Transcript
Page 1: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement
Page 2: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

PRESENTATION:THE ROMANTIC

MOVEMENT (±1798 TO ±1830)

Presented To: MADAM SAIMA MURTAZA

Presented By:

ALI AFZAL

Page 3: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

Our presentation is divided in following parts:

a) Introductionb) French Revolution and Reforms and Impact of

French Revolution on Englandc) The Industrial Revolutiond) The Napoleonic Wars, England’s Laissez-Faire (Let

It Be) Philosophy and Democracye) Sturm und Drang (German Literary Movement)

and Neoclassicism and Romanticism.f) Characteristics of Romantic Literature

Page 4: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty/ that is

all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Page 5: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

Introduction

Page 6: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT(±1798 TO ±1830)

•The Romantic period was largely a reaction against the ideology of the Enlightenment•Whereas Enlightenment thinkers value logic, reason, and rationality, Romantics value emotion, passion, and individuality•Professor Chris Baldick provides the following description: “Rejecting the ordered rationality of the Enlightenment

as mechanical, impersonal, and artificial, the Romantics turned to the emotional directness of personal experience and to the boundlessness of

individual imagination and aspiration”

Page 7: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT(±1798 TO ±1830)

•This was the big project of Lyrical Ballads, the collection of poetry by Wordsworth and Coleridge that marked the beginning of the Romantic period.

William Wordsworth S.T Coleridge

Page 8: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT(±1798 TO ±1830)

•The changing landscape of Britain brought about by the steam engine has two major outcomes: the boom of industrialism with the expansion of the city, and the consequent depopulation of the countryside as a result of the enclosures, or privatisation of pastures. Most peasants poured into the city to work in the new factories

Page 9: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT(±1798 TO ±1830)

•The poor condition of workers, the new class-conflicts and the pollution of the environment causes a reaction to urbanism and industrialisation prompting poets to rediscover the beauty and value of nature•This movement opposed the scientific rationalization of nature. •Those instincts in human nature, which Pseudo-classicism disregarded, took the form of a distinct Romantic Revival

Page 10: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

The French

Revolution

Page 11: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

•During the two centuries while England had been steadily winning her way to constitutional government, France had past more and more completely under the control of a cynically tyrannical despotism and a cynically corrupt and cruel feudal aristocracy. •The conditions are vividly pictured in Dickens' 'Tale of Two Cities' and Carlyle's 'French Revolution').

Page 12: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

•in 1789 the people, headed by the lawyers and thinkers of the middle class, arose in furious determination, swept away their oppressors, and after three years established a republic. •It was the first time that the aristocracy had been brought down, and Marie-Antoinette and her husband Louis the XVI had their heads guillotined off.•The early Romantic poets tended to be supporters of the French Revolution•In his youth William Wordsworth was drawn to the Republican cause in France, until he gradually became disenchanted with the Revolutionaries.

Page 13: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

•It was a time of huge social and political transformation, which was inspiring to the Romantics, who valued individuality and freedom and rebelled against social and literary conventions of their day.•Just like the French revolutionaries, William Blake was really against injustice and inequality. He shows us just how terrible inequality is in his poems "London." and "The Chimney Sweeper."

Page 14: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Page 15: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

•The causes of this threatened revolution were not political but economic. (The unequal distribution of wealth)

•The invention of machinery at first threw thousands of skilled hand workers out of employment; in order to protect a few agriculturists, heavy duties were imposed on corn and wheat, and bread rose to famine prices just when laboring men had the least money to pay for it.•sixteen hours' labor would hardly pay for the daily bread•and in every large city were riotous mobs made up chiefly of hungry men and women

Page 16: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

•It is only when we remember these conditions that we can understand two books, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, which can hardly be considered as literature, but which exercised an enormous influence in England.

Page 17: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

REFORMS AND IMPACT OF FRENCH REVOLUTION ON ENGLAND

•The destruction of the African slave trade•The mitigation of horribly unjust laws which included poor debtors and petty criminals in the same class•The prevention of child labor•The freedom of the press•The extension of manhood suffrage•The abolition of restrictions against Catholics in Parliament

Page 18: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

The Industrial Revolution

Page 19: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

•More and more people were moving to the cities to work in factories•new manufacturing processes were being put in place•New inventions meant mass production of goods could be produced more efficiently•people were moving further and further away from nature

Page 20: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

•Rural workers in cottage businesses and agriculture had little choice but to seek work in factories, mills, and mines•Women and children worked to help support the family•Cities became centers of “poverty and deprivation”•Building new physical and commercial infrastructure took priority over the individual and nature

Page 21: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

•The Romantics were not very enthusiastic about these changes, they were especially concerned about people moving away from nature. Therefore, the Romantic Movement was a movement against industrialization and mechanization.•References to The Industrial Revolution are present in:•John Keats' Poem "Ode to a Nightingale”

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs; (lines 25-28)

• and William Blake’s Poem “London”

Page 22: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

The Napoleonic Wars

Page 23: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

THE NAPOLEONIC WARS

•Napoleon was initially considered a liberator, a symbol of change, and several Romantic writers were in support of revolution•Many saw the rise of Napoleon as a revolutionary figure and bringer of a new freedom, others saw the violent excesses of the French Revolution and Napoleonic War as signs of the apocalypse

Page 24: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

THE NAPOLEONIC WARS

•Romantics became less enthusiastic over the course of the Napoleonic wars with Napoleon’s increasing cruelty and aggressive imperialism•Because of revolutions and war, there is an undercurrent of tragedy, death and despair in much of the later Romantic literature.

