Introduction to the Romantic Era

Task 1: Video Questions

Whats it all about?

What couldnt the Romantics stand?

The Romantics were inspired by?

When did it occur?

Folklore, not high art

Shakespeare, not classical drama

Gothic and medieval, not modern

Romantic love, not just marriage contracts

Individualism, not fixed roles in society

Nature and countryside, not industrialism and cities

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV_q45Otdic

Task 2: Period Introduction Overview

TH E RO MANTIC PE RIO D 17851832 (NAE L VO L. D)

The Romantic period is short, relative to other literary periods, but is still quite
complex.

The beginning and ending dates of the Romantic period are identified differently
by various scholars, though these dates always coincide with major literary,
cultural, political, or social events.

While study of the Romantic Period for many years focused on the big six
Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keatsscholars have more
recently expanded their focus to include many diverse authors and genres of
writing from the period.

R E V O LU T I O N A N D R E A C T I O N

England at this time was transforming from a primarily agricultural nation to one
focused on manufacture, trade, and industry.
Revolutions outside of Englands borders had considerable impact within those
borders, including the revolutions in America and in France.
While many English people initially supported revolutionary efforts like those in
France, just as many came to abhor the violent tyrannies that followed. The Reign
of Terror that followed the French Revolution is a primary example.
Early efforts to abolish slavery met with little success. Often, those in power saw
the granting of widespread freedoms as the prelude to violent uprising.
England at this time was often described in terms of Two Nations: (1) the rich
and privileged who owned the nations burgeoning means of industrial production,
and (2) the poor and powerless who were more and more forced from agricultural
roots to life in industrial cities. Of course, it is this latter group upon which the
Industrial Revolution depended, though it is the former group who benefitted.
The word shopping entered English vocabulary at this time, reflecting societys
newfound love for buying the goods that imperial colonization and industry could
produce.
Women authors, though they did not enjoy anything like social equality with their
male counterparts, did at least enjoy greater prominence and wider readership
than had previously been the case. The term bluestocking was often used to
describe a certain class of educated women writers and intellectuals.

T H E N E W P O E T R I E S : T H E O RY A N D P RA C T I C E

The Romantics did not actually identify themselves as such. It was later Victorian
critics who first used the term to describe the previous generation of writers.
Among all literary genres during the Romantic period, poetry was considered the
most important.
New modes of production and distribution made the written word available to
more people in more places than had previously been the case in England. In fact,
some authors even worried about the problem of overproduction of written
works.
Just as there were many different, and sometimes conflicting, schools of poetry
during the Romantic period, there were many competing visions for what good
poetry should be and what its aims should be.

W R I T I N G I N T H E M A R K E T P L A C E A N D T H E L AW C O U RT S

The number of people who could read, and who wanted to read, grew dramatically
during the Romantic period, particularly among those of the lower and middle
classes. Writers became increasingly aware of their position within a growing
marketplace, even though the Romantic ideal of the writer was often conceived as
the solitary figure, removed from the realities of everyday life.
New modes of production increased the number of books that could be printed. In
this way, writing was affected by the Industrial Revolution in England just as
agriculture and manufacturing were.
The British state tried to control what could be printed and read not so much by
direct censorship but by charging authors or publishers with sedition or
blasphemy. The state also tried to control publication by imposing prohibitive taxes
on printed matter in some cases.

O T H E R L I T E RA RY F O R M S

Although the Romantic period centred primarily on poetry, many other literary
forms flourished as well, including political pamphlets, reviews, drama, and
novels.
The Romantic Period saw the emergence of the professional literary critic who
came to have considerable influence in shaping national literary tastes.
Drama during the Romantic period tended to focus on visual spectacle rather than
literary value. Theatregoers went to see something (which might include dancers,
pantomime, and musicians), rather than hear great literature spoken to them.
The novel as a genre grew in importance throughout the Romantic period and it,
like poetry, saw increasing efforts on the part of authors to experiment with form,
style, and content.

1. Why do you think poetry was considered the most important form of art by some
Romantics?

Romanticism
From: Facts On File Companion to the French Novel.
Romanticism was an intellectual and cultural movement that spanned both sides of
the Atlantic and the entire European continent. Romanticism greatly affected aesthetic
and artistic movements in poetry, fiction, music, and painting, reflecting
the Romantic emphasis on the individual and the irrational as a source of creativity
and truth.
The Enlightenment (16881815) emphasized reason and the notion that objective
knowledge leads to progress. The Romantic Movement was in part a reaction against
the rigidity of Enlightenment thought, raising questions about the use of reason and
rationality. The Romantics opposed restrictions on the individual (political, religious, or
civil), and believed that such restrictions were ultimately derived from rationalism.
The concurrent rise of industrial society, a consequence of the application of empirical
knowledge to daily life, only increased the Romantics' belief that the modern world
created heightened conditions for the individual's alienation and isolation in the
material world. Not surprisingly then, the movement also reflects changes in
philosophy and history.

