1. Elements of Romanticism

2. How Romantic Are You?
Individually, respond to the Romanticism Quiz/Survey.
Next to each statement, write whether you agree or disagree.
Tally up how many statements you agreed with.

3. What is Romanticism?
Romanticism was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and in most areas was at its peak around

4. Why did Romanticism start?
The Romantic Movement was a revolt against the Enlightenment of the late17th and 18th century and its focus on rational and scientific thought.

5. Characteristics and focuses of Romantic literature include emphasis on:
Emotions
Morality 
Nature  stressed the awe
The “everyday man”  (noble savage & natural goodness)
Subjectivity and the individual  Romantics often elevated the achievements of the misunderstood, heroic individual outcast.
Imagination
Gut feelings/intuitions  knowledge is gained through intuition
Experimental trial and error
Spontaneity

6. Romanticism Art - The Raft of the Medusa
Common man  the individuals on the raft consisted of people from the lower classes of society who are suffering.
Emotions  Represents the rise from death to hope creates a “pyramid of hope” and helps establish the two different tones of the painting.
Awe of nature  the wave and horizon
Celebrate the individual  Each of the characters tells a story about the predicament that has befallen the survivors on this raft. In the bottom left quarter of the painting a gray-haired man clasps the body of his dead son. In the center top of the painting another man gestures with his hand as he turns back to the despairing people on the raft behind him.

7. Meet the Grand-daddies
Romanticism started mainly in Britain and then migrated over to America, so we need to begin with the “grandfathers” of Romanticism.

8. First Generation- Wordsworth and Coleridge
Men meet at Cambridge
Publish Lyrical Ballads in 1798
Seek to abandon formal language of 1700’s
Balance between poet’s influence and “real language”
Balance between commonplace and supernatural

9. Second Generation: Byron, Shelley, and Keats
All have tragically short lives
Byron and Shelley both aristocrats, well-educated; leave England under pressure; see themselves as outcasts
Byron is popular while Shelley is misunderstood
Keats produces poetry at 24 and dies at 25

10. Fun Facts about Lord Byron – “Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know”
When Lord Byron went to Cambridge in 1805 he requested his dorm to have four bottles of wine, four bottles of port, four bottles of sherry, and four bottles of claret along with decanters and glasses.
Lord Byron lived a very free lifestyle and contracted a variety of STDs by the time he was only 21.
Byron was married and did have a daughter, however, Byron's wife left him in January following the birth of their daughter because of his alcoholism and debt. He never saw either his wife or daughter again.
Lord Byron and his friends, including the Shelleys and Claire Clairmont, spent the summer of 1816 together at the Villa Diodati in Switzerland. It was during this summer that Lord Byron suggested they have a contest to write the best horror story. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. Lord Byron wrote The Vampyre.

11. Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale”
“Darkling I listen; and, for many a time    I have been half in love with easeful Death,  Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,    To take into the air my quiet breath; 
  Now more than ever seems it rich to die,    To cease upon the midnight with no pain….”

12. American Adoption of Romanticism
As we adopted romanticism, America focused on the “everyday man”, individualism, nature, revolution, and revolted against the strict religious traditions of early settlers.
This gave rise to New England Transcendentalism, which had less restrictive relationships between humans, God, and universe.

13. Some American Romantic Poets Include:
Edgar Allan Poe ( )
Emily Dickinson ( )
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ( )
Ralph Waldo Emerson ( )
Walt Whitman ( )
Nathaniel Hawthorne ( )
Herman Melville ( )

14. 21st Century Romanticism – in Art Bansky’s “Throw Up”
This street art reflects the romantic idea of the importance of nature and contradictory elements/gestures.
It contrasts the industrial characters with natural characters.

15. 21st Century Romanticism – in Song “The Sound of Silence”
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In restless dreams I walked alone Narrow streets of cobblestone 'Neath the halo of a street lamp I turned my collar to the cold and damp When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light That split the night And touched the sound of silence
Hello darkness, my old friend I've come to talk with you again Because a vision softly creeping Left its seeds while I was sleeping And the vision that was planted in my brain Still remains Within the sound of silence