Romanticism

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Romanticism

• A World of Perfection and Exploration to the Dark

2
Definition

• An artistic, literary and intellectual movement
• Originated in 18th century Western Europe during
  the Industrial Revolution
• A revolt against aristocratic, social, and
  political norms of the Enlightenment period
• A reaction against the scientific rationalization
  of nature in art and literature

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Definition

• Strong emotion as a source of aesthetic
  experience
• New emphasis on such emotions as trepidation,
  horror, and the awe experienced in confronting
  the sublimity of untamed nature
• Romantic" ("romance) a prose or poetic heroic
  narrative originating in medieval literature and
  romantic literature

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Romance

• A narrative mode
• Employing exotic adventures and idealized
  emotions
• Idealistic depiction of characters and actions
• People, actions and events are depicted more as
  we wish them to be
• Heroes are always very brave, whereas the
  villains are at all times bad rather than the
  complex ways they usually are

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Romance

• Medieval romances chivalric tales of kings,
  knights, and aristocratic ladies
• Modern romances adventure novels which embodied
  the symbolic quests and idealized characters of
  earlier, chivalric tales in slightly more
  realistic terms
• Sir Walter Scotts Ivanhoe
• Nathaniel Hawthornes The House of the Seven
  Gables
• Star Wars and James Bond films

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Romantic Comedy

• A form of comic drama
• The plot focuses on one or more pairs of young
  lovers
• Overcoming difficulties to achieve a happy
  ending, usually marriage
• Characters not with withering contempt but with
  kindly indulgence
• Takes place in everyday world, or perhaps in some
  never-never land (the forest of Arden in
  Shakespeares As You Like It)
• Shakespeare A Midsummer Nights Dream

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The Romantic Period (1785 1830)

• Literature "Romanticism" the late 18th century
  the 19th century
• Recurring themes
• Criticism of the past
• Emphasis on women and children
• Respect for natures
• The supernatural/occult and human psychology
  (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

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Important Historical Events in the Romantic
Period

• 1789 1815 Revolutionary and Napoleonic period
  in France
• 1789 French Revolution broke out
• 1793 King Louis XVI executed
• 1793 94 The Reign of Terror
• 1804 Napoleon crowned emperor
• 1815 Napoleon defeated in Waterloo
• 1820 Accession of George IV in England

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Major Writers in Romantic Period

• Poets
• William Wordsworth (Lucy Gray, The Prelude)
• John Keats (Ode to a Nightingale, To Autumn)
• Percy Bysshe Shelly (Ode to the West Wind, The
  Cloud)
• Lord George Gordon Byron (She walks in beauty,
  Don Juan)
• Novelists
• Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and
  Prejudice, Emma)
• Sir Walter Scott (Rob Roy, The Heart of
  Midlothian)

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The Spirit of the Age and the French
Revolution The Yearning for Change

• A pervasive intellectual and imaginative climate
  the French Revolution had seemed the dawn of a
  new era, a new impulse had been given to mens
  minds (Hazlitt, William. The Spirit of the Age.)
• A literary renaissance
• Release of energy
• Experimental boldness
• Abundant creative power
• Accompaniment of political and social revolution

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The Spirit of the Age and the French
Revolution The Yearning for Change

• A pervasive feeling an age of new beginnings
  when everything was possible
• By throwing away the inherited procedures and
  out-of-date customs in different sectors of life
• Including the political and social branch, as
  well as the intellectual and literary activities.

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Theories in Romantic Period (1)Concept of
Poetry and the Poet

• Wordsworth the spontaneous overflow of powerful
  feelings
• The source of the poem not located in the outer
  world, but in the individual poet
• The essential materials of the poems the inner
  feelings of the author, or external objects only
  after these have been transformed by the authors
  feelings
• Poetry as the expression / utterance /
  exhibition of emotion

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Theories in Romantic Period (1)Concept of
Poetry and the Poet

• Major Romantic form Lyric poems written in the
  first person
• I (often not the lyric speaker) with
  recognizable traits of the poet in his own person
  and circumstances
• Example Wordsworths Prelude a poem of epic
  length, about the growth the poets own mind
• Prelude as the central literary form of
  Romanticism
• A long work about the formation of the self
• Centering on a crisis
• Presented in the radical metaphor of an interior
  journey in quest of ones true identity and
  destined spiritual home

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Theories in Romantic Period (2) Poetic
Spontaneity and Freedom

• Emphasis on free activity of imagination
• Insistence on the essential role of instinct,
  intuition and the feeling of the heart to
  supplement the judgments of the purely logical
  faculty, the head

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Theories in Romantic Period (3) Romantic Nature
Poetry

• Prominence in natural landscape to raise an
  emotional problem or personal crisis whose
  development and resolution constitute the poem
• Endowing the landscape with human life, passion
  and expressiveness a deliberate revolt against
  the world views of science (a mechanical world of
  physical particles in motion)

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Theories in Romantic Period (3) Romantic Nature
Poetry

• Natural objects correspond to an inner or a
  spiritual world
• Tendency to symbolist poetry a rose, a
  mountain, or even a cloud can be presented with
  meanings beyond itself (Shelly I always seek in
  what I see the likeness of something beyond the
  present and the tangible object.)

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Theories in Romantic Period (4) The Supernatural

• Writers frank violation of natural laws and the
  ordinary course of events in poems
• Opening up poetry to areas of mystery and magic
  materials from ancient folklore, superstition and
  demonology
• To impress the readers with the sense of magical
  powers and unknown modes of being
• Set in the distant past or in faraway places, or
  both (Example milieu of Kubla Khan exploits the
  exoticism both of the Middle Age and of the
  Orient)

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Theories in Romantic Period (4) The Supernatural

• The rise of Gothic Novel
• Frequent setting in a gloomy castle of the Middle
  Ages
• Possibilities of mystery and terror in dark,
  rocky landscapes
• Common images decaying mansions, secret passages
  and sneaky ghosts
• Opening up the dark, irrational side of human
  nature the savage egoism, the perverse
  impulses, and the nightmarish terrors lying
  beneath the controlled and ordered surface of the
  conscious mind

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Theories in Romantic Period (4) The Supernatural

• The rise of Gothic Novel
• Powerful and influential writings by female
  writers (e.g. The Champion of Virtue A Gothic
  Story by Clara Reeve and The Italian by Ann
  Radcliffe)
• A fictional release for the hidden desires and
  compensatory fantasies of the rigidly restricted
  and disadvantaged class

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Theories in Romantic Period (4) Strangeness to
Beauty

• Unusual modes of experience
• Examples
• Visionary states of consciousness (common among
  children but not in adult judgment)
• Mesmerism (Hypnotism)
• Dreams and nightmares