4 .

1 Britain and America

George III
George II’s grandson, George III, came to the throne in 1760. His reign lasted 60 years and is one of the longest in
English history. To reduce the public debt due to the Seven Years’ War, he introduced new duties on corn, paper, and
tea, which caused opposition in American colonies. The English Parliament responded by repealing some of them, but
the tax on imported tea remained. By the 1770s many colonists thought that they only had to pay taxes approved by
their local government assemblies.

The Declaration of Independence

The rebels argued that the taxes were unfair, since the colonies had no political power: they said: "No taxation
without representation". The Americans split into Patriots, who wanted independence, and Loyalists, who wanted to
remain part of Britain, and the War of Independence began in 1775. The Americans set up an army under the
command of George Washington to face the army. British. On July 4, 1776, in Philadelphia, Congress, made up of
representatives from 13 colonies, signed the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson. the colonies
were a new nation, he argued that all men had a natural right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".
governments could claim the right to govern only if they had the approval of those who govern, "the consent of the
governed". In 1781, at the Battle of Yorktown, the British army was defeated, and Britain recognized the
independence of its former colonies with the Treaty of Versailles of 1783. America became the symbol of a "new
beginning", where people from all European countries they could merge into a new race. the United States of America
adopted a federal constitution in 1787 and George Washington became the first president in 1789. Settlers who
remained loyal to Britain moved to Canada.

William Pitt the Younger

After the loss of America, George III had difficulty with his ministers until, in 1783, he asked William Pitt the Younger to
become Prime Minister. He remained in office for 18 years, sought to simplify the financial system and reduce public
debt, promoted trade and supported Adam Smith's laissez-faire theory, which encouraged free trade and economic
interest and emphasized the division of labour.

The new United Kingdom

In Ireland, in 1791, a group of Catholics and Protestants founded the Society of United Irishmen which had as its
objective the founding of its own republic. In 1798 they organized a revolt which was put down by British troops. To
prevent further rebellion, Pitt allowed Irish representatives to sit in Westminster. In 1801 the Act of Union united
Ireland and Great Britain to form the new United Kingdom. The Irish flag was added to create the Union Jack.
 4 .2 The Industrial Revolution

Economic change
In the late 18th century, economic changes transformed the country from an agricultural nation to an industrialized
nation. the economic transformation was caused by the Black Plague. The population increased in the 1500s and
1600s and agriculture intensified. open fields were divided in smaller portions of land to make farms more efficient.
the soil was drained and made more fertile, so that grain production was increased. the animals were selectively bred,
producing more meat. The economic activity was diversified, through the production of woollen cloths. People started
buying more household goods. The clothing of the common people changed with the introduction of white linen
underwear, stockings, ribbons, and hats. Clothing marked the beginning of the Industrial Revolution because the mass
consumption of machine-made goods began. Cotton was the leading sector of industrialization. More and more
people began to consume things for pleasure, such as tobacco, tea, coffee, sugar, or alcohol.

Technological innovation
During the 18 th century a succession of technological innovations transformed and improved the productivity of
workers. Thomas Newcomen invented a steam engine in 1712, which made pumping water out of coal mines possible;
James Hargreaves’s Spinning Jenny increased spinning efficiency; in 1765 James Watt invented a steam engine that
was more powerful and wasted less fuel than its predecessors. Edmund Cartwright’s loom linked cloth manufacture to
water and steam power. As a result, cheaper products met the growing demand for goods. Heavy investment in
technological development increased and innovation became linked to energy generated from coal. This changed the
geography of the country, concentrating the new industrial activity near the coalfields of the Midlands and the North.
People shifted from the rural South to the North and the Midlands, and small towns, ‘mushroom towns’, were
constructed to house the workers near the factories.

