The Romantic Period 1785-1832 The divine arts of imagination: imagination, the real & eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow. - William Blake
The Romantic Period The items in pink text are of special interest. Whitechapel High Street, ca. 1894
The Romantic Period Began in 1785 (Blake and Burns publish their first poems) Ended about 1832 (major writers of the time were either dead or no longer productive) Turbulent time period; England changes from a primarily agricultural society to a modern industrial nation. Wealth and power shifts from the landholding aristocracy to large-scale employers = large, dissatisfied working class.
English Government Reaction to French Revolution Prohibits public meetings Suspends habeas corpus Change advocates are charged with high treason However Need exists for political changes to go with social changes New social classes demand a voice in government Viaduct across the Great Northern Railway, 1851
The Industrial Revolution Invention of power-driven machinery replaces hand labor. Open fields and farms are enclosed into privately owned holdings. A new labor population fills the sprawling mill towns that grew in central and northern England. The new landless class migrates to the industrial towns or remain as farm laborers for starvation wages. Megg's almshouses, 1800s
Results of the Industrial Revolution The landscape begins to take on its modern appearance, with rural areas divided into a checkerboard of fields enclosed by hedges and stone walls. Factories of the industrial and trading cities cast a pall of smoke over vast areas of badly-built houses and slum tenements. The population polarizes into two classes of capital labor; the large owner or trader and the possessionless wage-worker; the rich and the poor.
Governmental response to the Industrial Revolution A laissez-faire attitude encouraged government to not interfere. Results: Inadequate wages Long hours of work Harsh discipline Sordid conditions Large-scale employment of women and children for tasks that destroyed both the body and the spirit.
The Spirit of the Age Writers during this time period did not think of themselves as romantic. Many writers, however, felt that there was something distinctive about their time a pervasive intellectual and imaginative climate which they called the spirit of the age.
The Spirit of the Age A release of energy Experimental boldness Creative power that marked a literary renaissance An age of new beginnings, discarding traditional procedures and outworn customs Everything was possible.
Romanticism Turned away from 18 th - century emphasis on reason and artifice; embraced imagination and naturalness.
Romantics Thought of nature as transformative; fascinated by the ways nature and the human mind mirrored each other s creative properties.
Romantic poets Preferred to write poetry that spoke of personal experiences and emotions, often in simple, unadorned language.
Romantic poets: Many turned to a past or an inner dream world they felt was more picturesque and magical that the ugly industrial age they lived in.
Poetry Wordsworth described all good poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. He believed that the source of all poetry was not in external things, but in the individual poet.
Poetry Lyric poetry expresses the poet s own feelings and temperament. This became a major Romantic form. The natural scene became a primary poetic subject, and poets described natural phenomena with an accuracy of observation that had no earlier match.
Poetry Poets expressed sentiments for the landscape that earlier writers had felt only for God, parents, or a beloved. Humble, rustic life and plain style were elevated and the wonder of ordinary things was exalted.
Themes in Literature Nature Isolationism or exile -------- -- especially spiritual Fascination with the outlaws of myth, legend, or history Mysticism England s Lake District Results of the industrial revolution
Poets from the Romantic Period William Blake Infant Sorrow The Tyger The Lamb The Chimney Sweep
Robert Burns To a Mouse William Wordsworth London 1802 Composed Upon Westminster Bridge The World is Too Much With Us
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Kubla Khan The Rime of the Ancient Mariner George Gordon, Lord Byron She Walks in Beauty The Destruction of Sennacherib Apostrophe to the Ocean
Percy Bysshe Shelley Ozymandias Ode to the West Wind John Keats When I Have Fears Ode on a Grecian Urn