ROMANTICISM

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ROMANTICISM

• The Spirit of an age

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ROMANTIC PERIOD IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
1798-1830 1789 ? Songs of Innocence
1798 ? Lyrical Ballads 1800 ?
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WORDSWORTH and COLERIDGE TRIED TO ARTICULATE
THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW POETRY IN THE PREFACE TO
LYRICAL BALLADS
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Wordsworth
Coleridge
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(No Transcript)
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(No Transcript)
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LYRICAL BALLADS

• THE MANIFESTO OF THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT

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THE TERM ROMANTICISM IS DIFFICULT TO DEFINE FOR
THE VARIETY OF LITERARY ACHIEVEMENTS, AND THE
WRITERS OF THE PERIOD WERE ONLY LATER LABELLED
ROMANTIC.
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• The period was dominated by poetry since it was
  the best vehicle for the renewed interest in
  imagination and emotions.

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POETRY WAS SEEN AS THE SPONTANEOUS
OVERFLOW OF POWERFUL FEELINGSTHE ESSENCE OF
POETRY WAS THE EMOTIONS, IMAGINATION OF THE
POET (NOT THE OUTER WORLD).
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POETRY THE POET

• FIRST-PERSON LYRIC POEM BECAME THE MAJOR ROMANTIC
  LITERARY FORM, WITH I OFTEN REFERRING DIRECTLY
  TO THE POET
• THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF BE-CAME A MAJOR TOPIC
  OF ROMANTIC POETRY.

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• The poets began to give great value to individual
  consciousness, an interest in psychological
  introspection and meditation as a reaction to the
  common sense and the grow of a mass-society.

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• POETS OFTEN SAW THEMSELVES AS PROPHETS IN A TIME
  OF CRISIS,
• REVISING THE PROMISE OF DIVINE REDEMPTION IN
  TERMS OF A HEAVEN ON EARTH.

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POETIC SPONTANEITY, FREEDOM

• INITIAL ACT OF POETIC COMPOSITION MUST ARISE FROM
  IMPULSE
• A POET MUST BE FREE FROM THE RULES INHERITED FROM
  THE PAST AND RELY ON INSTINCT, INTUITION,
  FEELING.

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• This spirit of revolt against all forms of
  authority resulted in a kind of
• TITANISM ( overstatement of passions)
• Exaltation of IRRATIONAL and MYSTIC aspects of
  life and to a concern with the SUPERNATURAL
• poetry for poetrys sake, a Greek ideal for
  beauty

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NATURE

• IMPORTANCE OF ACCURATE OBSERVATION DESCRIPTION
  OF WILD NATURE, WHICH SERVES AS A STIMULUS TO
  THINKING TO THE RESOLUTION OF PERSONAL PROBLEMS
  CRISES.

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NATURE (cont.)

• LANDSCAPE WAS OFTEN GIVEN
• HUMAN QUALITIES OR SEEN AS A SYSTEM OF SYMBOLS
  REVEALING THE NATURE OF GOD.
• NATURE WAS SEEN AS BRINGING OUT HUMANITYS INNATE
  GOODNESS.

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• Romantics see nature through lenses of emotion,
  usually coloured with melancholy.
• Nature is in contrast to the ugliness of the
  towns of the time.
• Far from the pastoral conventions of Augustan
  Age, it conveyed a new sense of intimate
  communion between nature and man.

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The Romantic conception of nature was influenced
by 3 philosophical theories

• Platonism or rather Renaissance Neoplatonism,
  which saw this world as the image of an ideal
  metaphysical world
• Pantheism Nature and the Universe is moved by an
  immanent God, whose presence is manifested in
  every stone and tree.
• German idealism Fichte- Schelling- Hegel
  regarded eternal reality as a sort of illusion

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Shelling

• with his philosophy of art, seen as the supreme
  moment when man, through unconscious intuitions,
  can grasp the truth behind reality, and his
  conception of nature, seen as something alive,
  sharing mans own feelings, since they are both
  driven by the same animating principles.

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GLORIFICATION OF THE COMMONPLACE

• HUMBLE, RUSTIC SUBJECT MATTER PLAIN STYLE
  BECAME THE PRINCIPAL SUBJECT MEDIUM OF POETRY.

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THE SUPERNATURAL STRANGE

• The universe was a living entity that could
  reveal itself on two levels
• The visible and the invisible ( the supernatural)
• MANY ROMANTIC POEMS EXPLORE THE REALM OF MYSTERY
  MAGIC INCORPORATE MATERIALS FROM FOLKLORE,
  SUPERSTITION, ETC , OFTEN SET IN DISTANT OR
  FARAWAY PLACES.

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THE STRANGE

• RELATED TO THIS WAS A RENEWED INTEREST IN THE
  MIDDLE AGES (AND THE BALLAD FORM) AS A BEAUTIFUL,
  EXOTIC, MYSTERIOUS ERA.

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THE STRANGE

• THERE WAS ALSO GREAT INTEREST IN UNUSUAL MODES OF
  EXPERIENCE, SUCH AS VISIONARY STATES OF
  CONSCIOUSNESS, HYPNOTISM, DREAMS, DRUG-INDUCED
  STATES, AND SO FORTH.

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INDIVIDUALISM

• HUMAN BEINGS WERE SEEN
• AS ESSENTIALLY NOBLE GOOD (THOUGH CORRUPTED BY
  SOCIETY)
• AS POSSESSING GREAT POWER POTENTIAL THAT HAD
  FORMERLY BEEN ASCRIBED ONLY TO GOD.

