Í DEX 1. The Romanticism in Great Britain 2. Romantic Movement: origin and features 3. The Romantic poetry; •
William Blake
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Wordsworth
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Coleridge
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Lord Byron
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Percy B. Shelley
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John Keats
4. The Gothic novel 5. Mary Shelley´s Frankenstein
1. The Romanticism in Great Britain Romanticism (or the Romantic Era) was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Revolution. In part, it was a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature. It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education and natural history. The movement validated strong emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror and terror and awe—especially that which is experienced in confronting the sublimity of untamed nature and its picturesque qualities, both new aesthetic categories. Romanticism reached beyond the rational and Classicist ideal models to elevate a revived medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived to be authentically medieval, in an attempt to escape the confines of population growth, urban sprawl, and industrialism, and it also attempted to embrace the exotic, unfamiliar, and distant in modes more authentic than Rococo harnessing the power of the imagination to envision and to escape. The modern sense of a romantic character may be expressed in Byronic ideals of a gifted, perhaps misunderstood loner, creatively following the dictates of his inspiration rather than the standard ways of contemporary society. Although the movement was rooted in the German which prized intuition and emotion over Enlightenment rationalism, the ideologies and events of the French Revolution laid the background from which both Romanticism and the Counter-Enlightenment emerged. The confines of the Industrial Revolution also had their influence on Romanticism, which was in part an escape from modern realities; indeed, in the second half of the 19th century, "Realism" was offered as a polarized opposite to Romanticism. Romanticism elevated the achievements of what it perceived as heroic individualists and artists, whose
pioneering examples would elevate society. It also legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority, which permitted freedom from classical notions of form in art.
2. Romantic Movement: origin and features The most outstanding features of this movement are the following: •
A rise of national identity. It is given great importance to the oral culture, legends, storytelling and the invidious, which is noticeable in Walter Scott’s woks.
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Love for nature. Nature becomes a source of mental cleanliness and spiritual understanding.
It is the link between God and Man.
The
Romantic natural world is represented by high mountains and wild landscapes where Man feels tiny, isolated and vulnerable. Wordsworth writing is marked, for instance, by the Lake District landscape. •
The importance of imagination. Through imagination the Romantic artist creates an individual world ruled by feelings and emotions where he isolates from the rational reality.
They penetrate in the world of
dreams, madness and drugs searching for the inspiration which will guide their pens. The Rime of an Ancient Mariner portrays Coleridge’s imaginative world created under the influence of drugs. •
Interest for the supernatural. There is a great fascination for all those things related to the non-rational such as mysterious voices, old castles, witches, visions and prophecies. This is clearly noticeable in the Gothic Novels of the period written by Mary Shelley and Blake’s visions.
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Radicalism. Romantic artists, at least when young, were very radical concerning religion, politics and society; although sometimes this opposition more idealistic and utopian than practical, comes into conflict with their personal experiences in life. Youth became a synonym for freedom, wisdom and new ideas Most Romantic heroes are rebels against the social order established and the Universe and God. Cain, Satan and Prometheus become the new heroes and Percy Shelley best representative of this radical view
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Great interest in travelling. Romantic artists travel round Europe for two main reasons: to know better the past and to discover new lands and peoples. They also travel to the past: Middle Ages and to exotic places, such as Lord Byron.
3. The Romantic poetry In the Romantic English poetry we can distinguish two clear generations of poets: an older generation whose main representatives are William Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge; and the younger generation formed by Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and John Keats. Poets were influenced by Plato, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton and by the spirit of the French revolution. They revive the sonnet, the ballad and the irregular Odes. WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827) was a poet, painter, engraver, printer, publisher and also a bookseller. As a child he saw visions which inspired his work all his life together with a wide reading of the Bible, Dante, Milton and Shakespeare. He shared the Neo-Platonist ideas about the evil influence of “generation” on Man and the fact that the only way Man can become free is that of imagination. Among his early works we find Songs of Innocent, an evocation of that Paradise that Milton declared lost and Songs of Experience in which he wrote of unknown things slightly mentioned in his previous work. Generally speaking, his prophetic works were first radical in politics, sex and religion such as Visions of the Daughters of Albion where he denounced the subordination of woman; and later influenced by the Bible. In the Book of Urizen Blake portrays his personal version of the Genesis. William Blake influenced the other Romantic poets and later writers such as Henry James, James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence. http://www.classicbookshelf.com/library/william_blake/songs_of_innocence/ WORDSWORTH (1770-1850) spent his childhood and adolescence in the Lake District whose landscapes and independent people marked his poetry, together with his stay in France and South England. An Evening Walk, a romantic description of the Lake District at night and ‘Descriptive Sketches’, where the author exposed the cause of the French Revolution belong to his early period.
The Lyrical Ballads, written jointly with Coleridge consolidated the romantic ideals in England. Among his longer poems, we can distinguish The Prelude. IT has been considered an autobiographical poem which deals with the story of his development as a poet, thinker and man. Its main purpose was to explore the psychology of the poet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyrical_Ballads COLERIGE’S (1772-1834) life was a mess. He was a poet, philosopher and a literary critic, and deeply interested in the German thinkers. Coleridge was poet destroyed by opium addiction, but even during his period of most addiction, he produced some brilliant works. Among his poems on various subjects we can mention The Aeolian Harp in which is noticeable the internal struggle of the author.
His most important
contribution to the Lyrical Ballads was The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The poem begins in the real world, a wedding, from which the Mariner starts a journey that takes him to a mythical and powerful nature mysteriously animated. Through a long process of spiritual regeneration in the natural world he is able to come back to the real world. Among his magical poems the most important one was Kubla Khan.
