1 / 18

What is Romanticism ?

Explore the literary movement of Romanticism, its key characteristics, and its impact on literature and society. Discover how Romantic writers celebrated individual experience, championed progressive causes, and embraced the power of imagination. Dive into the sublime, nature, and the representation of landscape in Romantic literature.

kdunham
Download Presentation

What is Romanticism ?

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. WhatisRomanticism?

  2. The worditself: • Romaunt: ‘romance’, a termused to describemedieval and Renaissance tales, in verse rangingfromballad to epic. • Romantic: first used in English to mean fictions withenchantedcastles, magiciansand so on,and theirrepresentations of feelings and passions.

  3. A literarymovement and a ‘profound shift in sensibility’ • In Britain and throughout Europe roughlybetween 1770 and 1848 • A reaction to the Enlightenment and exercise of reasonabove all • Inspiredpolitically by revolutions in America and France

  4. Emotionally,expressed an extreme assertion of the self and the value of individualexperience • A sense of the infinite and the transcendental • Socially,championed progressive causes • Stylistickeynote: intensity • Watchword‘IMAGINATION’

  5. Innovation v Tradition • A reactionagainstNeoclassicism and ‘decorum’ • Materialfromeveryday life ratherthanhighsubjects in an elevated style • The supernatural • The poet- prophet, the visionary • Spontaneityratherthan ‘artful manipulation’ • Not all writersdisplay all of the characteristicelements all of the time.

  6. Nature The landscape and itsflora and fauna (including people) become a persistent subject of poetry

  7. Nature continued • Lyricalpiecesdescribing rural scenes • Sense of the health and integrity of a life in the outdoors • Contrastwith the evilgenerated by mankind • ‘Lineswritten a few miles aboveTinternAbbey’ • Celebration of subjectivity • The mind’s contribution to experience: ‘we receive but what we give,/And in our life alonedoes Nature live’ . Dejection: An Ode Coleridge

  8. Important texts/ideas • LyricalBallads1798: William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Humanitarianism:( see ‘Wordsworth’s ‘The FemaleVagrant’) • Radical political feeling • Paine’s ‘Rights of Man’ 1791-2: All hereditarygovernmentistyranny…..representativegovernmentisfreedom. A new rhetoric of of radical egalitarianism

  9. Writers and artists • William Godwin 1756-1836 • Mary Wollstonecraft 1759-97 • William Wordsworth • Samuel Taylor Coleridge • William Blake: Songs of Innocence 1784-5 ‘The Little Black Boy’- enlightened anti-slavery • Henry Fuseli 1741-1804 • Shelley: 1792-1822 • Mary Shelley • Keats • Byron: 1788-1822

  10. Dissenters: a popular tradition • Unitarians • Moravians • Swedenborgians • CalvinistMethodists • AncientDeists of Hoxton!

  11. Freedom • From moral codes and institutions such as marriage • From the ‘slavery’ of women • From spiritual, economic and political repression

  12. Somewriterssuggestedthat the mindpossessed a facultywhichenabledit to see throughmaterial world to a greater, spiritual reality behindit. • ‘Ode: Intimations of ImmortalityFrom recollections of EarlyChildhood’ Wordsworth 1807: …‘trailingclouds of glory do we come/ FromGod, whoisour home:’ • Rousseau rejectedideathatwhatispeculiar to humanbeingsistheirreason.

  13. The Sublime • ‘A power thatexceeds the quantifiable and the usable’Edmund Burke (1757) • A terrifyingthrill • Astonishment • Anythingearthlythat can produce an impression of infinity: an ultimate reality beyond Nature • God?

  14. Gender and the Sublime • Do the writersacknowledgethat women can experience the visionaryexperience? • Is Nature female? • How doesthislink to ‘Frankenstein’?

  15. Are the poets political? • A concentration on the individual? • ‘Blisswasit on thatdawn to be alive’ Prelude Book X • But also ‘hethathathhiswhole life long/Preserved, enlargedthisfreedom in himself?-/ For thisaloneisgenine liberty.’ Prelude Book XIII • Whatisinnerfreedom?

  16. ‘Frankenstein’ • Pushes the Romantic model of the solitary, creative imagination to the extreme and illustratesitsdangerous and destructive propensities • Frankenstein abandons social responsibilites in hisquest • The real monsteris…. • The destructiveness of the ego • The representation of landscape in the novel

More Related