The workers’ life

Industrial cities lacked elementary public services – water-supply, sanitation, street- cleaning, open spaces –; the air
and the water were polluted by smoke and filth; the houses, built in endless rows, were overcrowded. Women and
children were highly prized by employers because they could be paid less and were easier to control. Children could
move more easily in mines, or crawl between the machines in the cotton industry to carry out repairs. Industrial
labour imposed new work patterns, which depended on the mechanised regularity of the machine and a rational
division of labour. Long working hours, about 65-70 a week, discipline, routine, and monotony marked the work of
industrial labourers. Food prices rose, diet and health deteriorated with an increase in the mortality rate

Industrial Revolution
By the end of the 19th century, Britain controlled the largest empire in the history of the world. the industrial
revolution began in Great Britain and gave it a huge commercial and technological advantage. Changes in agricultural
production and farming methods had led to an increase in food production and an increase in population. More and
more people moved from the countryside to the cities as machines replaced manual labour in agriculture and
factories created new jobs. central banks, stock markets and corporations have encouraged people to take risks with
investments, trade, and new technologies. The new scientific thinking born of the Enlightenment was increasingly
applied to the mechanical and technical fields. The openness to new ideas in English culture has made England
receptive to innovation. the availability of rivers and navigable canals has provided cheap and rapid transport of both
raw materials and finished products. Much of the new technology was made of iron and fuelled by coal as coal and
iron deposits were readily available. This included steam engines in textile factories and locomotives. the government
has encouraged new technological advances through patent laws that have allowed inventors to financially benefit
from the "intellectual property" of their inventions. It has supported global trade by increasing the navy's role in
protecting trade and by providing financial incentives to explore the world in search of new resources. urbanization
has spurred the boom of new industries by concentrating workers and factories together. The new industrial cities
became sources of wealth for the nation, but the working-class neighbourhoods were squalid, crowded, dirty and
polluted. In the beginning there was also a lack of regulation which led to abuses such as child labour and long
working hours in difficult conditions.
 4 .3 The French Revolution, riots, and reforms

The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars 

In 1780s, King George III suffered the first attack of severe mental confusion. The famous ‘royal madness’ was a
hereditary condition. In 1810 George III became incapable of reigning and in 1811 his son George, the future George
IV, was made Prince Regent. The following period is known as ‘Regency’. Meanwhile in France, in 1789, the principles
of social equality of the Enlightenment had led to a revolution. In 1792 the French had abolished the monarchy and
declared their country a republic. The spirit of intellectual rebellion pervaded the works of the poets. in 1793, the
royal family and thousands of people considered as enemies of the Revolution were executed during a period called
the ‘Reign of Terror’. France declared war on Britain and Holland in 1793. The French had a weak navy but proved
unbeatable on land. Much of their success was due to the skills of Napoleon Bonaparte. By 1797 he had defeated
much of Europe and was ruling France as a military dictator. However, Napoleon’s victories in Europe were balanced
by Britain’s supremacy at sea. The hero of the British navy was Admiral Horatio Nelson, who was killed at his victory
over the French and Spanish off Cape Trafalgar in 1805. Later the Duke of Wellington led British soldiers to victories in
Portugal. Napoleon surrendered in 1814. His ‘100 Days’ in 1815 ended in defeat at the Battle of Waterloo.

Riots and reforms

The costs of the war were huge. Soldiers and sailors returned home to discover that high taxation and industrial
changes were causing misery. Increases in the price of bread led to riots in the cities, while in the factories the
‘Luddites’ smashed the new machines which had taken their work away. This unrest frightened the authorities that
tried to repress discontent under many laws allowing arrest without trial, forbidding the combination of working men
into trade unions, and silencing the freedom of expression. The most serious incident was at St Peter’s Fields in
Manchester in 1819, where a peaceful crowd, who had come to hear the radical Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt, was fired on by
the local militia. after the victory over Napoleon’s tyranny at Waterloo, this ‘massacre’ was called ‘Peterloo’.

George IV
The ‘mad’ George III died in 1820 and was succeeded by his son George IV. He won the title of ‘First Gentleman of
Europe’ for his extravagant behaviour. His taste for the exotic was reflected in the public buildings of the period, like
the Royal Pavilion in Brighton and Regent Street in London. In political affairs he behaved irresponsibly, and he did
very little to encourage any social reforms. In 1824 trade unions, the associations of workers, were legalised. In 1829
the Home Secretary, Sir Robert Peel, created the Metropolitan Police, known as ‘bobbies’.

