1. THE ROMANTICS 1750-1837

2. ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS  1. What were the essential features of Romanticism?  2. How did Romantic writers respond to nature?  3. What conception of the imagination did Romanticism express?

3. General History of the Period  England’s population increased 5 xs  Eli Whitney created the cotton gin  First public railroad opened in 1830  As industrialism grew, Romantics fled to more rural areas such as the Lake District

6. More history Coal and steam replaced wind and water as energy sources American and French Revolutions took place- 1776 & 1789 Toussaint L’Overature overthrows French in Haiti 1804 Napoleanic Wars ended in 1815 with Waterloo defeat (1804-1815)

7. Features of Romanticism  Romanticism sprang from a reaction against Enlightenment ideals  Whereas Enlightenment praised reason and its limits, Romantics were fascinated by extreme physical sensation and mental states – even terror and madness.  Romantic works as filled with exotic extremes, whimsy and caprice, nightmares and visions, innocent children, lone wanderers, and quests after the unattainable.

8. Romantic Ideals Continued  Whereas the skeptical intellectual represented the Enlightenment, the sublimely inspired poet inspired the Romantics  Romantics valued expressions of feeling  Deeply demonstrated a natural human sympathy both to nature and to the feelings of others.  In Romance, nature is always active, vital, and spontaneous.

9. Romantics….  The “Noble Savage” ideal was born during this period-the idea of instrinctive goodness  Placed their trust in instinct and the power of the imagination.  Romantic indictment of how science deforms nature took life in the gothic novel Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley  Coleridge and “Kubla Khan”  Many were inspired by the classics and thereby the Greeks opposition to the ruling Turks

10. Reading  “Kubla Khan” - Coleridge  “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” – Thomas Gray  “To a Mouse” – Robert Burns  “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”

11. Later Romantics  Wordsworth – “The World is Too Much With Us” & “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”  Coleridge – “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”