Romanticism(1800-1850):A Subversive and Sublime Artistic Movement

• When we think of the word “romantic” we think of traditional love

• This is NOT what Romanticism is. Rather, it is a movement defined as a cultural movement

in reaction to the Enlightenment which valued logic, reason and rationality.

• Romantics believed in the power of the human imagination and stood in both awe and horror of the natural world, otherwise

known as the sublime (a realm of experience beyond the measurable).

Unit Essential Questions

• We will refer back to these questions throughout the unit1. In what ways are the texts reactions to the

changes English society?

2. What does it mean to be human?

3. How do writers structure their work to reflect the meaning of the content?

4. What is the relationship between the creator and the created?

Tentative Romantics Study Schedule

• 3 weeks on Romantic poetry– William Blake– William Wordsworth– Samuel Taylor Coleridge – John Keats– Lord Byron– Percy Bysshe Shelley

• You will have an in-class essay explicating 1-2 poems

• 4 weeks on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein– Focus: humanity, genetic engineering and cloning– Fishbowl Discussion– Argumentative Essay

William WordsworthHow would you characterize Wordsworth’s poems?

What are some similarities between Wordsworth’s poetry and Blake’s? Differences?

Pick one of the essential questions of the unit and answer it by reflecting on Wordsworth’s poetry. Use two quotes.

William Wordsworth• b. 1770 d. 1850• One of the primary poets of the Romantic

era, spearheading cultural movements against the status quo

• Close friends with Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Famously collaborated on a book of poetry titled

Lyrical Ballads (1800)• “Lucy” poems and “Tinturn Abby” are featured in this

collection

• Nature was his religion, as reflected in much of his poems

Samuel Taylor Coleridge(1772-1834)

“Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure.” -"Definitions of Poetry" (1811)