William IV
When George IV died in 1830, his brother became king as William IV. A Whig, the Earl of Grey, was the new Prime
Minister. The Whigs wanted to bring in electoral reform and, despite strong opposition, the Great Reform Act was
passed in 1832.It extended the vote to almost all male members of the middle classes. Parliament abolished slavery in
the West Indies in 1833 and the Factory Act limited factory employment of children under 9. William IV died in 1837
and his 18-year-old niece, Victoria, succeeded him to the British throne.
 4.4 A new sensibility

Towards subjective poetry

In the second half of the 18 th century a new generation of poets established new trends, but they did not lay down a
precise programme of rules. While the early 18 th -century poets had dealt with impersonal material with loud and
noble eloquence, the later poets tended to use subjective, autobiographical material moving towards the expression
of a lyrical and personal experience of life. They were less intellectual than Augustan poets and more intimately
emotional. The poetry was essentially reflective. It dealt with experiences presented for generalised reflection. Many
factors produced this change. The noisy activity of the industrial town was compared negatively with the simple
serenity of the countryside. There was a growing interest in humble and everyday life in opposition to the elevated
subjects of Augustan poetry. Related to this was an interesting melancholy, often associated with meditation on the
suffering of the poor and on death. A new taste for the desolate, the love of ruins, graveyards, ancient castles, and
abbeys were part of a revival of interest in the past felt as a contrasting period to the present reality.

A new concept of nature

There was a revolution in the concept of nature. The classical view of nature as an abstract concept, a set of divine
laws and principles established by God, which man could order and control thanks to the faculty of reason, was slowly
replaced by the view of nature as a real and living being. The higher value placed on sensibility led to the need to
elaborate a new aesthetic theory built on individual consciousness rather than on the imitation of the precepts of
nature or the classics. The most remarkable work was Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our
Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), in which he gave supremacy to the sublime over the beautiful among the
qualities then thought to please the imagination.

The sublime
The distinction between the beautiful and the sublime became a main theme of 18 th -century aesthetics. Burke
thought that terror and pain are the strongest emotions and that there is an inherent pleasure in such feelings.
Whatever provoked these emotions could be defined as sublime.
 4 .6 The Gothic novel

New interests in fiction

In the second half of the 18 th century, an increasing interest in individual consciousness revealed itself in fiction. It
was marked by a taste for the strange and the mysterious, an impulse for freedom and escape from the ugly world,
and by the fear of the triumph of evil and chaos over good and order. The interest in ‘Gothic novel’, was huge and
common to all social classes, thanks to circulating libraries. Today’s ghost and horror novels and films, which are so
popular, are a direct descendent of the 18 th century Gothic novel. The adjective ‘Gothic’ was first applied to
architecture long before it connoted literature. The writer Horace Walpole was the first to establish a link between the
two; his obsession with his beloved miniature castle at Strawberry Hill was the inspiration for The Castle of Otranto,
and its subtitle, ‘A Gothic Story’, marks the first time that the term was used in a literary context.

Features of the Gothic novel

Gothic novels wanted to arouse fear in the reader with the threat of realising all the potentialities of the mind beyond
reason. The nature of this fear seemed to reflect the specific historical moment, characterised by increasing
disillusionment with Enlightenment rationality and by the bloody Revolutions in America and France. The setting of
Gothic novels was influenced by the concept of the sublime; it includes ancient settings, like isolated castles,
mysterious abbeys, and convents with hidden passages. The most important events take place during the night
because darkness is a powerful element used to create an atmosphere of gloom, oppression, and mystery. The Gothic
hero is usually isolated either voluntarily or involuntarily, and the heroine is both afflicted with unreal terrors and
persecuted by a villain, who is the embodiment of evil. The wanderer or outcast of several Gothic tales is the symbol
of isolation as he wanders the earth in perpetual exile, as a form of divine punishment. The plots are often
complicated by embedded narratives and supernatural beings, like monsters, vampires, ghosts, and witches which
increase the suspense and mystery. The first novel of this kind, The Castle of Otranto, was followed by The Mysteries
of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis, and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.
 4.7 Romantic poetry

The romantic imagination

At the end of the 18 th century and the beginning of the 19 th century English Romanticism saw the prevalence of
poetry, which best suited the need to give expression to emotional experience and individual feelings. Imagination
gained a primary role in the process of poetic composition. Thanks to the eye of the imagination, Romantic poets
could discover reality and truth beyond the powers of reason. A divine faculty, imagination allowed the poet to
recreate and modify the external world of experience. The poet was seen as a visionary prophet or as a teacher whose
task was to mediate between man and nature, to point out the evils of society, to give voice to the ideals of freedom,
beauty, and truth.

