Three Eras: Enlightenment, Romantic, and Victorian

Enlightenment

• increasing empiricism• scientific rigor• increasing questioning of religious orthodoxy• Rationalism• Logic over tradition

Blake

• Songs of experience • Song of innocence• Pastoral ideology

Swift

• Modest Proposal– Social satire

• Gulliver’s Travelssatire of society as created in parts 1,2 and 4parody of the travel narrative

• Romantic poets– individualism– the natural world– idealism– physical and emotional passion– interest in the mystic and supernatural– Common man– Freedom and revolution– opposition to the order and rationality of classical and

neoclassical artistic

MutabilityPercy Bysshe Shelley, 1792 - 1822

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon; How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver, Streaking the darkness radiantly!—yet soon Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings Give various response to each varying blast, To whose frail frame no second motion brings One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest.—A dream has power to poison sleep; We rise.—One wandering thought pollutes the day; We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep; Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same!—For, be it joy or sorrow, The path of its departure still is free: Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability.

What is a Byronic Hero?

• Charismatic characters with strong passions and beliefs

• Act in ways which are contrary to mainstream society • Tend to be fearless and volatile in their emotions and

behavior• Mostly a handsome male• Own philosophy which he will not change • Has internal conflicts that are romanticized • Broods over his struggles and beliefs

Victorian Era

• Marked as an age of peace and economic growth• Victoria becomes queen of England, 1837• Voter rights in England are expanded to any man with land

worth 10 pounds or more.• Due to rapid urbanization and industrialization, English people

called for reforms to unsafe living and working conditions.• Violent rallies called for fair food prices and votes for ALL people• Due to trade, food prices did eventually drop and the diet of

most English people improved.• Factory acts limited child labor; reducing the working day to ten

hours

Vocabulary

• Sustenance– Nourishment; provisions

Vocabulary

• Glut– Surfeit; overabunance

Vocabulary

• deference– Respect; high regard

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• Scrupulous– Meticulous; detail-oriented

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• Censure– Reproach; criticize

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• expedient– Efficient in accomplishing a task

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• Digressed – go off the point; tangential

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• procure– Obtain; aquire

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• brevity– Shortness; brief

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• Animosity– Hatred; scorn for something

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• Dehumanization– denial of humanness to other people

Vocabulary

• Mantra– Saying of which you place religious or

philosophical belief into

Vocabulary

• Superficially– Meaningful on the surface

Vocabulary

• Dictum– A worthwhile statement; a statement of

importance

Vocabulary

• Elitism– Practice or belief that one is of a select group

Vocabulary

• Aphorism – Saying; maxim; adage

Vocabulary

• Repertoire – range; skills; stock

Vocabulary

• Conflated– To bring together in a way that heightens issue or

concept at hand

Vocabulary

• Metonyms– Items that are parts of something that stand for

the whole

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• Elided– To suppress or strike out

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• Antithesis– The exact opposite of something

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• Narcissism– Egotism; self-importance

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• Proletariat– Labor class

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• Abysmal– Terrible or dreadful

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• Acolyte– Assistant

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• Denigrates– To lessen the value of

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• Exploitation – To use in a destructive way

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• Succumb – Give into