1 The Romantic Period M. Kubus
2 “I am not made like any of those I have seen“I am not made like any of those I have seen. I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different.” Rousseau
3 The great age of REVOLUTIONSWorking class radicalism began to organize itself in the form of societies, of which the most famous was the London Corresponding Society. Those hoping for change at home felt their cause was stronger when they saw their values of liberty being exported first to America and then to France. Sense of opportunity. How Wordsworth experienced this time period: O pleasant exercise of hope and joy! For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood Upon our side, we who were strong in love; Bliss was it that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very Heaven: O times, In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways Of custom, law, and statute took at once The attraction of a Country in Romance; When Reason seem'd the most to assert her rights When most intent on making of herself A prime enchantress -- to assist the work, Which then was going forward in her name. Not favor'd spots alone, but the whole Earth!
4 The Romantic Poets Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron, Shelley
5 Definitions of plenty A movement in art and literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in revolt against the Neoclassicism of the previous centuries...The German poet Friedrich Schlegel, who is given credit for first using the term romantic to describe literature, defined it as "literature depicting emotional matter in an imaginative form." Imagination, emotion, and freedom are certainly the focal points of romanticism. Any list of particular characteristics of the literature of romanticism includes subjectivity and an emphasis on individualism; spontaneity; freedom from rules; solitary life rather than life in society; the beliefs that imagination is superior to reason and devotion to beauty; love of and worship of nature; and fascination with the past, especially the myths and mysticism of the middle ages. English poets: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats American poets: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman Morner, Kathleen and Ralph Rausch. NTC's Dictionary of Literary Terms. Chicago: NTC Publishing Group, 1997.
6 Characteristics of English Romantic Poetry Poetry about THE POET Use of the subjective “I”: Poets focus on: -personal feeling, reactions, responses -poet as maker -the interior mind of the poet Use of common language, images, ideas; movement away from formal language Experiment: Changed styles, meter, and rhyme scheme, purpose of poetry Nature as a central figure Ignored ideas of conformity and decorum Seeking to be self-aware and unselfconscious -in youth you can be unselfconscious… what happens? What does Shelley say is the role of the poet? Unacknowledged Legislators of the World
7 Imagination “One Power alone makes a PoetImagination “One Power alone makes a Poet. – Imagination The Divine Vision.” William Blake, scribbled in margins of Wordsworth’s 1815 Poems “Imagination [. . .] in truth, Is but another name for absolute strength And clearest insight, and amplitude of mind, And reason in her most exalted mood.” William Wordsworth, “Reason is to imagination as the instrument to the agent, as the body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance.” Percy Shelley, Defence of Poetry As opposed to REASON as the supreme faculty of the mind Not only do we perceive the world around us, but we have a part in creating it = “Intellectual Intuition” (Coleridge) “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact”
8 Why “Romance”? What do you recall about the genre of Romance from the Medieval period? -Fantasy, improbability, love, adventure -Need for poetry for pleasure -No didacticism “The word romantic (ism) has a complex and interesting history. In the Middle Ages 'romance' denoted the new vernacular languages derived from Latin - in contradistinction to Latin itself, which was the language of learning. Enromancier, romancar, romanz meant to compose or translate books in the vernacular. The work produced was then called romanz, roman, romanzo and romance. A roman or romant came to be known as an imaginative work and a 'courtly romance'. The terms also signified a 'popular book'.” Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Third Ed. London: Penguin Books, 1991.
9 The Lyric -Revived in France in the 19th century Poem has the form and musical quality of a song, or a short poem that expresses personal feelings -Refers to a specific moment -Extreme emotions -Often composed in first person, emphasizing the individual consciousness M.H. Abrams on The Greater Romantic Lyric: “They present a determinate speaker in a particularized, and usually localized, outdoor setting, whom we overhear as he carries on, in a fluent vernacular which rises easily to a more formal speech, a sustained colloquy, sometimes with himself or with the outer scene, but more frequently with a silent human auditor, present or absent. The speaker begins with a description of the landscape; an aspect or change of aspect in the landscape evokes a varied but integral process of memory, thought, anticipation, and feeling which remains closely intervolved with the outer scene. In the course of this meditation the lyric speaker achieves an insight, faces up to a tragic loss, comes to a moral decision, or resolves an emotional problem. Often the poem rounds upon itself to end where it began, at the outer scene, but with an altered mood and deepened understanding which is the result of the intervening meditation” (201).
10 The Ode A lyric poem, usually of some length, marked by an elaborate stanza structure, formality, and highly formalized tone. A rather grand poem.
11 Key Terms Romance Negative Capability Lyric Metonymy Synecdoche Sublime Pathetic Fallacy Romantic Ode DEFINE FOR TOMORROW.