The figure of the child

There was interest about the experience and insights of childhood. To the Augustan Age, a child was important only in
as he would become an adult and civilised being. Childhood was considered a temporary state, a necessary stage in
the process leading to adulthood. To a Romantic, a child was purer than an adult because he was unspoilt by
civilisation. His uncorrupted sensitiveness meant he was even closer to God and the sources of creation; childhood
was a state to be admired and cultivated.

The importance of the individual

There was new emphasis on the significance of the individual. The Augustans had seen man as a social animal, in his
relationship with his fellows. The Romantics saw him in a solitary state, and stressed the special qualities of each
individual’s mind. They exalted the atypical, the outcast, the rebel. The current of thought represented by Rousseau
stated that the conventions of civilisation represented intolerable restrictions on the individual personality and
produced corruption and evil. Therefore ‘natural’ behaviour, that is to say, unrestrained, and impulsive, is good, in
contrast to behaviour which is governed by reason and by the rules and customs of society. The ‘noble savage’
concept is specifically a Romantic one. The savage may appear primitive, but actually he has an instinctive knowledge
of himself and of the world often superior to the knowledge which has been acquired by civilised man.

The cult of the exotic

Rousseau’s theories influenced the ‘cult of the exotic’, that is the veneration of what is far away in space and in time.
the Romantic poets welcome the picturesque in scenery, the remote and the unfamiliar in custom and social outlook.

The view of nature

The Romantic poets regarded nature as a living force and, in a pantheistic vein, as the expression of God in the
universe. Nature became a main source of inspiration, a stimulus to thought, a source of comfort and joy, and a means
to convey moral truths.

Poetic technique
As regards poetic technique, breaking free from models and rules, the Romantic poets searched for a new, individual
style through the choice of a language and subject suitable to poetry. The problem of poetic diction was a central issue
in Romantic aesthetics. More vivid and familiar words replaced the artificial circumlocutions of 18 th century diction;
symbols and images lost their decorative function to assume a vital role as the vehicles of the inner visionary
perceptions.
Two generations of poets
The great English Romantic poets are usually grouped into two generations. The poets of the first generation, William
Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were characterised by the attempt to theorise about poetry. While
planning the Lyrical Ballads, they agreed that Wordsworth would write on the beauty of nature and ordinary things
with the aim of making them interesting for the reader; Coleridge, instead, should deal with visionary topics, the
supernatural and mystery. The poets of the second generation, George Gordon Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John
Keats, experienced political disillusionment which is reflected in the clash between the ideal and the real.
Individualism and escapism were stronger and found expression in different attitudes of the three poets: the anti-
conformist, rebellious and cynical attitude of the ‘Byronic hero’; the revolutionary spirit and stubborn hope of
Shelley’s Prometheus, and finally, Keats’s escape into the world of classical beauty.

Romanticism
The term ‘Romanticism’ comes from the French word romance. The adjective ‘Romantic’ first appeared in English in
the second half of the 17 th century, meaning fabulous, extravagant, or unreal. Throughout the 18 th century,
‘Romantic’ was used to describe the picturesque in the landscape. the term came to be applied to the feeling the
landscape created in the observer and to the evocation of subjective emotions. In the literary field, Sehnsucht was
opposed to Stille; poetry was always new and spontaneous, no longer the imitation of the classics. Romanticism in
Europe developed in different ways and times according to the cultural, social, and political situations of each country.
In Germany, anticipated by the Sturm und Drang movement of the late 18 th century, the Romantic ideas of the
brothers Friedrich and August Wilhelm von Schlegel appeared on the periodical Athenäum in 1798. In the same year,
in England, the Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were published. The second
edition of 1800 contained a ‘Preface’ by Wordsworth which is usually regarded as the Manifesto of English Romantic
poetry. De l’Allemagne by Madame De Staël spread the Romantic principles in France, and the Lettera semiseria di
Grisostomo al suo figliolo by Giovanni Berchet marked the official beginning of the Romantic movement in Italy.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEENMAN AND NATURE is an important characteristic of the Romantic Age. The
subordination of nature to the self is emphasised in the new concept of the ‘sublime’, expounded by Edmund Burke,
who held that the sublime is not a feature of nature, but a particular way of perceiving and interpreting it. The ideas of
German Idealism, where the concept of nature implied a gradual passage from the inorganic to the organic state,
influenced the literary production of Romanticism in which nature can also be dramatic, mysterious and reflect the
poet’s mood. Primitive, wild landscape or night scenes convey the inner feelings of the poet, connecting his soul with
the supernatural and the divine, as in the poems by Coleridge, Byron and Shelley. Some Romantic writers developed
the concept of nature from a consoling view, as in Wordsworth. Others portrayed nature as an entity which is
indifferent to man’s destiny. we can find the Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi, the French poet Alphonse de Lamartine
and the English novelist Thomas Hardy. In Romanticism nature also meant an escape from familiar experiences and
the limitations of reality. The English poets delighted in the description of the marvellous and abnormal. They were
attracted exotic places as a means of expanding the consciousness. Examples of this are found in the adventurous
works produced by Byron, Sir Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper. The relationship between man and nature
continued to evolve in the direction of a deeper symbolism towards the end of the 19 th century
 4.8 Romantic fiction

