THE ROMANTIC AGE (1760 – 1830)
Many Great Revolutions characterized the second half of the 18 th century and the beginning of the 19 th century:
- the American Revolution with the Declaration of American Independence in 1776
- the Industrial Revolution,
- the French Revolution.
In the romantic period
The Romantic A new sensibility Revival of Imagination Emphasis on Cult of the Rediscovery of the
A new concept of
age is a reaction became dominant everyday life as a means of the individual exotic child’s sensitiveness
nature
against the faith knowledge
in reason
Supremacy of feelings Imagination can The Romantics Nature is A child was purer than an adult, had
and emotions expressed emotional exalted a real an uncorrupted sesivity and was
experience the atypical, and living being closer to God
the rebel,
the outcast
The cult of the Byronic hero
and the view of society as an evil force
Romantic poetry
• Poetry, for the romantics, is the genre who best suited the need to give expression to emotional experience and individual feelings;
•
• Imagination gained a primary role in the process of poetic composition because allowed the poet to re-created and modified the external
world of the experience;
•
• The poet is a visionary, a prophet, a mediate between man and nature.
Features of romantic poems
• The presence of the lyric I;
• Nature is a living force and is the expression of God in the universe;
• The use of language of sense impressions;
• The freedom from models and rules;
• The search for a new individual style;
• The return to past (ballads, sonnets, poems, exc.);
• The use of symbols and images.
The first • William Wordsworth
generation
The romantic poets or the generation
of “the lake poets”
• S. T. Coleridge
are usually grouped into two generations
• Byron
•
The second generation • Shelley
•
• Keats
The poetswrote
• They of first
andgeneration
published much of their work around the time of the French Revolution.
• They discuss the new aesthetic values which are typical of Romanticism.
• This generation set the basis for the birth of Romanticism and its main rules.
• They link poetry with music and the visual arts
• They create multi-layered poems made of opposition between realism and symbolism,
which can exist at the same time in the poem.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850)
• He was a big supporter of French Revolution
• With Coleridge wrote THE LYRICAL BALLADS, which is considered as the manifesto of Romanticism in England
• He was a man speaking to men (ordinary man with more imagination, more easily affected by experiences and able
to communicate his experiences)
• He preferred the Countryside (opposed to the noisy towns) as source of inspiration (best feelings inspired by
nature)
• He used common language to express ordinary events, humble and rustic life (spontaneity of feelings, critic of
elevated and aristocratic language)
• Memory: through it he could live simple situations again
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834)
• “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is considered a mixture of Gothic romance (there are supernatural and magic elements), travel
literature (it is about a journey by sea) and traditional ballad (the ballad is a medieval genre, it is a poem or a song narrating a
story that is generally dramatic).
• Dissatisfaction with society. Friendship with radicals. Pantisocracy (ideal democratic community in America)
• Exotic and fantastic nature. Supernatural visions
• Conciliation of the opposites
The poets of second generation
Byron
• Poor conditions - noble and rich. Exclusive schools, Grand Tour, sudden success, women, scandal exile Italian years (met Shelley and Mary
Godwin).
• Death in Greece Disdain of the world and the crowd.
• Reject of conventions and rules.
• In favour of Greek independence (Byron = one of the leaders of the revolution) Byronic hero (passionate, moody, restless, mysterious, individualist
and rough, but attractive; autobiography).
• Poet = isolated from men and society Admiration for nature’s greatness in opposition to man’s weakness. Solitary and sublime places where he
mingles with the Universe and the infinite (great pleasure)
• Descriptions of Europe: distant and exotic lands (those Byron visited)
• Met the Romantic taste
• He has not lived in vain: there is a force in him stronger than the corruption of the world and death.
• Poetry makes immortal
SHELLEY
• Born in a rich family
• Italian years (Italian landscapes, poetical inspiration)
• Tragic death during a storm in Leghorn
• Violent opposition) against tyranny and injustice (England in 1819).
• He was a dreamer, a utopian thinker
• Had more sensibility and imagination than other men, was able to express the truth in the form of beauty
• He sees the reality of the present and perceives the future (he is a prophet)
• The Poet is a law-giver of civil society: he makes men perceive and desire the beauty of order and holiness
• Poetry is the expression of imagination, makes immortal what is beautiful and best in the world and is the centre of
knowledge
• Refuge from the disappointment of the world.
• Veil that hides the truth of the Divine Spirit Various forms, great technical ability
Keats
• Born in London.
• Abandoned a medical career for literature.
• He contracted tuberculosis and died
• He wasn’t interested in politic: his poetry is not subjective or autobiographical; experience is not the substance of his odes.
• Has the “negative capability”: he can experience mysteries and doubts denying his certainties and personality to identify with the object of
poetry
• Belief in the supreme value of imagination, which made Keats a Romantic poet.
• Great part of his work is a vision of what he would like the world to be like. What strikes his imagination most is beauty Romantic fondness
for unfamiliar and strange, and for the remote in place and time.
• He didn’t identify landscapes with subjective moods: no pantheism (Wordsworth), no mystery (Coleridge)
• Beauty finds expression in the melodic verse and in a sensuous and hypnotic language.
• Beauty = truth.
• Beauty (mainly Classical beauty) strikes imagination; it is the ideal of all art
