- Ego-centric point of view
Context
- Romanticism: attitude or intellectual orientation that characterised many works of literature, paintings, music, architecture and criticism in Western civilisation over a period from the late 18th century to the mid-19th century
- Can be seen as a rejection of the precepts of order, calm, harmony, balance, idealisation, and rationality that typified late 18th century Neo-classicism in particular
- Also a reaction against the Enlightenment and against 18th Century l
The Romantic Movement
- Freedom of the individual
- Rejection of restricting social conventions and political rule
- Fight for rights of the common man
- Emphasis on emotions and the imagination over reason and logic
- Free spontaneous action over controlled calculated behaviour
- Valorisation of the wilderness
- The “noble savage”
- Savage meaning people from other, non-Euro places
- Revival of interest on folklore and legends
- Chivalry
As an aesthetic philosophy, Romanticism engages with these key concepts:
- Cult of Nature
- Individualism
- Social Responsibility
Romanticism
- Derived from medieval concept of romance, which included nostalgia for the past
- Dominant aesthetic philosophy in England and parts of Europe
- Literature, painting, architecture and music were romantic in style and form
- Reaction to 18th century thoughts and ideas of the neo-classical period (the Enlightenment)
- Neo- : New, revived
Neo-Classicism
- Period of revived interest in ancient Greek and Roman art, literature and architecture from the Augustan Period
- The Enlightenment
Neo-Classical
- Reason, order, logic
- Rationalism
- Empiricism
- Mechanical philosophy
- Human dominion over nature
- E.g. squared gardens with orderly lines of trees
- Essential truths in nature and society
The 17th-18th Centuries: A Time of Great Historical Change
- Scientific and technological revolution
- Industrial Revolution, industrialisation
- Agricultural Revolution, urbanisation
- Brith of mass society and mass communication
- London became centre for trade from “the new world” and an intellectual and cultural centre
- “A man who is tired of London is tired of life”
- City/Country, Culture/Nature opposition
- Country seen as unstimulating
- Changed relations between man and nature
- Social inequity and increasing secularisation
- French Revolution
Romanticism and Social Responsibility
- Emerged in response to events in England and Europe
- Intellectuals “declasse” (without class)
- Support by romantics such as Woodsworth for the French Revolution
- Valorisation of the rustic, concern over the plight of the urban poor
The Cult of Nature
- Romanticism saw Nature as restorative of values, perceptive of reality
- Pantheism (God is Nature)
- Nostalgia for rustic life
- Impact of industrial revolution on people’s lives
- Living to the clocks, not the Sun and seasons
- Nature is restorative to human spirit, more true, closer to the divine
- Wilderness valued over tamed countryside
Individualism
- Romantics challenged neo-classicist notions of essential truths in nature and society
- Disagreed with: mechanical ideology of everyone, and everything as a cog in the great clock of the world
- Society: artificial self, return to nature = simpler life and true individual(ism?)
- Valorisation of originality over retreatment of classic stories
- Children are viewed as special people with special perception(s?)
- French Revolution: Liberte, Equalite, Fraternite
- Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood
Poetry: The Dominant Romantic Literary Mode
- Historical tradition of poetry as the highest form of literature
- Prose is the language of commerce
- Poetry suited to self-expression
- Linked with magic in earlier civilisations, connection to the primitive
- Poet as prophet, seer, outcast, visionary
Romantic Poets
1st Generation
William Blake
- 1757 to 1827
- Son of hosier, engraver (artisan class)
- Largely unrecognised for the most part of his life
- Student at the Royal Academy
- Unhinged, deranged
- Activist
William Woodsworth
- 1770 to 1850
- Son of attorney
- Cambridge education
- Lived (modestly) on family money
- Poetry is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility”
- E.g., I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- 1772 to 1834
- Son of vicar
- Cambridge education
- Theological writing
2nd Generation
Lord George Byron
- 1788 to 1824
- Son of captain
- Cambridge education
- Inherited title 1798
- “Mad, bad and dangerous to know”
- Had to leave England after his half-sister had his child
- Killed in Greek war of independence
Percy Bysse Shelly
- 1792 to 1822
- Son of Mp (later Baronet)
- Expelled from Oxford for atheism
- Eloped with Mary when she was 16
- Lived in Europe
- Hung around with Byron
- Died in a boating accident
John Keats
- 1795 to 1821
- Son of stables manager (barely middle class)
- Apothecary/surgeon
- Died of consumption
- “With a great poet the sense of beauty overcomes every other consideration”