the development of the novel century

the novel was the most popular form of fiction. It continued to develop reflecting the new interest in the individual,
especially as regards the conflict between his personal desires and ambitions and the requirements of society. This led
to:

• a deeper psychological insight.

• a more detailed description of the relationships between the social classes.

• the character’s self-realisation and inner maturity.

• the development of dialogue as a means of bringing the characters to life.

The novel of manners

The changes in the social hierarchy of English society in the 19 th century provided the background for the rise of the
novel of manners. Wealth and influence were passing from the aristocracy to the newly successful middle classes, so
the standard markers for determining an individual’s position in society proved increasingly unreliable. The novel of
manners dealt with how these classes behaved in everyday situations and described their codes of conduct. The
master of the novel of manners was Jane Austen, his novels were based on vital relationship between manners, social
behaviour, and character. They are usually set in the upper and middle levels of society, generally in the country with
few insights into town life. They deal with the codes and conventions of daily behaviour through the description of
visits, balls, and teas as occasions for meeting. They explore personal relationships, class distinctions and deal with the
influence of money and property on the way people treat each other. Their main themes are marriage and the
complications of love and friendship. A third-person narrator is employed, and dialogue plays a central role, especially
as a vehicle for irony. Passions and emotions are not expressed directly but more subtly and obliquely.

The historical novel

The historical novel appeared at the beginning of the 19 th century at a time when, men from different nations were
brought into contact by the Napoleonic Wars. It is a literary genre that reflects the Romantic interest in the past,
particularly the historical period of the Middle Ages. The founder of this genre, which had a great impact on Romantic
Europe, was Sir Walter Scott, his novels, starting with Waverley, created a passion for the historical novel among
readers and writers. Scott’s main achievement was that history was the product of human decisions and not a list of
political and religious events. He blended highly figurative language with dialect to portray real and living characters,
who belong to the aristocracy and the humble classes. He introduced a new concept of history, based on the lives of
ordinary people, rather than on those of kings and noblemen. Waverley and Ivanhoe, his most important works,
describe historical crisis, especially in Scottish history, caused personal problems in individuals or in groups. Sir Walter
Scott greatly influenced the Italian writer Alessandro Manzoni, whose long narrative The Betrothed was published in
1827. Scott and Manzoni mingled historical truths and fiction; they set their novels in historical contexts that point out
the political and cultural conflicts between Scotland and England, and Lombardy and Spain. However, they used
different linguistic means: Scott used Scottish dialect to celebrate the glorious past of his country and its
independence from England; while Manzoni removed any regional inflections from the language employed in the
definitive edition of The Betrothed because he aimed at creating a national consciousness.

