INTRODUCTION

ROMANTIC POETRY

~Age of Enlightenment/Age of Reason

~Power of reason to reform society

~It promoted science and intellect and opposed superstition, intolerance and abuses in church and state.

~Sought God through quantitative measurements of the scientific world. Through science, we can understand the laws of the universe and, therefore, know God.

~Addison, Defoe, Swift.

AGE OF REASON: RECAP

18th Century/Age of Reason vs. 19th Century/Romanticism

~reason~mind~intellect~urban/city~society/social interactions~objectivity~external reality~political~literature as imitation of reality

REASON VS. ROMANTICISM

~November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827~”Pre-Romantic” because his work appeared in the 18th Century~Poetical Sketches 1782. First collection of poems~Supported both French and American Revolutions~Free love and marriage laws~Songs of Innocence and Experience

WILLIAM BLAKE

~Duality of the human soul

~Childhood = a time and a state of protected "innocence," but not immune to the “fallen” world i.e. society. Connection to Milton’s “Paradise Lost.”

~Focuses on the convergence of the two selves, when childlike wonder meets the wisdom/disillusionment of experience.

~Adulthood = "experience," a state of being marked by the loss of childhood vitality, by fear and inhibition, by social and political corruption, and by the manifold oppression of Church, State, and the ruling classes.

SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE

Songs of Innocence

~ Innocent~Pastoral~Naïve~Brighter~Childlike tone~Hopeful

INNOCENCE VS. EXPERIENCE

Songs of Experience

~Voice of experience~Less harmonious with natural surroundings~Knowledge ~Dark ~Bitter tone~Melancholy

INNOCENCE VS. EXPERIENCE

~April 7, 1770 – April 23, 1850

~Instrumental in the development of the “Romantic” era

~Poet Laureate

~Lyrical Ballads with Coleridge

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

~October 21, 1772 – July 25, 1834

~Literary critic/philosopher/poet

~Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan

~”Pantisocracy” : a Utopian-like commune in the wildernesses of Pennsylvania. An abandoned plan with Robert Southey.

~Lyrical Ballads with William Wordsworth

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

~Published in 1798 by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge

~Most of the poems were contributed by Wordsworth, Coleridge contributed 4 (including Rime of the Ancient Mariner)

~The Preface indicates the poetical principles of the Romantic movement (most notably those of Wordsworth and Coleridge themselves)

LYRICAL BALLADS

~Verses using normal, every day language to give their poetry universality. Poetry for the “common man.”

~Even the title of the collection recalls rustic forms of art - the word "lyrical" links the poems with the ancient rustic bards and lends an air of spontaneity, while "ballads" are an oral mode of storytelling used by the common people.

~The focus on simple, uneducated country people as the subject of poetry was a signal shift to modern literature

QUALITIES

~ One of the main themes of "Lyrical Ballads" is the return to the original state of nature, in which people led a purer and more innocent existence.

~Wordsworth believed that humanity was essentially good but was corrupted by the influence of society. This may be linked with the sentiments spreading through Europe just prior to the French Revolution.

QUALITIES CONT.

WHAT IS ROMANTICISM?

Romantics sought to transcend the world of ordinary reality into a greater, higher world of spiritual existence. Some characteristics are…

1. Wisdom of childhood/fascination with simplicity  2. Love of the exotic, the distant, and the past  3. Nature as a source of comfort and inspiration  4. Love of freedom /hatred of tyranny of established rules and organizations/hatred of social corruption      

ROMANTICISM CONT.

5. Love of the mysterious, strange, and supernatural

6. Love of introspection, solitude, and loneliness  7. Praise of the common man/Rousseau’s “noble savage”/ “low and rustic” people (see also Wordsworth’s explanation in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads)  8. Love of the imagination and the act of transformation.  

~While Romantics such as Wordsworth and Blake depict the individual as inherently good, Dark Romantics (Coleridge and Mary Shelley) depict the individual as prone to sin and self-destruction.

~The natural world as dark, decaying, and mysterious (Poe, Hawthorne, Irving).

~Nature as God vs. Nature as Power.

~Nature leads to truth. Truth as Enlightening vs. Truth as Alarming.

DARK ROMANTICISM

~Focus on the outcasts (Frankenstein)

~Physical/Mental/Emotional torment from the self or an outside, supernatural force

~Will the nature of man bring salvation or destruction?

~Supernatural/Haunted structured space/Environmental symbolism/Mystical wilderness/Doomed quest for the ideal

DARK ROMANTICISM