ROMANTIC & GOTHIC MOVEMENTS IN LITERATURE

ROMANTICISM Romanticism saw a shift from faith in reason to faith in the senses, feelings, and imagination; a shift from interest in urban society to an interest in the rural and natural; a shift from public, impersonal poetry to subjective poetry; and from concern with the scientific and mundane to interest in the mysterious and infinite. Mainly they cared about the individual, intuition, and imagination.

CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANTICISM 1. Imagination and emotion are more important than reason and formal rules; imagination is a gateway to transcendent experience and truth. 2. Along the same lines, intuition and a reliance on “natural” feelings as a guide to conduct are valued over controlled, rationality. 3. Romantic literature tends to emphasize a love of nature, a respect for primitivism, and a valuing of the common, "natural" man; Romantics idealize country life and believe that many of the ills of society are a result of urbanization. a. Nature for the Romantics becomes a means for divine revelation (Wordsworth) b. It is also a metaphor for the creative process—(the river in “Kubla Khan).

CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANTICISM, CONTINUED 4. Romantics were interested in the Medieval past, the supernatural, the mystical, the “gothic,” and the exotic; 5. Romantics were attracted to rebellion and revolution, especially concerned with human rights, individualism, freedom from oppression; 6. There was emphasis on introspection, psychology, melancholy, and sadness. The art often dealt with death, transience and mankind’s feelings about these things. The artist was an extremely individualistic creator whose creative spirit was more important than strict adherence to formal rules and traditional procedures. a. The Byronic hero b. Emphasis on the individual and subjectivity.

THE ROMANTICS British Writers William Wordsworth—poetry, clouds flowers William Wordsworth—poetry, clouds flowers Jane Austen—literature, Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen—literature, Pride and Prejudice William Blake—poetry, religious/lambs and stuff William Blake—poetry, religious/lambs and stuff Emily Bronte—literature, Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte—literature, Wuthering Heights Charlotte Bronte—literature, Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte—literature, Jane Eyre Percy Shelley—poetry, nature/classical Roman stuff. “Ozymandias” Percy Shelley—poetry, nature/classical Roman stuff. “Ozymandias” American Writers Nathaniel Hawthorne—The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne—The Scarlet Letter Emily Dickinson—poetry Emily Dickinson—poetry Walt Whitman—poetry, “Leaves of Grass,” “Song of Myself” Walt Whitman—poetry, “Leaves of Grass,” “Song of Myself”

GOTHICISM The Gothic creates feelings of gloom, mystery, and suspense and tends to the dramatic and the sensational. Most of us immediately recognize the Gothic (even if we don't know the name) when we encounter it in novels, poetry, plays, movies, and TV series. Elements of the Gothic have made their way into mainstream writing. They are found in Sir Walter Scott's novels, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and in Romantic poetry like Samuel Coleridge's "Christabel," Lord Byron's "The Giaour," and John Keats's "The Eve of St. Agnes." A tendency to the macabre and bizarre which appears in writers like William Faulkner, Truman Capote, and Flannery O'Connor has been called Southern Gothic.

CHARACTERISTICS OF GOTHIC LITERATURE a castle, ruined or intact, haunted or not, ruined buildings which are sinister or which stir up a pleasing melancholy dungeons, underground passages, crypts, and catacombs which, in modern houses, become spooky basements or attics, labyrinths, dark corridors, and winding stairs, shadows, a beam of moonlight in the blackness, a flickering candle, or the only source of light failing (a candle blown out or an electric failure), extreme landscapes, like rugged mountains, thick forests, or icy wastes, and extreme weather, omens and ancestral curses, magic, supernatural manifestations, or the suggestion of the supernatural, a passion-driven, willful villain-hero or villain, a curious heroine with a tendency to faint and a need to be rescued–frequently, a hero whose true identity is revealed by the end of the novel,

METONYMY OF GLOOM & HORROR wind, especially howlingrain, especially blowing doors grating on rusty hingessighs, moans, howls, eerie sounds footsteps approachingclanking chains lights in abandoned roomsgusts of wind blowing out lights characters trapped in a roomdoors suddenly slamming shut ruins of buildingsbaying of distant dogs (or wolves?) thunder and lightningcrazed laughter Metonymy is a subtype of metaphor, in which something (like rain) is used to stand for something else (like sorrow). For example, the film industry likes to use metonymy as a quick shorthand, so we often notice that it is raining in funeral scenes. Note that the following metonymies for "doom and gloom" all suggest some element of mystery, danger, or the supernatural.

Mystery diabolical, enchantment, ghost, goblins, haunted, infernal, magic, magician, miracle, necromancer, omens, ominous, portent, preternatural, prodigy, prophecy, secret, sorcerer, spirits, strangeness, talisman, vision Fear, Terror, or Sorrow afflicted, affliction, agony, anguish, apprehensions, apprehensive, commiseration, concern, despair, dismal, dismay, dread, dreaded, dreading, fearing, frantic, fright, frightened, grief, hopeless, horrid, horror, lamentable, melancholy, miserable, mournfully, panic, sadly, scared, shrieks, sorrow, sympathy, tears, terrible, terrified, terror, unhappy, wretched Surprise alarm, amazement, astonished, astonishment, shocking, staring, surprise, surprised, thunderstruck, wonder Haste anxious, breathless, flight, frantic, hastened, hastily, impatience, impatient, impatiently, impetuosity, precipitately, running, sudden, suddenly Anger anger, angrily, choler, enraged, furious, fury, incense, incensed, provoked, rage, raving, resentment, temper, wrath, wrathful, wrathfully Largenessenormous, gigantic, giant, large, tremendous, vast

The Gothics Jane Austen---Northanger Abbey, Mary Shelley---Frankenstein Bram Stoker—Dracula Edgar Allen Poe—Poetry and Novels