1. Romantic Era
Beautiful vs Sublime

2. A Revolution in the Arts
Cultural movement that emerged during the same years as the French Revolution and the rule of Napoleon.
A new emphasis among writers, artists, and philosophers, not the neoclassical and empirical emphasis found during the Enlightenment.

3. Classicism vs Romanticism
imitates ancient Greece and Rome
emphasizes reason, order, balance
man only is made perfect in a large society
originality
emphasizes emotions, feelings, imagination
man is interesting as an individual made worse by society

4. 4. admires order man imposes on nature
4. admires nature itself and the impression it makes on man

5. William Blake Illuminated Plates

7. Later Romantic Images

9. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Considered a Romantic writer and philosopher, though he predates much of the time period.
French.
Philosophy is built on his love of nature and living naturally.

10. IV. Man’s state of nature, according to Rousseau, is beautiful, uncorrupted, and peaceful.
Man was healthier in this state and lived a simpler life, free of the artificiality of rules and habits, including government.

11. V. According to Rousseau, society was to blame for the distinction between social classes, which led to inequality and the difference between rich and poor, noble and commoner.
“Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.”

12. B. Criticized the aristocracy, favoring instead the noble savage, such as Native Americans, who had not been corrupted by the idea of private property and social distinctions.

13. IV. Believed that, in education, children should be allowed to follow their natural desires and make their own discoveries.
He did not believe children should be forced to study subjects that they did not have any interest in.

14. B. He also was against the idea of discipline and memorization, claiming that these things were artificial, stifling the imagination, the focus of Romantic thought and pursuit.

15. In Literature
Celebrated nature, the individual person, emotions, and the imagination.
Focus was on the response elicited in the reader. The poem was supposed to be a powerful thing that unlocked memory and created experience.

16. Two Generations of Romantic Poets
Wordsworth and Coleridge
Byron, Shelley, Keats
Different voices and approaches to the subject, even between Wordsworth and Coleridge and then especially between them and the second generation-Byron, Keats, Shelley

17. Wordsworth
First generation Romantic poet concerned with man’s relationship with nature.
Poems have a spiritual element.
He loved the beauty found in nature, and his poetry focused on beauty, not the sublime.

18. II. Focuses on the rustic in his poetry, imitating the “real language of man” by keeping his language simple.
III. Poetry, according to Wordsworth, is “the spontaneous overflow of feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility,”
A. pleasant memory leads to poetry.

19. IV. His poetry follows his changing views-politically and religiously-and matures over time until he finds his poetic voice.
V. A friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

20. Example: “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”
I wandered lonely as a cloud The waves beside them danced; but they
That floats on high o'er vales and hills, Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
When all at once I saw a crowd, A poet could not but be gay,
A host, of golden daffodils; In such a jocund company:
Beside the lake, beneath the trees, I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. What wealth the show to me had brought:
Continuous as the stars that shine For oft, when on my couch I lie
And twinkle on the milky way, In vacant or in pensive mood,
They stretched in never-ending line They flash upon that inward eye
Along the margin of a bay: Which is the bliss of solitude;
Ten thousand saw I at a glance, And then my heart with pleasure fills,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. And dances with the daffodils.

21. Coleridge
A Romantic poet, critic, and philosopher who focused of lyricism in his poetry.
He loved to use his imagination to draw out (elicit) a strong reaction in readers.
Focuses on the sublime, as that elicits a stronger reaction and more lasting impression than does the beautiful.

22. B. Explores the nature of the human mind.
III. Creates a new voice in poetry, one of informality, leading to a conversational tone and a sense of unity in the poem, illustrating the unity between man and nature.

23. IV. A strong Christian who uses his poetry to prove the necessity of faith and how Christianity is consistent with man’s experiences, needs, and relationship with nature.

24. Example from “Fears in Solitude”
May my fears,
My filial fears, be vain ! and may the vaunts
And menace of the vengeful enemy
Pass like the gust, that roared and died away
In the distant tree : which heard, and only heard
In this low dell, bowed not the delicate grass.

25. Byron
His real name was George Gordon, though he is most commonly known as Lord Byron.
Traveled extensively, a fact seen in his poetry, which often describes exotic places.
Also includes what has come to be known as the Romantic hero, a defiant and melancholy individual who often suffers from personal and secret guilt.
Wordsworth, Man and the beauty of nature. Coleridge: Man and the sublimity of nature, also, man and nature are joined. Byron: relationships and nature are similar love=beauty heartbreak=sublimity, romantic hero.

26. A. Commonly believed that many of his Romantic heroes are based on his own life.
B. Was unlike the other Romantics in that he did not view the imagination as the way to impart ultimate truth.

27. C. Favored poetic forms: satire, ode, lyric, narrative, confessional, dramatic monologue, couplets, blank verse (iambic pentameter), and Spenserian stanzas.
D. Focuses on catharsis: a strong emotional response to an experience in order to purge emotion from the person.

28. E. He died young, in his prime, much like many of the Romantic heroes he wrote about in his poems.

29. Example: “When we Two Parted”
They name thee before me, In secret we met--
A knell to mine ear; In silence I grieve,
A shudder comes o'er me-- That thy heart could forget,
Why wert thou so dear? Thy spirit deceive
They know not I knew thee, If I should meet thee
Who knew thee so well-- After long years,
Long, long I shall rue thee, How should I greet thee?--
Too deeply to tell. With silence and tears.

30. IV. Wordsworth: Man and the beauty of nature.
Coleridge: Man and the sublimity of nature, also, man and nature are joined.
Byron: relationships and nature are similar. love=beauty and heartbreak=sublimity. The Romantic hero pursues love and ends in heartbreak (unites beauty and sublimity).

31. Keats Second generation Romantic. Perfected the ode form of poetry.
Poetry is complex and emotional while also remaining coherent and not losing its power and interest.
Focuses on the desires and sufferings of the heart.

32. II. Was obsessed with the beauty of nature.
III. Poetry is known for its beauty and harmony of language.
IV. For him, poetry was an intensification of sensory experience through use of the imagination.

33. He attempted to revive nature as a living thing and man’s love and respect for it through unity with nature.
He focused on aesthetics, the beauty of language and form and how it is attractive.

34. Example: “Bright Star”
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.

35. Shelley
Second generation Romantic whose poetry encompasses (includes) both joy and despair.
He creates powerful images and symbols by pursuing the ideal, much like his contemporaries (other Romantics) but also is deeply skeptical (questioning).

36. He typically took the controversial side of an argument, even at risk of being unpopular and made fun of.
Subjects in poetry: poetry, love, sorrow, hope, nature, politics.
Always challenged blind acceptance of authority, suggesting, instead, that man set high goals and work to achieve them.

37. III. Viewed as a symbol of the free spirit of man, leading to continuing perfection through hope.
Poetry sets us free, illustrated in his poem “Ode to the West Wind.” Poetry is an example of how the imagination passively acts upon man, forming him rather than being formed by him.

38. Example: “Ode to the West Wind”
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?