Page 25: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

England’s Laissez-Faire (Let It Be) Philosophy

Page 26: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

LAISSEZ-FAIRE (LET IT BE) PHILOSOPHY

•This philosophy Encouraged people to follow their interests and limited state involvement in economic activity, as a result:

•Communal land was taken over by individuals, resulting in a large number of displaced people

•The gap widened between the very wealthy and the very poor

•Working conditions were terrible, with long hours, low wages, and child labor exploitation in factories, mills, and mines

•Rapidly growing towns became polluted and overpopulated, disease was rampant

•Frustrated with the current political and social situation, Romantic poets responded with poetry that was private, spontaneous and lyrical – a shift from earlier formal and more public poetry.

Page 27: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

Democracy

Election Day 1815

Page 28: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

DEMOCRACY

•In the late 18th and early 19th century, concepts

such as the Great Chain of Being, which had long

represented the way humans thought of

themselves and their roles in society, crumbled in

the wake of new ideas about democracy. Rather

than placing themselves above or below other

individuals in a hierarchy, people began to

believe that all men are equal.

Page 29: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

Sturm und Drang (German Literary Movement)

Page 30: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

STURM UND DRANG (GERMAN LITERARY MOVEMENT)

•The Sturm und Drang movement pictures an anti-hero, a character dark in appearance, mood, and thought, in rebellion against the restrictions of society. •Sturm und Drang, (German: “Storm and Stress”), German literary movement of the late 18th century that exalted nature, feeling, and human individualism and sought to overthrow the Enlightenment cult of Rationalism. Goethe and Schiller began their careers as prominent members of the movement.

Page 31: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

STURM UND DRANG (GERMAN LITERARY MOVEMENT)

•The exponents of the Sturm und Drang were profoundly influenced by the thought of Rousseau and Johann Georg Hamann, who held that the basic verities of existence were to be apprehended through faith and the experience of the senses.•The movement borrowed the name from a play by Friedrich von Klinger. Self-discipline was not a tenet of the Sturm und Drang, and the movement soon exhausted itself.

Rousseau Johann Georg Hamann

Page 32: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

NEOCLASSICISM AND ROMANTICISM

Neoclassicism Romanticismuse and imitation of literary traditions from

ancient Greece and Rome

use and imitation of literary traditions from the Middle Ages (including the medieval

romance)beauty in structure and order beauty in organic, natural forms

art from applying order to nature art from inspirationheroic couplets lyric poetry

focus on external people and events focus on self-expression of the artistSocial hierarchy/ Great Chain of Being democracy

reason mysticismReason leads to spiritual revelation Nature leads to spiritual revelation

urban (glorifies civilization and technological progress)

rural (sees the evils of civilization and technological progress)

values wit and sophistication values primitive, simple peopleHuman nature needs artificial restraints of

societyRestraints of society result in tyranny and

oppressionThe Head The Heart

Page 33: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

Characteristics of Romantic Literature

Page 34: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANTIC LITERATURE

•Experimentation with Poetic Form:The early Romantics, especially William Wordsworth and Samuel

Taylor Coleridge, wanted to revolutionize the way poetry was written.. They wanted to make poetry conversational.

•Rebellions:The Romantics did not want to be constrained by social, literary, or political conventions. They believed, above all else, in being true to

their own individuality.

Page 35: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANTIC LITERATURE

•Sublime:The sublime was so important to the

Romantics because:•They loved nature

•They believed that the sublime transcended the rational. That is,

the feelings of awe and terror evoked by the sublime are beyond words and the emotions that the

sublime creates overwhelm rational thought.

Nature + powerful emotion = the Sublime

Page 36: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANTIC LITERATURE

•Medievalism:•Romantic-era writers prefer nostalgic views

of the Middle Ages•Often a Romantic

medieval vision is not realistic

Page 37: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANTIC LITERATURE

•Mysticism:•Romantic writers would worship

not the tree, but the spiritual, sublime element manifested by the

tree.•Romantic writers love nature not only for its beauty but primarily because it is an expression of

spirituality and the Imagination.

Page 38: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement
Page 39: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANTIC LITERATURE

•Sensibility:•With her novel Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen set up the dichotomy between rationalism and the emotional enthusiasm•In his Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth defined poetry as the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”•The overwhelming emotional reaction to nature seen in Wordsworth’s poetry and the supernatural evocation of terror in Gothic literature all are expressions of sensibility.

Page 40: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANTIC LITERATURE

•Primitivism and Individualism:•Romanticism values the primitive individual, the person who does not have the artificial manners of high society, the cultivated facade of the aristocracy. Individuals who are closer to nature are better able to recognize and exemplify goodness and spiritual discernment.•Romanticism places the individual in the center of life and experience.

Page 41: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANTIC LITERATURE

•Nature and Spirit:•For poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge, nature is a source of divine revelation, a visible veil through which God may be discerned. For others such as Shelley, nature is the means to tapping into the collective power of the human mind.

Page 42: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANTIC LITERATURE

•Imagination:•For Romantic writers the source of poetry is the inspiration that comes from connecting, through nature, with the divine or the transcendental properties of the human mind•The power of God to create nature is parallel to the poets power to create through the Imagination•In his A Defence of Poetry, Percy Bysshe Shelley states that the Imagination :“strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bare the naked and

sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of its forms.”

Page 43: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANTIC LITERATURE

•Melancholy:•There is a strong tendency to melancholy. This inclination is common enough in many romantic-spirited persons of all times, and it is always a symptom of immaturity or lack of perfect balance.

Page 44: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANTIC LITERATURE

•Revival of blank verse:•Milton was one of their chief masters, and his example led to the revival of blank

•Gothic Novel:•Ann Radcliffe and others wrote Gothic novels that typically feature picturesque yet haunted medieval castles and ruins, supernatural elements, death, madness, and terror.

Ann Radcliffe

Page 45: Romanticism/ Romantic Poetry/ The Romantic Movement

Thank YouAny Question?


Top Related