Reading and Writing Skills for Students of Literature in English:

RomanticismEnric Monforte

Jacqueline HurtleyBill Phillips

Romanticism

Caspar David Friedrich 1774-1840

Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer 1818

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RomanticismHighly influential movement in virtually every country of Europe, the United States, and Latin America lasting from about 1750 to about 1870.

J.M.W.Turner 1775-1851

S. Giorgio Maggiore: Early Morning 1819

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/turner/

Imagination

Rebellion

Nature

Childhood innocence

The individual

Characteristics:

Origins and Inspiration Late 18th century in France and Germany literary taste turns away from classical and neoclassical conventions.

Giovanni Paolo Pannini 1691-1765Roman Ruins with the Arch of Titus1734

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http://www.laputanlogic.com/articles/2006/05/index.html

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Inspiration initially from two men: Jean Jacques Rousseau and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712-1788

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1749-1832

http://www.greatbooksandfilm.com/rousseauquest.htm

http://copepodo.wordpress.com

The Romantic Spirit Rousseau established the cult of the individual and the freedom of the human spirit: I felt before I thought.

Frontispiece to Songs of Innocence by William Blake

http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/song.htm

Goethe and others extolled the romantic spirit as manifested in German folk songs, Gothic architecture, and the plays of Shakespeare.

Strasbourg (depicted in the late 18th c.) and Cologne Cathedrals

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Goethe justified revolt against political authority and inaugurated the Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) movement, a forerunner of German romanticism.

Jean-Pierre-Louis-Laurent

Houel 1735-1813

Prise de la Bastille

http://www.cheminsdememoire.gouv.

fr

The Sorrows of Young Werther

(1774) exalts sentiment to the

point of justifying committing suicide

over unrequited love.

http://brendenundefined.blogspot.com/

Romantic attitudes: frenzy, melancholy, world-weariness, self-destruction

Edgar Degas 1834-1917

Melancholy c. 1874

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edgar_Degas-_Melancholy.JPG

William Wordsworth 1770-1850

Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834

John Keats 1795-1821

Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792-1822

George Gordon, Lord Byron 1788-1824

Mary Shelley 1797-1851

http://tomypledgedwordamtrue.blogspot.com

http://web2.cc.nctu.edu.tw

http://www.filipspagnoli.wordpress.com

http://www.records.viu.ca

http://www.rogervivier.wordpress.com

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The Preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1802)

by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

http://web2.cc.nctu.edu.twhttp://etc.dal.ca

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.com

“I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquility gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.”

“To whom does he address himself?”

“And what language is to be expected from him?”

“What is a Poet?”

“a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility”

“more enthusiasm and tenderness”

“who has a greater knowledge of human nature”

“and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind”

“- He is a man speaking to men”

“The language, too, of these men* has been adopted (purified indeed from what appear to be its real defects, from all lasting and rational causes of dislike or disgust) ...”

*men of humble and rustic life

“And what language is to be expected from him?”

“Humble and rustic life was generally chosen, because, in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language...

...and, lastly, because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature.”

Nature

Nature and the CountrysideReaction to the industrial revolution

Rise of the bourgeoisie

Contrast with the corruption of government (pastoral)

Greenburn Bottom, near Grasmere, Cumbria

http://www.wordsworthcentre.co.uk

PoliticsLibertarian and abolitionist movements of the late 18th and early 19th centuries coincide with the romantic philosophy: freedom from convention and tyranny, the rights and dignity of the individual.

Eugène Delacroix 1798-1863

La Liberté guidant le peuple 1830

http://www.theartwolf.com

Political and Social Causes

William Blake – antinomian, anti-institutional

William Wordsworth – French Revolution

Lord Byron – Greek independence

Shelley – political reform in England and Ireland

Keats – opposition to political repression in England

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The Lure of the Exotic

Lord Byron http://www.listverse.com

The Middle Ages as an inspiration for themes

and settings:

melancholy, ruins, graveyards, the

supernaturalhttp://

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The Gothic