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INDIVIDUALISM

• THERE WAS A GREAT BELIEF IN DEMO- CRATIC IDEALS,
  CONCERN FOR HUMAN LIBERTY, A GREAT OUTCRY
  AGAINST VARIOUS FORMS OF TYRANNY.

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INDIVIDUALISM

• THE HUMAN MIND WAS SEEN AS CREATING (AT LEAST IN
  PART) THE WORLD AROUND IT, AND AS HAVING ACCESS
  TO THE INFINITE FACULTY OF IMAGINATION.

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INDIVIDUALISM

• MANY WRITERS DELIBERATELY ISO-LATED THEMSELVES
  FROM SOCIETY TO FOCUS ON THEIR INDIVIDUAL
  VISION.( isolation in Nature)
• THEME OF EXILE WAS COMMON, THE NON-CONFORMIST
  ROMANTICS WERE OFTEN SEEN AS GREAT SINNERS OR
  OUTLAWS .(revolt aganst society)

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Striving for the infinite

• The desire to create myths
• The Romantics were aware that the search for
  infinity was destined to fail, but this
  impossible task was the artists mission

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The language

• It should be written in a selection of language
  really used by men instead of Artificial
  Diction
• There was a return to earlier verse forms
• Blank verse ( Wordsworth and Shelley) unrhymed
  iambic pentameter
• The sonnet ( Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats)
• The Spenzerian Stanza ( Keats)
• The Italian Terza Rima ( Shelley)
• The Italian Ottava Rima ( Byron)
• The Folk ballad Stanza ( Keats, Coleridge)

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There were several important differences between
first generation of Romantics and the younger
second generation

• Age and political convictions
• Wordsworth and Coleridge were critical of many
  existing social conventions
• Byron, Shelley and Keats were all exiles , exiled
  from moral, social and political habits
  prevailing in English life.
• The second generation kept their revolutionary
  spirit to the end.
• Byron and Shelley thought that all authority
  should be cast aside and leave man free . Keats
  exiled more in spirit than in body, dedicated
  himself to a search for timeless beauty

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Before analyzing one of Wordsworths
poemsDAFFODILS

• Lets have a look at the video

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Wordsworth DAFFODILS
I wandered lonely as a cloud  That floats on
high o'er vales and hills,When all at once I saw
a crowd,  A host, of golden daffodilsBeside
the lake, beneath the trees,Fluttering and
dancing in the breeze.
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Wandered may suggest

• The isolation and alienation of the poet
• it emphasize his loneliness, and how he feels no
  connection with anyone around him
• That indicates that he didn't have a destination
  or purpose , he was just wandering about, almost
  as if in search of a friend

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A simile as a cloud

• Floating lonely as a cloud symbolizes a
  separation from the natural world
• he states that he "floats on high o'er vales and
  hills." ,he is far above the hills and vales, not
  connected to them.  He is apart and separate, and
  not included.
• But also the union between man and nature
• Idea of freedom
• The habit to dream/ imagination

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When all at once I saw .golden daffodils

• he re-establishes a connection with nature as he
  moves through the field of daffodils
• a crowd, a host.. Fluttering and dancing
• The daffodils are alive and personified endowed
  with a life and a soul of their own
• They are able to feel joy and to transmit it
• golden..
• Giving them a higher connototion
• A CERTAIN COLOURING OF IMAGINATION

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A CERTAIN COLOURING OF IMAGINATION

• ordinary things should be presented to the mind
  in an unusual way

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Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

• The daffodils are not described, but the poet
  puts them in relationship to nature

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Continuous as the stars that shine  And twinkle
on the milky way,They stretched in never-ending
line  Along the margin of a bayThe thousand
saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in
sprightly dance.
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as the stars that shine  And twinkle on the
milky way,

• Earth and heaven are united in the beauty of the
  daffodils
• No more solitude, but a deep union with nature

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• The waves beside them danced but they  Outdid
  the sparkling waves in gleeA poet could not but
  be gay,  In such a jocund companyI gazedand
  gazedbut little thoughtWhat wealth the show to
  me had brought

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A poet could not but be gay,

• Only a poet can find himself in a state of
  creative joy
• the importance of the poet's role in society
  during the Romanticism period.  Romantics such as
  believed it was the poet's responsibility to
  demonstrate humanity's connection to nature and
  relay the message to society.

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I gazedand gazed

• This repetition conveys the impression of the
  poet breathless, unable to move in front of such
  a beauty
• but little thought
• The thought came later
• wealth
• happiness with the contact with nature. This
  joy is now the opposite of the loneliness in the
  first stanza, his life is awakened to new life by
  the daffodils

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• For oft, when on my couch I lie  In vacant or
  in pensive mood,They flash upon that inward
  eye  Which is the bliss of solitudeAnd then my
  heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the
  daffodils

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when on my couch I lie

• When the poet sees the daffodils he little tought
  what they meant to him.
• The thought came later, remembering the daffodils
  and using imagination
• Only Imagination enables man to enter into and
  give life and significance to the world
• When at home, in a pensive mood, remembering the
  sensations felt, you are able to feel emotions

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LANGUAGE

• Language really used by men
• In the first 3 stanzas he uses the past simple,
  while in the last one he uses the Present Simple.
• The change of tenses underlines the gap between
  the past experience and its remembrance in the
  poets ecstatic vision

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WHAT IS POETRY?

• The spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings
  emotions
• It comes from emotions recollected in
  tranquillity