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Modernity & Romanticism

Modernity & Romanticism. Introduction to ENGL 2523:Major British Writers II. Modernity (ca. 1700-Present). Condition of Western culture since Empire and Capitalism Industrial Revolution of 19 th Century Mass production of commodified goods  U niformity and loss of uniqueness

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Modernity & Romanticism

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  1. Modernity & Romanticism Introduction to ENGL 2523:Major British Writers II

  2. Modernity (ca. 1700-Present) • Condition of Western culture since Empire and Capitalism • Industrial Revolution of 19th Century • Mass production of commodified goodsUniformity and loss of uniqueness • Rise in prominence of reason and science  Crisis of faith • Rise in literacy & industrialized print technology Larger reading public • Rise in commerce  increased personal wealth Democratization that challenged aristocratic order • WWI a culminating point for all of above

  3. Romantic Period in Context (ca. 1795-1837) • American Revolution – 1775-1783 • French Revolution – 1789-1799 • British Wars w/France – 1793-1815 •  Upending of hereditary hierarchies (Aristocracy) •  Newly democratic social order in which individuals have more autonomy • Industrial Revolution – 1790 – 1835  National & Urban Populations Double, 1791-1831  Economy & Labor base shifts from Rural/Agricultural to Urban/Industrial

  4. Romantic Responses to the Times • Drastic and Rapid Social Change  Revolutions end monarchy, devalue privilege/ entitlement (7)  Undergirded by sense of “Natural Rights”  Leads also to abolition of slavery • Literature: vivid sense of participating in modern world  But sometimes in a hidden way • Romantic literature defamiliarizesworld; sees with fresh eyes (8) • Inward turn toward Imagination, memory, self (8)  Opp. Enlightenment (C18) – objective truth, concrete/ measured realities (8-9) • Also an escapism / exoticism: imagining better possibilities through fantastic Visions of Otherness that reflect own world (11)

  5. Romantic Imagination Mind is not a passive mirror but an active light, visionary power (9) • Levels of Imagination (9) • Analogous to but lesser than divine creation • Poetry a secondary, synthesizing power from Imagination that resolves and vitalizes opposing forces in Nature • Precedes Reason • A semi-autonomous entity of the mind or soul, like the subconscious (10)

  6. Romantic Poetry • Style changes to more organic, erratic forms (14)  Mirror the eccentricities of Nature and the Self  Think of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 • The “I” becomes a more complex, full being with mysterious inner regions (cf. painting “Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog”)

  7. Wanderer Above the Sea of Fogby Caspar David Friedrich (1818)

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