1. Welcome. Today is April 14th
Random fact: There are 10 human body parts that are only 3 letters long.
You need your journal and a writing utensil.
Journal: what does “romantic” mean to you?

2. Romantic Poetry 1798-1848 (1910?) In context:
( ) Anglo Saxon—Alliteration and Caesura
( ) Middle English—Rhyme and Ballads
( ) Renaissance
( ) Neoclassicism

3. What was happening in the world during this period?
Erie Canal opens
Invention of photography
Neptune discovered
Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of the Species
American Civil War

4. 1869 - Transcontinental Railroad completed
Brooklyn Bridge opens
Telephone invented
Phonograph invented
Statue of Liberty presented to New York
Henry Ford builds first car
Wright Brothers first airplane flight at Kitty Hawk, NC
E=mc2 - Einstein’s Theory of Relativity

5. Social and Political Influences
Industrialism
First occurred in Britain
Power shifted from aristocratic landowners to middle class city dwellers
Populations moved from an agrarian (rural) center to an urban center

6. Definition
Romanticism refers to a movement in art, literature, and music during the 19th century.
Romanticism is characterized by the 5 “I”s
Imagination
Intuition
Idealism
Inspiration
Individuality

7. 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.”

8. 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.”

9. 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.

10. 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.”

11. 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…”

12. Origins
Romanticism began to take root as a movement following the French Revolution.
The publication of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1792 is considered the beginning of literary Romanticism.

13. The Arts
Romanticism was a movement across all the arts: visual art, music, and literature.
All of the arts embraced themes prevalent in the Middle Ages: chivalry, courtly love. Literature and art from this time depicted these themes. Music (ballets and operas) illustrated these themes.
Shakespeare came back into vogue.

14. Visual Arts
Neoclassical art was rigid, severe, and unemotional; it hearkened back to ancient Greece and Rome
Romantic art was emotional, deeply-felt, individualistic, and exotic. It has been described as a reaction to Neoclassicism, or “anti-Classicism.”

15. Visual Arts: Examples
Romantic Art
Neoclassical Art

16. Music
“Classical” musicians included composers like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Josef Haydn.
Romantic musicians included composers like Frederic Chopin, Franz Lizst, Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky

17. Music: Components
Classical music emphasized internal order and balance.
Romantic music emphasized expression of feelings.

18. Literature In America, Romanticism most strongly impacted literature.
Writers explored supernatural and gothic themes.
Writers wrote about nature – Transcendentalists believed God was in nature, unlike “Age of Reason” writers like Franklin and Jefferson, who saw God as a “divine watchmaker,” who created the universe and left it to run itself.

19. Five Major Romantic Era Poets
Keats
Wordsworth
Blake
Byron
Shelley
John Keats
During his life, his poems did not receive favorable reviews by the critics
The poetry of Keats is characterized by sensual imagery, most notably in his odes

20. “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art”
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art— Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors— No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

21. William Wordsworth William Blake Helped to launch the Romantic Age
His most famous work is The Prelude chronicles the spiritual life of the poet
Has an interest and sympathy for the life and troubles of the “common man”
He is considered the nature poet by focusing ordinary people in country settings
Started writing poetry when he was twelve
Blake was a nonconformist who associated with some of the leading radical thinkers of his day
He rebelled against traditional poetic forms and techniques
He valued imagination over reason

22. I Wandered Lonely as A Cloud William Wordworth I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed—and gazed—but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.
The Tyger William Blake Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare sieze the fire? And what shoulder, & what art. Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

23. Percy Shelley Lord Byron
Shelley had a very unconventional life and was very idealistic
He was also a radical nonconformist
He did not become famous until after his death
Wife: Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstien
He indulged in excesses and had huge debts and many love affairs
His most famous creations are his dark heroes, called Byronic heroes, who, in fact, were not heroes at all, but stood out from ordinary humans as larger than life

24. So We’ll Go No More a Roving
George Gordon, Lord Byron
So, we'll go no more a roving So late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving, And the moon be still as bright. For the sword outwears its sheath, And the soul wears out the breast, And the heart must pause to breathe, And love itself have rest. Though the night was made for loving, And the day returns too soon, Yet we'll go no more a roving By the light of the moon.