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Poe & The Romantic Period. Romanticism. Dates 1800-1900 (approximate) Characteristics: 1. Nature as subject of art 2. Transcendence 3. Wild, irregular, grotesque 4. Human rights & animal life 5. Interest in the past 6. “Sentimental Melancholy” (deep sadness) 7. Love. Key Ideas.
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Romanticism • Dates 1800-1900 (approximate) • Characteristics: • 1. Nature as subject of art • 2. Transcendence • 3. Wild, irregular, grotesque • 4. Human rights & animal life • 5. Interest in the past • 6. “Sentimental Melancholy” (deep sadness) • 7. Love
Key Ideas • 1. Individual over Society • 2. Melancholy • 3. Altered state of consciousness • 4. Reaction against Enlightenment • 5. Social Causes • 6. Simplicity • 7. Mystical • 8. Nature
EuropeanRomanticism • “liberalism in literature” –Hugo • In France, leading figures: Hugo, Dumas, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Neval, Gautier, Vigny • Romantic Musicians • Berlioz (France); Verdi (Italy); Chopin (Polish but settled in France); Wagner (Germany); Beethoven (German) • Artists (Girodet, Gericault, Delacroix, Goya (transition)
Symbolists • Group of poets in France • Used heavily symbolic language • “fleeting moments” • Dark subjects • Rimbaud, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Mallarme’ • “beauty in darkness” • Decadent Movement (reaction against the “naïve” views of Romanticism); inspired by the Gothic movement & Poe; describes an erosion of moral, ethical, or sexual traditions. • Fin de Siecle, or “end of century”; term given to a group of writers (including Symbolists) in France at the end of the 19th century that “celebrates a romantic and willful sense of decay.” It influenced the Bohemian and other counter-culture movements of the 20th century.
French Romanticism • “La vague des passions” – waves of passions and sentiment. • “Le mal du siecle’”– the pain of the century. • The first is represented by the Romantic poets, writers, and artists; the second is typified by the offshoots of the genre, such as the Gothic writers and the Symbolists.
England • William Blake– father of Romantic Poetry; artist and engraver • William Wordsworth– Lyrical Ballads (1798); nature & imagination • Blake, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge
America • Transcendentalists • Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau • Whitman– Leaves of Grass • Social reform, nature, individual spirituality • Dark side = Gothic = Edgar Allan Poe • American Renaissance • Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter) & Melville (Moby Dick) • After = Realism & Modernism
Poe & Gothic Romantic Literature • Gothic: Germanic, Medieval • Architecture: pointed arch, vault, stained glass, flying buttresses, etc. • Literature: “all the extravagancies of an irregular fancy” • Richness, mystery, aspiration • Examples of Gothic in today’s society?
Gothic • “Sublime” – exalted • Entrapment • Terror & Horror • Characteristics: • Past, decay, ruin, fallen, death, supernatural
3 Types of Gothic • 1. High Gothic (supernatural) • 2. Enlightenment Gothic (explanation) • 3. Ambiguous Gothic (keeps us guessing) • Grotesque– outgrowth of interest in the irrational, distrust of cosmic order, frustration; fantastic representations of human and animal forms, distortions, absurd, ugly, caricature. • Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
Poe • 1809-1849 • Macabre: horror of death & decay • Detective story, gothic horror, symbolic fiction • 1st person– LIVING THE STORY • Raised in Virginia • Virginia Clemm • TB • “The Muders in the Rue Morgue” (1841)– detective story • Poem: “The Raven” (1845) • Died poor • Became a major literary figure when he was recognized by Baudelaire as an important figure upon the translation of his works into French.
