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Romantic Revolution

Explore the Neo-Classical Age of Reason and the emergence of Romanticism as a reaction against it, celebrating nature, idealism, and rebellion. Dive into the lives of revolutionary poets like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and Byron, who challenged social norms and embraced ordinary language to express their poetic visions, in defiance of established structures. Witness the impact of the American and French Revolutions on literary movements. Uncover the essence of the Romantic era through its fascination with the exotic, the supernatural, and the embrace of emotion and sensation.

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Romantic Revolution

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  1. RomanticRevolution Poetry in context

  2. The 18th century: • Neo-Classical Age of Reason • Thinkersadmired all thingsclassicalfrom architecture to literature • Logicalthinkinghighlyprized. • Romanticism a reactionagainstneo-Classicism • A greater value given to emotionalside of humanresponses • A place for the imagination

  3. Sir Isaac Newton by Blake

  4. Blake shows the scientistabsorbed in a calculation but: • apparentlyunaware of hisownnaturalnakedness • and of the beauty of the world symbolised by the wonderfully coloured rock uponwhichheissitting

  5. Characteristics of Romanticism: • idealism • celebration • nature-worship • fascination with the mediaeval, the gothic,theforeign, the exotic,(especially oriental) and supernatural • valuing the senses and indulgence in physical passion and sensation for theirownsake • living for the moment

  6. Revolution: • A refusal to follow the oldpathways • Rebellingagainstestablished social and political structures • Periodsees the rise of democracy • 1776 American Revolution, • 1789 French Revolution: 20 yearoldWordsworth,’to be youngwasveryheaven’

  7. Coleridge planned to found a socialistutopia in America but hisdreamsdashed by the Terror in France and followingdictatorship of Napoleon • 1798 NapoleoninvadedSwitzerland, long a symbol of freedom • 1804 Beethoven tears up the dedication to hisEroicasymphony on hearingthatNapoleonhad made himself an emperor.

  8. Wordsworth and Coleridge revolutionary in otherliteraryways: • rejected the self-consciouspoetic diction of former times • ‘Ordinarylanguage of ordinary men’ as a fit medium for poetry • focus uponordinary people as subjects

  9. Second generation: Keats, Shelley and Byron alsorevolutionaries • All grew up under a repressive, reactionary Tory government • Shelley expelledfrom Oxford afterwritingThe Necessity of Atheism (1811) Exiledhimself to Italy • Peterloo Massacre 1819 troopsattacked a gathering of 60,000 in Manchester, Shelley wroteThe Mask of Anarchy:nopublisherdared to printituntilafter the 1832 ReformAct • Afterunsuccessful speeches in Parliamentadvocating social reform, Byron led by hisrevolutionaryprinciples to Greece and hiseventualdeathpreparing to fight to free the birthplace of democracyfrom the Turks • Keats’sexperimentwithmetre seen as a challenge to the social order!

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