American prose
American independence marked an important step in the development of a spirit of national unity and increased the
need for an American culture and literature. The diversity of the languages of the emigrants led to the publication of
Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828, which determined the primacy of English. It was in
prose that truly American characteristics emerged. The short story became a distinctive form, providing ideal
entertainment for the reader. The novel featured fantastic stories, legends and myths related to the life of the
pioneers and descriptions of nature. The leading short story writer was Edgar Allan Poe, while James Fenimore Cooper
was the novelist who created the first ‘epic’ of the frontier.
 4 .11 William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth  
William Wordsworth was born in Cumberland in the English Lake District, in 1770. In 1791 he graduated from St John’s
College, Cambridge. In 1790 he had been on a walking tour of France and the Alps. His contact with revolutionary
France had filled him with enthusiasm for democratic ideals, he hoped for a new social order. In 1791 he returned to
France and fell in love with Annette Vallon, who bore him a daughter, Caroline. The brutal, destructive developments
of the Revolution and the declaration of war between England and France in 1793 brought him to the edge of a
nervous breakdown. His sister Dorothy supported his poetry, she copied down his poems and recorded their life in her
Journals. In the same year he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Their friendship proved crucial to the development of
English Romantic poetry: they produced a collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads which appeared anonymously in
1798. The second edition in 1800 also contained Wordsworth’s famous ‘Preface’, which was to become the Manifesto
of English Romanticism. Wordsworth is celebrated for his ‘Lucy poems’, a series of five poems written between 1798
and 1801. In 1799 William and Dorothy settled in the Lake District and in 1802 William married Mary Hutchinson, and
they had five children. Wordsworth wrote some of his best poems, published in two volumes in 1807. In 1805 he
finished his masterpiece, The Prelude, a long autobiographical poem in 14 books, subtitled ‘Growth of a Poet’s Mind’,
published only after his death. in 1843 he was made Poet Laureate. He died in 1850.

The Manifesto of English Romanticism

For Wordsworth poetry was a solitary act, originating in the ordinary. He belonged to the first generation of Romantic
poets, which was characterised by the attempt to theorise about poetry. While planning the Lyrical Ballads with
Coleridge, they decided that he would deal with man, nature and everyday things trying to make them interesting for
the reader, while Coleridge should write about the supernatural and mystery making them seem real. Wordsworth’s
strongest objection to 18 th century poetry was its artificial, elevated language, called ‘poetic diction’. In his ‘Preface’
he explained that the subject matter should deal with everyday situations or incidents and with ordinary people. The
language should be simple, and the objects called by their ordinary names. The reason for Wordsworth’s choice lies in
the fact that in humble rural life man is nearer to his own purer passions. the poet is a man among men, writing about
what interests mankind.

The relationship between man and nature

Wordsworth shared Rousseau’s faith in the goodness of nature as well as in the excellence of the child. He thought
that man could achieve that good through the cultivation of his senses and feelings. He was interested in the
relationship between the natural world and the human consciousness. his poetry offers a detailed account of the
complex interaction between man and nature, of the influences, insights, emotions, and sensations which arise from
this contact. When a natural object is described, the main focus of interest is the poet’s response to that object.
Wordsworth believed that man and nature are inseparable; man exists as an active participant in natural world. In his
pantheistic view Wordsworth saw nature as something that includes inanimate and human nature: each is a part of
the same whole. Nature is a source of pleasure and joy; it comforts man in sorrow and teaches him how to love and to
act in a moral way. Wordsworth also saw it as the seat of the mighty spirit of the universe.
The importance of the senses and memory
For Wordsworth nature was also a world of sense perceptions and he used the sensibility of the eye and ear. He was
influenced by the philosopher David Hartley in his belief that our moral character develops during childhood as a
result of the pleasure and pain caused by our physical experiences. Sensations lead to simple thoughts, which later
combine into complex and organised ideas. He was most interested in the growth of his relationship with nature, in
the ways it influenced him at different points in his life and the ways in which his awareness of it changed. Memory is
a major force in the process of growth of the poet’s mind and moral character, and it is memory that allows he to give
poetry its life and power.

The poet’s task and style

The poet has a great sensibility and an ability to see into the heart of things. The power of imagination enables him to
communicate his knowledge, so that he becomes a teacher showing others how to understand their feelings and
improve their moral being. His task consists in drawing attention to the ordinary things of life, to the humblest people,
where the deepest emotions and truth can be found. Wordsworth abandoned the 18 th -century heroic couplet; he
used blank verse, he proved skilful at several verse forms such as sonnets, odes, ballads and lyrics with short lines and
simple rhymes
 4.17 Edgar Allan Poe

