Download The Romantic Period

The Romantic Period
1785-1830
Whitechapel High Street,
The Romantic Period
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Began in/around 1785, the year Blake and Burns
published their first poems (text notes it as 1780)
Ended in 1830, by which time the major writers of the
preceding century were either
dead or no longer productive.
It was a turbulent time period,
when England changed from
a primarily agricultural society
to a modern industrial nation.
Wealth and power shifted
from the landholding aristocracy to large-scale employers, who found themselves
against a large, restive working class.
Reaction to Revolution
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In response to the French Revolution, the English
government prohibited public meetings,
suspended habeas corpus (the release from
unlawful restraint), and advocates of even
moderate political change were charged with high
treason.
Yet economic and social
changes created a
desperate need for
corresponding political
changes, and new social
classes were demanding
Viaduct across the Great Northern Railway,
a voice in government.
The Industrial Revolution
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Resulted from the invention of power-driven machinery
replacing hand labour.
Open fields and farms were enclosed into privately owned
agricultural holdings.
A new labour population
massed in the sprawling mill
towns that burgeoned in
central and northern England.
The new landless class
migrated to the industrial
towns or remained as farm
labourers, subsisting on
Megg's almshouses, 1800s
starvation wages.
Results of the Industrial Revolution
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The landscape began 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 jerry-built houses
and slum tenements.
The population polarized
into two classes of capital
labour, 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
 The results were inadequate
wages, long hours of work
under harsh discipline in sordid
conditions, and the large-scale
employment of women and
children for tasks that
destroyed both the body and
the spirit.
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Colonialization
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While the poor were suffering, the landed classes, the
industrialists, and many merchants prospered as the
British Empire expanded aggressively both westward
and eastward.
During this time period, the British Empire became the
most powerful colonial presence in the world.
The British East India Co.
ruled the entire Indian subcontinent, and black slave
labour in the West Indies
generated great wealth for
British plantation owners.
The “Spirit of the Age” -Ethos
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.”
 They described it as a release of energy,
experimental boldness, and creative power that
marked a literary renaissance, an age of new
beginnings when, by discarding traditional
procedures and outworn customs, everything was
possible.
 Attacked all forms of tyranny and evils of
industrialism (urban blight, polluted environment,
alienation from nature & each other)
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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.
 The lyric poem, expressing the poet’s own feelings
and temperament, 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.
 Poets bestowed attitudes and sentiments
on 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.
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Characteristics
Indifferent to form and structure
 Direct expression of strong personal feelings and
emotions
 Imagination =reality/possibility
 Passion
 Many poems were intimate self-revelation of poet
 Took themselves as heroes
 Often portrayed as the “struggle of genius against all
limitations”
 Sometimes withdrew from society to “brood” upon
themselves
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Characteristics of the Byronic Hero
A Byronic hero exhibits several characteristic traits, and
in many ways he can be considered a rebel.
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is a rebel (against convention, society, etc.)
has a distaste for society and social institutions
is isolated from society (a wanderer, an exile)
is not impressed by rank and privilege (though he may possess it)
is larger-than-life in his ability--and his pride
has a hidden curse or crime
suffers from titanic passions
tends to be self-destructive
One of the key connections to understanding the Byronic Hero is that he is, in
some ways, like the Romantic conception of Satan in Paradise Lost--the rebel
who fights against a tyrannical establishment but is destroyed by his own
overwhelming pride. This figure is an unconventional hero--dangerous and
destructive, but admirable because he is larger than life.
Themes in Literature
Nature
 Isolationism
 Exile – especially of a
disinherited mind that
cannot find a spiritual
home in its native land
England’s Lake District
 Fascination with the
outlaws of myth, legend, or history
 Mysticism
 Results of the industrial revolution
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Authors from the Romantic Period
William Blake
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Poetical Sketches
Songs of Innocence and
Experience
The Book of Thel
The Marriage of Heaven
and Hell
Jerusalem
Robert Burns
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Tam o’ Shanter
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Various songs and
poems
William Wordsworth
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Lyrical Ballads, with
a Few Other Poems
The Prelude
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner
Dejection: An Ode
Kubla Khan
Christabel
George Gordon, Lord Byron
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Childe Harold’s
Pilgrimage
Don Juan
Various poems
Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Alastor
Prometheus
Unbound
Adonais
Various poems
John Keats
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Endymion
The Eve of St.
Agnes
Various poems