Historical context, characteristics, ideas, and poets

Statements that Embody or Suggest Romanticism1. The answers to life’s most puzzling questions can be found through discussions

with a simple person who lives in the country close to nature—not with a sophisticated, well-educated person from the city.

2. The answer to life’s most puzzling questions can be found through a connection with nature.

3. The use of one’s imagination is more important than rational thought.

4. Subjectivity is more important than objectivity.

5. Knowledge is gained through gut reactions and subjective hunches rather than level-headed, objective, deductive thought.

6. Nature is more important than art.

7. Experimental trial and error is a better process than the conventional scientific method.

8. Poetry should be spontaneous and full of emotion, not planned and straightforward.

9. Sensitivity, feelings, and spontaneity are more important than intellectualism.

10. “Dare to be” is a better battle-cry than “dare to know.”

Periods in British Literature 450-1066: Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) Period (Beowulf)

1066-1500: Middle English Period (Geoffrey Chaucer)

1500-1660: The Renaissance (William Shakespeare; John Donne, John Milton)

1660-1785: The Neoclassical Period

1785-1830: The Romantic Period (William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley)

1837-1901: The Victorian Period (Charles Dickens)

1914-1939: The Modern Period

1945-present: The Postmodern Period (George Orwell, Mark Haddon, Bryce Courtenay, Tsitsi Dangarembga and more!)

1785-1830: The Romantic PeriodTurbulent timeIn France: Revolution, Reign of Terror, NapoleonIndustrialization and Enclosure Acts shifted

population to cities, changed landscapeShift in power from landholding aristocracy to

industrialistsPopulation increasingly polarized into rich and

poor, capital and laborReaction against Enlightenment, which placed an

emphasis on reason and science Counter-Enlightenment

“The Spirit of the Age”Writers of the time didn’t call

themselves Romantic, but many felt there was something distinctive about their time, a new literary spirit that accompanied social and political revolution.

Most leading British writers ardently supported the French Revolution at first and were disappointed by the Reign of Terror.

But, filled with the spirit of revolution, they still felt everything was possible by discarding inherited ideas and outworn customs.

The Storming of the Bastille (1789), Jean-Pierre Houel

Wordsworth and Coleridge: Lyrical Ballads, 1798Wordsworth’s Preface: announced new

poetry in opposition to the previous century’s artificial conventions

Wordsworth: Poetry is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”

Coleridge used an organic metaphor—a poem begins as a seed in the poet’s imagination

Wordsworth: “What is a Poet?… He is a man speaking to men; a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind”

William Wordsworth

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Characteristics of Romantic PoetryLyric poem—a poem that

expresses the emotions of a first-person speaker (and in Romantic poetry, that speaker is often quite similar to the poet)

Intuition over reasonThe pastoral over the urbanFocus on NATURE (Nature is

expressive, personified, sometimes even divine)

Focus on intense EMOTIONS (including horror and awe => THE SUBLIME)

“The Wanderer Above the Sea of Clouds” (1818), Caspar David

Friedrich

More Characteristics of Romantic Poetry:Importance of the power

of the IMAGINATIONNATIONALISMRUINS and nostalgia for

all things medieval and gothic

Interest in the EXOTICGlorification of the

COMMONPLACEInterest in DREAMS and

ALTERED STATES (opium)

Emphasis on SOLITUDE (outlaws, outcasts, nonconformity)

John Constable, “The Haywain” (1821)

The Raft of the Medusa