Life and works

Born in Boston in 1809, Edgar Poe was the son of poor actors. His father, was an alcoholic, left his family in 1810, and
his mother died the following year. Edgar was brought up by the Allan’s, a childless couple, and after 1824 his full
name became Edgar Allan Poe. After attending school, first in England and then in the States, he went to the
University of Virginia in 1826. he ran into debt by gambling and when the Allans refused to pay, he left for Boston,
where he published his first collections of poems. These works brought him no money, so he decided to join the army.
Mr Allan helped him to enter the military academy of West Point, where he remained only seven months. He then
moved to Baltimore where his aunt, Maria Clemm, lived. He fell in love with his cousin Virginia, whose pale and fragile
beauty, and childlike character embodied the morbid ideal Poe celebrated in his poems. They married in 1836, when
Virginia was 13 and he was 27. in 1838 he published his novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym; in 1840 “Tales of
the Grotesque and Arabesque”, in 1845 the poem “The Raven” an, in 1846 “The Philosophy of Composition”, the
essay containing his aesthetic theories. Virginia died in 1847 and Poe’s health declined rapidly owing to his alcoholism.
In 1849 he was found in Baltimore, lying unconscious in the street, and a few days later he died. Poe’s reputation in
America was spoilt by accusations of perversion, alcoholism, and drug addiction. It was Baudelaire who increased
European appreciation of Poe’s work with his remarkable translations of his tales. The French poet Stéphane
Mallarme, who translated Poe’s poems into French, regarded him as a forerunner of the Symbolist movement. Poe’s
main contribution to literature was in the field of the short story, where he began the genre of the detective story.

Poe’s creative spirit

Poe thought that art was the only method to give order to the shapeless world. He saw the human self as divided into
intellect, conscience, and soul. The first was concerned with truth, the second with duty and the third with beauty.
Since poetry was a means to the discovery of beauty, it had nothing to do with truth or morals. Poe speaks of beauty
in an age when poets liked identified the tone best suited to poetry with sadness and melancholy.

Poe’s tales
His tales can be divided into two groups. The First Group are the tales of ratiocination or detection, that exerted great
influence on the development of the detective story. Poe created a private detective, Monsieur Dupin, who is
aristocratic, arrogant, eccentric but extremely rational. Dupin solves crimes by his capacity of logical reasoning and his
power of psychological analysis. The knowledge based on the deductive method, rather than the plot itself, is at the
heart of the detective story. Poe paved the way for the future writers of detective stories, like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
and Agatha Christie. The second group are the tales of imagination, where, despite using conventional Gothic
elements, Poe went beyond the Gothic tradition to write stories where the ‘horror’ come from inside the self.

Setting and characters

Poe’s characters are rarely seen in daylight; they often live confined in a small place, some are walled into cellars,
others are buried prematurely, because of madness, which for Poe was almost an aspect of a higher awareness. All of
his most memorable characters withdraw from the conventional aspects of life to cultivate a life of their own, so cut
off from the world that they lose contact with reality. In this condition they develop an exceptional acuteness of the
senses and lose their sanity, and often their lives, as a result of expanded consciousness.
Themes
the most common themes is ‘perverseness’, that impulse to annihilation which rules the dark side of human
behaviour and that Poe believed to be hidden in every material and spiritual portion of the universe. in Poe’s stories
morality is the tension between the creativity of his narrators and the perverse impulse to dissolution that leads them
to act as they should not act and to confess their crimes at the end. conscience becomes the most powerful agent of
the perverse because it betrays the self by revealing its deepest secrets. Other themes are the fusion of beauty and
death, creation and destruction, and the theme of the double which anticipates the modern idea of ‘split personality’.
Poe was also attracted to death: he was aware that man’s fear of death is mainly linked to the fate of decay of the
body after it stops breathing. In The Tell-Tale Hear the narrator’s punishment is brought about by the incessant
beating of the heart of the man he has killed.

Style
Almost all tales are narrated in the first person, thus becoming long interior monologues which describe a great
variety of moods and sensations: sadness, sense of guilt, claustrophobia, deviation, fear, hatred, and desire.
Movement is given by the relationship between cause and effect.

Key idea
The single effect Edgar Allan Poe wrote remarkable short stories in which the world of the imagination coexists with
the analytical spirit of reason; he was also the first theorist on the genre. In “The Philosophy of Composition” he
explained his approach: the first principle was brevity; secondly, the story should be read in a single sitting so that the
external world could not distract the reader from the unity of the work. The characters should be shown at some
revealing moments of crisis rather than while developing and maturing. The setting was simplified or circumscribed,
and the skill of the writer was devoted to rendering atmosphere and situation convincingly. Poe used the ‘single
effect’, a keynote to arouse the reader’s curiosity and interest.