The emergence of nationalism in the post-Napoleonic era gave rise to a

conservative Romanticism that focused on a definition of nature and culture derived
from the nation-state. Stendhal's novel The Red and the Black depicts both the
isolated Romantic individual's struggle in society and the importance of nationalism to
personal and cultural identity. Language was important to both Romanticism and
nationalism as the existence of different languages seemed to confirm the notion of
an organic view of the world. Language is not the result of abstract reason or
individual effort; it is the function of national or ethnic organisms. The French
Revolution revealed a belief that the state can be artificially constructed.
The Romantic notion of the nation was different. The nation is not the conscious
joining of individuals but a natural union of people who share the same language,
culture, and traditions.
The effects of industrialization and modernization on the European psyche caused
some Romantics to seek solace in an idealized past. Romantics were thus fascinated
by traditional, rural peasant life since they believed that identity comes from what is
unique and particular rather than from the general. They preferred custom and
tradition to legislation and rejected the notion of absolute truths.
The Romantics were critical of "modern" social change and so desired to look at the
world in a new and different way. Their approach was largely antirational, but that did
not mean rejecting science. For the Romantics, nature was not a product but a
process, an organism rather than a Newtonian machine. Nature was also a source of
inspiration. Early Romantics in particular sought an ideal union among humankind,
nature, and God. Prominent themes in literature were love, nature, and beauty.
Chateaubriand's novel Atala, set among North America's "noble savages," is an
example of the Romantic's yearning for an unattainable and perfect unity with nature,
God, and one's beloved.
On the whole, the Romantics were introspective. They were also fascinated by the
human potential for creative genius. As a result, they wanted to know what the self is
like on the inside. The Romantics might have talked about "practical reason," "fancy,"
"imagination," or simply "feeling," but they believed that the human mind possesses a
special power that goes beyond the limits of passive understanding or knowledge
acquired experientially (as described by Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke
and David Hume). Influenced by 18th-century sentimentalism as seen in the works of
Jean-Jacques Rousseau such as mile or Julie, the Romantics believed that it is not
reason that makes us human but emotions.
Art and literature were important because they represent the inner self. Music played
a particularly significant role because it is unrestricted by physical form, place, and, in
a sense, time. The world of art (including literature) was an ideal world as art is
essentially a heavenly miracle; artistic genius could not be taught or learned.
The Romantic emphasis on the individual and human emotions (the inner self)
became increasingly important and led into a fascination with the psychological. The
manifestation of the dream became a popular topic on canvas and in literature. One
need only call to mind the English artist Henry Fuseli's painting The Nightmare.

Romanticism brought extreme scepticism to the view of modernization and

industrialization along with a mistrust of materialism. Later writers such as the
existentialists bring us back again to the importance of the irrational, which began
with Romanticism and as a reaction to rationalism associated with Enlightenment
thought. With the Romantics, subjectivity takes precedence over objectivity in the
struggle between passion and reason.
Questions:
1. Which TOK ways of knowing would Romantic artists use to understand the
world? How do these differ from those of Enlightenment thinkers?
2. In what ways would the French Revolution have been both a source of
inspiration and concern for Romantic artists? (refer to the information in the two
readings above)
3. How did the Industrial Revolution influence the attitudes of the Romantics?
4. Explain, in your own words, the importance of the following to Romantics: 1.
nationalism, 2. language and 3. the relationship between nationalism and
language.
5. Three thematic concerns of Romantic literature were love, nature and beauty.
Think back to our reading on Keats. Are these themes reflected in the short
biography of Keats? Explain.
6. Create a visual representation (spider diagram, flow chart, tree etc.) of the key
ideas of Romanticism.
Further Information
Allen, James. Popular French Romanticism. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press,
1981.
Berlin, Isaiah. The Roots of Romanticism. Edited by Henry Hardy. Princeton, N.Y.:
Princeton University Press, 1999.
Bishop, Lloyd. The Romantic Hero and His Heirs in French Literature. New York: P.
Lang, 1984.
Bowman, Frank. French Romanticism: Intertextual and Interdisciplinary
Readings. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.
Gautier, Thophile. A History of Romanticism. New York: Fertig, 1988.
Talbot, mile. Stendhal and Romantic Esthetics. Lexington, Ky.: French Forum, 1985.

Taylor, Karen L. "Romanticism." Facts On File Companion to the French Novel. New
York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007. Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 20 Mar. 2015
<http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?
ItemID=WE54&WID=107036&SID=5&iPin=CFN445&SingleRecord=True>.