EMOTION VERSUS REASON

Landscape with a double rainbow, 1812, John Constable (1776-1837)

The age of Revolutions

(1775 – 1830)

1775 – 1783 : American War of Independence

John Trumbull,

Declaration of

Independence,

1819

The age of Revolutions

(1775 – 1830)

• 1789 – 1794: French Revolution

Eugène F.V. Delacroix

(1798–1863) Liberty

Leading the People, 1830

The age of Revolutions

(1775 – 1830)

• end of the XVIII c.: Agricultural and

Industrial Revolution

a spinning mill slums in London

The age of Revolutions

(1775 – 1830)

All this was also to affect

the cultural and literary

aspects of life

A NEW SENSIBILITY

reaction against faith in reason

J.M.W.Turner, Norham Castle, Sunrise, ca. 1841

William Blake (1757 – 1827) – Newton (1795)

supremacy of feelings and emotions

C.D. FRIEDRICH, The

Wanderer in the Mist

(1817)

elements of introspection,

nostalgia, individualism

individual was essentially

seen in the solitary state

Caspar David Friederich, Chalk Cliffon on Rügen (1818)

elements of emotionalism

Subjectivity of Reality and Truth

The Romantics

discovered that

REALITY and

TRUTH are

SUBJECTIVE

The Townley Urn (ca. 2nd century AD)

IMAGINATION gained a KEY ROLE means of giving expression to emotional experience

J.M.W. Turner, Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps, 1812.

IMAGINATION & drugs, dreams, hypnosis

any means of exploring less conscious aspects of feeling

Henry Fuseli (1741-1825),

The Nightmare

IMAGINATION and LIMITLESSNESS

OF HUMAN MIND

imagination revealed the limitlessness of human mind

• reason is given a different role

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyaxtIShWtM

M.C. Escher, Circle Limit III

See limitless version…

IMAGINATION:The Magic Faculty

• thanks to this divine gift the poet to see beyond reality and the power of reason

• it allowed him to re-create and modify the world of experience

William Blake

God as an Architect, 1794

IMAGINATION AND CHILDHOOD

CHILDHOOD was admired

and cultivated

a child was purer than grown-up people

unspoilt by civilisation

uncorrupted sensitiveness

closer to God

Sir Thomas Lawrence Portraits of the

Children of Charles B Calmady 1823-4

IMAGINATION and the POET

• Imagination was owned only by a visionary poet

prophet

his role was to

- to denounce social evils

William Blake: Elohim creating Adam, 1795

Romanticism and rebellion J.J. ROUSSEAU (1712-1778)

conventions of civilisation:

intolerable restrictions

on the individual personality ↓↓↓

• idealization of the "noble savage" 'natural' (unrestrained and impulsive) behaviour

• exaltation of the outcast, the rebel

• exaltation of freedom and beauty

↓↓↓

reaction against the

Industrial Revolution

Frontispiece illustration to 1831 edition of

Frankenstein (1818) by M. Shelley (1797 - 1851)

IMAGINATION and the POET

the poet’s role was also to

mediate between man and nature

J. Constable,

The White

Horse, 1819

APPEAL TO THE HEART

• growing interest in humble, country life

↑↑↑

where man's

relationship with

nature was still

intact

The Haywain by John Constable (1776 – 1837)

A NEW CONCEPT OF NATURE

real living being – pantheistic substitute for traditional religion

landscape of the mind, mirror of the poet's mood

means to convey moral truths

vehicle for self-consciousness: nature allows people to discover what they truly are

Hampstead Heath by John Constable (1776-1837)

A NEW CONCEPT OF NATURE

nature as an

expressive language:

natural images

provide the

poet with a way of

thinking about human

feelings and the self

Cumbria

Marche

A NEW CONCEPT OF NATURE

stimulus to thought, source of sensations

source of comfort and joy

John Constable. Salisbury

Cathedral, from the Meadows. 1831

A NEW CONCEPT OF NATURE

provocation to a

state of

imagination and

vision

John Mallord

William Turner

(1775-1851)

Snowstorm

Philip James de

Loutherbourg,

An Avalanche in

the Alps (1803)

THE CULT OF THE EXOTIC

contrast with present reality

↓↓↓

far away both in space and in time

↓↓↓

rediscovery of the art and popular traditions of the Middle Ages (‘Gothic vogue’)

new taste for ruins

interest in what was wild, supernatural, frightening

J. S. Cotman, Croyland Abbey, 1804

NEW VISION, NEW STYLES

The expression of this

new vision of reality

required new styles

and new languages

New Styles and New Languages

Vital role, vehicle

of inner perception

Decorative

function

Imagery

Simple Subordinated to

demands of metre

Syntax

Vivid / familiar Artificial / “poetic

diction”

Language

Broke free from

them

strictly followed Models and rules

ROMANTIC

POETRY

18th-century

poetry

ROMANTICISM IN EUROPE

England

• germs of Romanticism already present in the second half of the 18th century:

Richardson: subjective approach

Sterne: emotional implication of facts

Gray: the beginning of a new sensibility

the Preface to the second edition of 1800 of the Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel T. Coleridge: manifesto of English Romantic poetry

William Wordsworth, by

William Shuter, 1798

S.T. Coleridge

by P. Vandyke, 1795

France

• the two main

personalities:

1. M.ME DE STAËL

2. J. J. ROUSSEAU

immensely influential

for the European

diffusion of

Romanticism

Vladimir Borovikovsky. Portrait of M-me de Stael. 1812

ITALY

names generally associated

with Romanticism

1. G. BERCHET

2. A. MANZONI

3. U. FOSCOLO

Here the movement had

a strong nationalistic

component

G. BERCHET (1783 -1851)

A. MANZONI (1785 -

1873), Francesco

Hayez, 1841

Ugo Foscolo (1778 – 1827), di

François- Xavier-Pascal Fabre, 1813

Germany

preparatory stage: Sturm

und Drang movement of

the 1770s

they believed in freedom

for the individual and the

artist

they advocated a return

to nature

Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1740 – 1832)

Origin of the Term

• “Romanticism” derives from “romance”

medieval works dealing with the adventures of knights and containing supernatural elements

beginning (17th c.): fabulous, unreal

18th c.: unusual, picturesque aspect in the landscape

later:

subjective and incommunicable emotions

new and spontaneous approach of a poet that distinguished himself for his Sensucht, his eternal restlessness