1. a literary movement of the mid 1790s to early 1820s
Romanticism
a literary movement of the mid 1790s to early 1820s

2. Definition of Romanticism
Romantic writers responded to the political unrest of European-French wars and military conquests, as well as the hardships of the Industrial Revolution.
William Wordsworth, a leading Romantic poet, insisted that poetry should sprout from a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”
The World Is Too Much With Us
The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers, For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.–Great God! I’d rather be A pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
- William Wordsworth

3. A Rebellion Against Neoclassicism
Neoclassical Literature
Romantic Literature
Admired ancient Greek and Roman artists
Objective, Rational
Reason, Intellect
Witty language
Portrayal of upper-class people in social settings
Think: Candide, Don Quixote
Response to political unrest and industrial squalor
Subjective, Imaginative
Emotion, Intuition
Language really used by men
Portrayal of situations from common life in natural settings
Reflect nature, self-knowledge, folklore, the mysterious and exotic
Think: Faust, Hunchback of Notre Dame

4. Romantic Thoughts
 “There is a pleasure in the pathless woods; There is a rapture on the lonely shore; There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roars: I love not man the less, but Nature more…”
-George Gordon Lord Byron
“To see a world in a grain of sand And heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour.”
-William Blake
“If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awake – Aye, what then?“
-Samuel Coleridge
“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.”
-John Keats

5. Romantic Writers William Wordsworth (England)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (England)
John Keats (England)
George Gordon Lord Byron (England)
William Blake (England)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Germany)
Heinrich Heine (Germany)
Alexander Pushkin (Russia)
Victor Hugo (France)

6. Listen to an NPR story about John Keats
“A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore but to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out. It is a experience beyond thought.” –Keats
“The thing about the Romantic poets is that they've got the epitaph of romantic posthumously. They all died really young, and Keats, the youngest of them all. I think they can sound a little flowery when you call them the romantics, but they were romantic really for solid reasons. They were rebels against a class system, the very state and entrenched political system. Keats, for example, didn't go to university. He wasn't a lord. He was the son of a stable people, and I think what they responded to was their own spirits, and that was the Lord for them, and, you know, to me, that seems like great instructions for life.” –Jane Campion

7. In your textbook… Read about Pushkin and Heine on page 874.
Read “I Have Visited Again” on pp
Read “Lorelei” pp
(Don’t forget to read the background information for each poem.)
Write a paragraph the answers the following question:
How do these poems reflect the ideals of Romanticism?
Use quotes from both poems to support your claim.