Neoclassicism vs. Romanticism English IV AP/IB Mrs. Snipes

Neoclassicism 1660 - 1789 Famous Neoclassical writers: - John Dryden - Alexander Pope - Jonathan Swift - Samuel Johnson - Oliver Goldsmith

Main Tenets of Neoclassicism: 1. These authors exhibited a strong traditionalism, which was often joined to a distrust of radical innovation and was evidenced above all in their great respect for classical writers—i.e., writers of ancient Greece and Rome.

2. Literature was conceived to be primarily an “art”; that is, a set of skills which, though it requires innate talents, must by perfected by long study and practice and consists in the deliberate adaptation of known and tested means to be achieved of foreseen ends upon readers.

3. Human beings were regarded as the primary subject matter of literature. Poetry was held to be an imitation of human life— “a mirror held up to nature.” Poetry is thus designed to yield both instruction and aesthetic pleasure for readers. Not art for art’s sake, but art for humanity’s sake.

4. Both in subject matter and the appeal of art, emphasis was placed on what human beings possess in common—representative characteristics and widely shared experiences, thoughts, feelings, and tastes. Pope: “what oft was thought but ne’er so well expressed”

5. The belief that human beings were limited agents who ought to set themselves only accessible goals. “Pride goeth before the fall” The golden mean/avoidance of extremes The Great Chain of Being The heroic couplet/traditional and highly restrictive patterns

Romanticism: 19th century Famous Romantic writers: - William Wordsworth - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - William Blake - John Keats - Percy Bysshe Shelley - Mary Shelley

Tenets of Romanticism 1. Imagination - Imagination was emphasized over “reason.” - This was a backlash against the rationalism characterized by the Neoclassical period or “Age of Reason.” - Imagination was considered necessary for creating all art. - British writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge called it “intellectual intuition.”

2. Intuition - Romantics placed value on “intuition,” or feeling and instincts, over reason. - Emotions were important in Romantic art. - British Romantic William Wordsworth described poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”

3. Idealism - Idealism is the concept that we can make the world a better place. - Idealism refers to any theory that emphasizes the spirit, the mind, or language over matter – thought has a crucial role in making the world the way it is. - Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher, held that the mind forces the world we perceive to take the shape of space-and-time.

4. Inspiration - The Romantic artist, musician, or writer, is an “inspired creator” rather than a “technical master.” - What this means is “going with the moment” or being spontaneous, rather than “getting it precise.”

5. Individuality - Romantics celebrated the individual. - During this time period, Women’s Rights and Abolitionism were taking root as major movements. - Walt Whitman, a later Romantic writer, would write a poem entitled “Song of Myself”: it begins, “I celebrate myself…”

The Sublime: The concept was introduced into the criticism of literature by a Greek treatise Peri hupsous (“On the sublime”), attributed in the manuscript to Longinus and probably written in the first century A.D. As defined by Longinus, the sublime is a quality that can occur in any type of discourse, whether poetry or prose.

Whereas the effect of rhetoric is persuasion, the effect of the sublime is “transport” (ekstasis)—it is that quality of a passage which “shatters the hearer’s composure,” exercises irresistible “domination” over him, and “scatters the subjects like a bolt of lightning.”

“And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. “ --William Wordsworth, Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey

The source of the sublime lies in the capacities of the speaker or writer. Three of these capacities—the use of figurative language, nobility of expression, and elevated composition—are matters of art that can by acquired by practice; but two other, and more important capacities, are largely innate: “loftiness of thought” and “strong inspired passion.”