mean when they describe literature as Augustan is that it has one or more of the following qualities.Augustan literature generally uses the Classical past as its subject matter. This included ancient Greek gods, like Apollo or Aphrodite, but it also included ancient history such as Alexander the Great’s military conquests. Augustan literature generally focuses on (and was written by) upper class society. Topics for comic verse used real life scandals of high society, such as Pope’s hilarious Rape of the Lock. Colloquial language tended not to be used, as it was considered vulgar, while the syntax and rhythms of the poetry were generally poetic, and did not reflect real speech. Examples of this are syntactical inversions, where words are placed the wrong way round, or the use of epithets, which is where you prefix a thing with a descriptive phrase, such as ‘Swift footed Achilles’ or ‘golden haired Apollo’. Critics use the term ‘poetic diction’ to describe poetry which uses deliberately artificial language. Formally, Augustan literature favoured elaborate forms like the ode, or very strict forms like the heroic couplet. Wordsworth was born at a time when these conventions were becoming boring and over-baked. In his preface to the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth wrote that he will use the ‘language of men’ in his poems, which is an explicit rejection of Augustan poetic diction. Wordsworth rarely wrote about classical subjects or satires on high society, and instead focused on rural life. The Lyrical Ballads is a revolutionary collection of poems because they were a revolt against all literary traditions of Augustan literature. The results are mixed. Keep in mind that the Lyrical Ballads are a sort of experiment, and that Wordsworth’s refusal to use advanced vocabulary in his poems has caused some critics to accuse his poetry of being mawkish and sentimental. Wordsworth, in his poetry after the lyrical ballads, does not always stick to his principle of using everyday language, but he would not necessarily be able to write the profound and spiritual poems he does without slipping into poetic English. Formally, Wordsworth and his fellow Romantic did write serious odes on occasion, but they are better known for their splendid use of the sonnet, the ballad form, the Spenserian stanza and the song. ................
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