The Romantic Period ( )

Origins and Originators  1798 sees the publishing of Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems  “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”  “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”  Regarded as the start of Romantic Movement in England

Across the Pond: American Rebels  : Romantic Movement reaches America about twenty years later  Quest for American literary destiny  After War of 1812, theorists call for a great literature to match the nation’s emerging political greatness

Across the Pond: American Rebels  Washington Irving ( )  Essayist, historian, and author  Central figure in US literature between 1809 and Civil War.  “Rip Van Winkle”  “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”

Across the Pond: American Rebels  Ralph Waldo Emerson ( )  “All natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence.”  “What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think….”  “The poet does not wait for the hero or the sage … so he writes primarily what will and must be spoken.”

Across the Pond: American Rebels  Walt Whitman  ( )  Nathaniel Hawthorne  ( )  Herman Melville  ( )  Henry David Thoreau  ( )  Edgar Allan Poe  ( )  Emily Dickinson  ( )

Origins and Originators  The era was dominated by six poets  Three were born before the period began and lived through most of it

Origins and Originators: The First Generation  William Wordsworth ( )  William Blake ( )  Samuel Taylor Coleridge ( )

Origins and Originators  The era was dominated by six poets  Three were born before the period began and lived through most of it  The three others began their careers in the 1810’s but died before 1825

Origins and Originators: The Second Generation  Percy Bysshe Shelley ( )  John Keats ( )  George Gordon, Lord Byron ( )

Revolutions: American  England loses in terms of  Economics  Prestige  Confidence

Revolutions: French  Storming of Bastille on July 14, 1789  Another way to date the start of the Romantic Period

Revolutions: French  England’s conservatives and ruling class fear  Democratic Spirit will spread  Uneducated poor will  Overthrow government  Take away their wealth  Threaten their lives

Revolutions: French  Wordsworth and other idealists exhilarated by events in France at first  Democratic ideals  Rise of the common man

Revolutions: French  Later disillusioned as Revolution follows its increasingly grim and violent course  Accession to power by Jacobin extremists  September Massacres of 1792  Reign of Terror (Robespierre)  Execution of the royal family, aristocrats, and political prisoners  Execution of those who directed Reign of Terror  Emergence of Napoleon as dictator and then as emperor

As Wordsworth writes in The Prelude, become Oppressors in their turn, Frenchmen had changed a war of self-defense For one of Conquest, losing sight of all Which they had struggled for….

Revolutions: French  England institutes harsh repressive measures  Public meetings prohibited  Habeas Corpus* suspended  Advocates of even moderate change charged with high treason in time of war *A prisoner files a petition for writ of habeas corpus in order to challenge the authority of the prison or jail warden to continue to hold him or her. the authority of the prison or jail warden to continue to hold him or her.

Revolutions: Industrial  Shift in manufacturing that resulted from the invention of power-driven machinery to replace hand labor  Begins in 1750’s with improvements in machines for processing textiles  Perfection of Steam engine by James Watt in 1765  Policy of Laissez Faire  Economic laws should be allowed to operate freely without government interference

Revolutions: Industrial  Communal farm lands confiscated by confiscated by private owners private owners  Landscape dramatically changed  Enclosure – Process of dividing land into privately owned agricultural holdings  Factories in cities casting smoke over vast areas of slum tenements  Results in large number of landless population  Some migrate to industrial towns  Others remain as laborers

Revolutions: Industrial  Population becomes increasingly polarized into “Two Nations”  Capital class  Large owner or trader  Rich  Labor class  Possessionless wageworker  Poor

Revolutions: Industrial  Long hours of work under harsh conditions  Inadequate wages  Large-scale employment of women and children  Chimney Sweepers  Harnessed to coal- sledges

Romantic?  Fascination with youth and innocence  Growing up  Exploring and learning to trust emotions  Questioning authority and tradition  In order to imagine happier healthier ways to live  Awareness of change  And ability to adapt to it

Romanticism  Imagination and naturalness  Instead of reason and artifice  Personal experiences and simple language  Instead of public, formal, adorned

Romanticism  Lyric  Poem that focuses on expressing emotions/thoughts  Becomes most popular poetic form, due in part to Wordsworth  Ode  Complex, generally long lyric poem on serious subject  Formal  Personal/reflective

Romanticism  Democratic  Poet speaking to men  Turning to inner dream/magical world  Instead of ugly reality of industrialism  Instead of reason and rationalism

Romanticism  Individual liberty  Supported and sympathized with revolution, rebel  Nature can transform  Nature and imagination “mirror” each other  Nature acts upon mind  Mind acts upon nature

Romanticism  Lure of the exotic  Middle Ages/ Medieval Romance  Near-perfect hero  Evil enemy  Quest  Test of hero  Good versus evil

Romanticism  Gothic  Ruins  Supernatural  Irrational  Mysterious  Sullen  Imaginary/unexpected  Medieval

What is a Poet?  To Wordsworth  “A man speaking to men”  Democratic but also wiser in human nature  To Blake  “A teacher”  Reveals and shows us human experience, ourselves

What is a Poet?  To Coleridge  “Brings the whole soul of man into activity... by employing … imagination”  Makes mankind complete  To Shelley  “Unacknowledged legislators of the world”  Says what has to be said  Speaks out against injustice

What is a Poet?  To Keats  “Physician” to humanity  Makes mankind healthy  Heals mankind