It
describes an idyllic and enchanted nature full of rivers, caves and it is full of strong sexual connotations. Coleridge was the first poet who articulated the mysterious and supernatural side of British Romanticism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rime_of_the_Ancient_Mariner
LORD BYRON (1788-1824) became lord at the age of ten and later a member of the House of Lords. He travelled to Italy, Portugal, Spain, Malta, Athens, where he wrote some of his poems. His poetry is marked not only by the Romantic features, but also his personal experiences. In Italy he wrote The Lament of Tosso, Don Juan, a brilliant picture of many lands, and a satire on social usage, different members of society and its hypocrisies of conventional morality.
Due to love affairs he left England and went to Switzerland where he wrote Manfred. While travelling in Europe he wrote Child Harold’s Pilgrimage where he portrays his hero: proud, moody and cynical but capable of deep affection. It became the Byronic Hero and also the Romantic hero. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Juan When PERCY SHELLY (1792-1822) was eighteen he was fervently opposed to the tyranny of the King, Church and family, and he devoted his whole life to the visions of liberty. In 1818 he left England for Italy and never came back. In his search for philosophy he read the works of Plato. In the Prometheus Unbound and the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, he inspired in the Platonic idea of Good and Evil though ethereal characters, spiritualised landscapes, earth, ocean, and all nature shares, both the suffering and the triumph. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_Unbound_(Shelley) JOHN KEATS (1795-1825) decided to abandon medicine and devote his life to poetry. He was in love but he could never married, which is reflected in all his works, a blend of pain and pleasure, together with a search for the ideal beauty. His first long poem, Endymion is based on a mythological subject. Endymion’s love for the moon and his journey in search of her.
In The Ode to a
Nightingale he contrasted a happy world of natural loveliness with the human world of pain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_to_a_Nightingale
4. The Gothic novel The Gothic novel took shape mostly in England from 1790 to 1830 and falls within the category of Romantic literature. It acts, however, as a reaction against the rigidity and formality of other forms of Romantic literature. The Gothic is far from limited to this set time period, as it takes its roots from former terrorizing writing that dates back to the Middle Ages, and can still be found written today by writers such as Stephen King. But during this time period, many of the highly regarded Gothic novelists published their writing and much of the novel's form was defined. The setting is greatly influential in Gothic novels. It not only evokes the atmosphere of horror and dread, but also portrays the deterioration of its world. The decaying, ruined scenery implies that at one time there was a thriving world. At one time the abbey, castle, or landscape was something treasured and appreciated. Now, all that lasts is the decaying shell of a once thriving dwelling. The Gothic hero becomes a sort of archetype as we find that there is a pattern to their characterization. There is always the protagonist, usually isolated either voluntarily or involuntarily. Then there is the villain, who is the epitome of evil, either by his (usually a man) own fall from grace, or by some implicit malevolence. The Wanderer, found in many Gothic tales, is the epitome of isolation as he wanders the earth in perpetual exile, usually a form of divine punishment. The plot itself mirrors the ruined world in its dealings with a protagonist's fall from grace as she succumbs to temptation from a villain. In the end, the protagonist must be saved through a reunion with a loved one. Even though the Gothic Novel deals with the sublime and the supernatural, the underlying theme of the fallen hero applies to the real world as well. Once we look past the terror aspect of this literature, we can connect with it on a human level. Furthermore, the prevalent fears of murder, rape, sin, and the unknown are fears that we face in life. In the Gothic world they are merely multiplied.
Because of the supernatural phenomena and the prevailing morbid atmosphere of Gothic novels, this genre is traditionally brushed off as "un-academic".
5. Mary Shelley´s Frankenstein Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) - original surname Godwin English Romantic novelist, biographer and editor, best known as the writer of FRANKENSTEIN, OR, THE MODERN PROMETHEUS (1818). Mary Shelley was 21 when the book was published; she started to write it when she was 18. The story deals with an ambitious young scientist. He creates life but then rejects his creation, a monster. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born in London. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died of puerperal fever 10 days after giving birth to her daughter. She was one of the first feminists, the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), and the novel The Wrongs of Woman. In the intellectual circles of London, her acquaintances included William Blake, who illustrated an edition of her book, Original Stories from Real Life. Mary Shelley's father was the writer and political journalist William Godwin, who became famous with his work An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793). Godwin had revolutionary attitudes to most social institutions, including marriage. In her childhood Mary Shelley was left to educate herself amongst her father's intellectual circle, the poet Coleridge and Percy B. Shelley, who came into Godwin's circle in 1812. In 1812 Godwin sent her to live in Dundee. Mary published her first poem at the age of ten. At the age of 16 she ran away to France and Switzerland with Shelley. Percy and Mary married in 1816 Shelley's wife Harriet had committed suicide by drowning. Their first child, a daughter, died in Venice, Italy, a few years later. In HISTORY OF SIX WEEKS TOUR (1817) the Shelleys jointly recorded their life. Thereafter they returned to England and Mary gave birth to a son, William. The story of Frankenstein started on summer in 1816, when Mary joined with Percy Shelley and Claire Clairmont near Geneva Lord Byron. She took a challenge, set by Lord Byron, to write a ghost story. With her husband's encouragement, she completed the novel within a year. At the Villa Diodati she
had been a "silent listener" of her husband and Byron, who discussed about galvanism. At Eton College Shelley had become interested in Luigi Calvani's experiments with electric shocks to make dead frogs' muscles twitch. It is possible that his teacher, James Lind, had demonstrated the technique to Shelley. Byron and Shelley talked Dr Darwin's experiments with a piece of vermicelli. In her 'Introduction' to the 1831 edition Mary revealed that she got the story from a dream, (see the film Remando al Viento) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein
6. Bibliography Mcbowel, David. An Illustrative History of Britain. 1993.Longman Blamires, Harry. A short History of the English Literature. WebPages: www.wikipedia.org