Romanticism in British Literature

Ms. Mengouchi

KEY CONCEPTS:

Sensibility

Innocence

Imagination

Inspiration

Individuality

Idealism

Intuition

Nature

Freedom from tradition

Influences

Denis Diderot future is built on reason: man is born to think for himself. His
works were banned by the government.

Jean Jacques Rousseau: feeling over thought, to feel is to exist .

American revolution inspired new ideas of equality and liberty in Europe

Jean Jacques Rousseau

 Both (Diderot and Rousseau) believed that control and authority are repressive
and thought that man needs freedom.

Rousseau: Man was born free and everywhere he is in chains

Civilized man is born and dies a slave

Man is innately good, but science is wicked and civilization is harmful and all
cultures are corrupt

Called for the end of civilization Nature never deceives us, it is we who deceive
ourselves

1780 French Revolution

FRENCH REVOLUTION: Political upheaval in France inspired dreams of

liberty.

1793 Louis XVI is executed by the Guillotine

French Revolution inspired ideas of freedom and liberty to the British

Romanticism revolted against Industry, commerce, rationality, science, the new

technology-oriented world.

Revolted against the repressive organized lifestyle of the modern world.

Revolution against authority and hierarchy

Major Figures

There are two Generations:

 First Generation Romantics: William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge

They are known as the Lake poets because they originate from Lake District

They were against change, wanted a return to poetry, imagination and legend.
(Nostalgia for the past) They wanted a return to the magical and Mysterious.

The Second Generation Romantics:

John Keats, P. B. Shelley, Lord Byron

They defied the standards of society, revolted against and transgressed the laws.

Sought to give meaning to life

They were self-sufficient and individualistic

Their poetry was self regarding and subjective.

They were envoloped in passion and emotion, incorporating so much more

intuitive thought, the supernatural, the exotic.

Sought satisfaction and made it unreachable.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

German literary figure, one of the fathers of Romanticism.

1774 The Sorrows of Young Wherther

 A love story between Wherther, a poet, and Charlotte, a married beauitful woman.

The book encouraged society to prefer love rather than class, lineage, and money.

In Romanticism it is noble to follow ones heart

William Blake 28 November 1757 12 August 1827

Imagination is the source of art

Sought freedom: he thought

the system enslaved him.

Chose poetry and painting to

express his uncommon ideas.

Life is a prison, will and

imagination are locked out of
imposed systems

Blake was influenced by the

ideals and ambitions of the
French and American
Revolutions.

Blake and Wordsworth had a grief for children who had to work

Blake wrote The Chimney Sweeper

Spontaneous childhood visions are the source of adult Inspiration

1726 Rousseau: Wisedom of little children, spontaneity, adults are repressive (like
reason)

Industrialization Vs Child innocence

 There is human nature in child innocence, and rational corruption in adult
discipline

Innocence is a source of creativity and genius

William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 23 April 1850

Revolution promised freedom for the future of humanity: Human nature seems
born again

The dream of a new world is broken by the turn of events in France

Conflict between France and Britain.

Wordsworth became wanderer in search of peace.

Landscape restored his faith in human nature.

Poetry about human passions

Celebrated nature (daffodils, oak trees, rivers, butterflies)

Hated anything mechanical and industrial

Preferred simplicity and nature rather than industry.

In Bristol he wrote poetry with Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 Both saved Romanticism from the chaos of the French revolution.

Both made a bond to change the world through poetry

The Lyrical Ballads 1798-1800

A collection of poems written by both W. Worsdworth and Samuel T Coleridge.

This collection is considered as the bible of Romanticism for it contains its main
principles.

They wrote with the same purposes of the French revolution

People cease to be subjects and become citizens

Topics were the same as earlier poetry (rural poor, beggars, deserted mothers) but
what made it different was its depth of moral and psychological complexity

Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772 1834

He gave lectures on Revolution after the French Revolution

Wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in which a voyager shots an Albatross and
his ship was followed by ghosts. A warning that man should respect other creatures.

Through this poem, the search of freedom led Romantics to the Natural world

Coleridge explored the limits of human imagination which inspired him Kubla
Khan (1797) the experience of the exotic Opium

For Coleridge, Mind is a mystery discovered through imagination

 Imagination is the human soul, able to create a new world.

God and religion are not at the centre of the world.

John Keats

He experienced the horror of conducting operations without anesthesis

Wrote peoples pain in poetry

A poet is a sage, humanist physician to all men. (words are medicine)

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Sought the meaning of life and claimed that it was found in Atheism.

Had different love affairs, sought self gratification.

By violating social conventions, Shelley pioneered a notion of Free Love

Driven by Individual will and feeling

Lord Byron

The great object of life is sensation

1812 Childe Harolds Pilgrimage a poem of a wanderer looking for an exotic

experience

Impossibility of satisfation both of Byron and his character Childe.

 Desire for extreme experience

Heightened sensation

Mary Shelley

She was poet and Novelist daughter of philosopher and feminist MARY
Wollestonecraft and politician William Godwin

Wrote Frankenstein

Gothic sotries of ghosts and beasts, supernatural, mystery, antiquity

Fear of the supernatural

Gothic Architecture

Conclusion

THE FIVE Is OF ROMANTICISM:

INNOCENCE AND YOUTH: YOUTH IS NOT CORRUPTED thus free from the
evils of society

IMAGINATION: A SOURCE OF INFORMATION which deserves exploration

INSPIRATION: BY NATURE. Nature is more valuable than towns and cities.

People are free from judgement and from negative influences

INTUITION: INNER VOICE

o INDIVIDUALISM: A DIVINE SPARK IN EVERY HUMAN BEING

References:

Wordsworth, William, Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Lyrical Ballads and Other

Poems. London: Wordsworth Editions, 2003. Print.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scck3YCiRxg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liVQ21KZfOI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6mefXs5h9o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiRWBI0JTYQ