1. Cultural History of Britain Lecture 9

2. Timeline 1760-1820: George III 1796-8: Irish Rebellion 1798: Lyrical Ballads 1800/01: Act of Union (Ireland) 1806-13: Napoleonic wars, blockade on Britain 1815: Waterloo 1820-30: George IV 1824: Death of Lord Byron 1830-37: William IV 1830: Death of Sir Walter Scott 1832: First Reform Bill 1837-1901: Queen Victoria

3. Historical, Economical and Social Contexts age of revolutions mass production (Blamires, History 217) urbanisation (pauperisation) (Blamires, History 217) laissez-faire (Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations 1776) (Blamires, History 217) rise of liberalism rise of the middle classes – 1789, the French Revolution →disillusionment revolutions throughout Europe in the first half of the 19 th century growth of nationalism

4. Intellectual background Enlightenment (1680-end of the 18 th century, “age of reason”) empiricism (Francis Bacon, Locke, Berkeley, Hume), rationalism (René Descartes), pragmatism, utilitarianism Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) – (Social Contract, Émile) (Blamires, History 218) Tom Paine, The Rights of Man (1791) William Godwin, Political Justice (1793) Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) uncertainties, metaphysical homelessness

5. Romanticism – General features continuation of Enlightenment thought (Habib, History 409) reaction against the new bourgeois social and economic order (Habib, History 408) focus on the individual (Leitch, Norton Anthology 12) poetry=personal expression of the poet (Leitch, Norton Anthology 12) focus on imagination→theories of organic form (Leitch, Norton Anthology 12) concern with the symbol (Leitch, Norton Anthology 12) exaltation of nature (Habib, History 408) childhood and spontaneity, primitive societies (Habib, History 408) emphasis on passion and emotion

6. Neo-Classicism vs. Romanticism Neo-ClassicismRomanticism Wit Understanding Memory Taste Learning Society Town Beautiful Classical models Poeta doctus REASON Imagination Sentiment/feeling Originality Intuition Genius Individual Country Sublime Fascination with the Middle Ages Poetry as the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” NATURE

7. Sublime images

8. Continued Neo-Classicism in Architecture: Regency Style (1790-1830) Origin: Regency of the future George IV (1811-20) Representatives: John Nash (1752-1835) Regent’s Park Applied a variety of styles, among them Gothic (his own house) and Mughal (Royal Pavilion, Brighton)

9. Literature: Two generations of English Romantic poets 1798-1824: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats)

10. Romantic Landscape Painting: Constable and Turner 18 th century: watercolour comes into the focus of interest Grand Tour Discovery of Britain (nature, architecture, Wales and Yorkshire as favourites) Watercolour: Easier to carry on a journey Better suited for being turned into an engraving (topography, maps) Picturesque (Rev. Gilpin, 18 th c.) Preference for irregular forms ‘rural’ picturesque of 17 th -c. Dutch painting

11. John Constable (1776-1837) Concentration on the local scene Legacy of Dutch painters Influenced by Gainsborough Sketches of the Lake District Painter of the Stour Valley and Southern England (Brighton, Weymouth, Salisbury) Paints in oil (watercolours perceived as sketches) Types of paintings: Small oil “sketches” – swiftly made in the open air Large preparatory studies – close to Impressionism Finished large canvases – compromise between precision and freedom of inspiration

12. Constable, Weymouth Bay (1816)

13. Constable, Hay Wain (1821) Study Finished painting

14. William Turner (1775-1851) Early paintings: Romantic ideal of the sublime (e. g. tragic scenes of shipwreck) – oil paintings Move towards the picturesque – watercolour Paints even pictures in oil as if they were watercolours Often seen as comparable with Impressionist and Post- Impressionist painting (abstract expressionism)

15. Turner, Shipwreck of the Minotaur, c. 1810

16. Turner, Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps (1812)

17. Turner, Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus (1829)

18. Turner, Fire at Sea (1934)

19. Turner, Rain, Steam and Speed (1844)

20. Works Cited Blamires, Harry. A History of Literary Criticism. London: Macmillan, 1991. Gaunt, William. English Painting – A Concise History. London: Thames and Hudson, 1991. Gelfert, Hans-Dieter: Nagy-Britannia rövid kultúrtörténete. Corvina, Budapest, 2005. Habib, M. A. R. A History of Literary Criticism and Theory from Plato to the Present. London: Blackwell, 2008. Halliday, F. E. An Illustrated Cultural History of England. London: Thames and Hudson, 1981. Jenner, Michael. The Architectural Heritage of Britain and Ireland. Penguin: London, 1993. Leitch, Vincent B., ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York, London: W. W. Norton, 2001. Morgan, Kenneth O., ed. The Oxford History of Britain. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1984. Tarnas, Richard. A nyugati gondolat stációi. Ford. Lázár A. Péter. Budapest: AduPrint, 1995. Watkin, David. English Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson, 1992.