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The Romantic Hero: Exploring Nature, Emotion, and Imagination

This chapter delves into the depths of the Romantic hero, their longing for the sublime, their fascination with nature, and their pursuit of emotional and imaginative experiences. It also explores the connection between nationalism and Romanticism, highlighting the unique cultures and histories idealized by writers of this period.

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The Romantic Hero: Exploring Nature, Emotion, and Imagination

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  1. Chapter 28 The Romantic Hero

  2. Romanticism • Nature • Emotion:sentimentality // nostalgia // melancholy • Imagination: exotic // ecstatic // fantastic // gothic

  3. Romanticism • The sublime • Subjectivity • Spontaneity • Mysticism

  4. “While Enlightenment writers studied the social animal, the romantics explored the depths of their own souls.” (Fiero 705)

  5. “I am made unlike anyone I have ever met: I will even venture to say that I am like no one in the whole world. I may be no better, but at least I am different.” (Rousseau, Confessions; quoted in Fiero 706)

  6. Nationalism

  7. Nationalism = • “an ideology (or belief system) grounded in a people’s sense of cultural and political unity” (Fiero 705)

  8. Nationalism ↔ Liberalism • After the first French Revolution (1789) nationalism = political change = freedom

  9. Nationalism ↔ Conservativism • An appreciation/veneration of the past • Demanding the sacrifice of individual’s freedom for the common good

  10. National Identity • Nation = narration = an imagined community = a system of cultural signification (Homi Bhabha)

  11. National Identity • Creation of national institutions • Participation of national rituals (holidays, festivals) • Identifying with a national community • National imagery: heroes

  12. Nationalism & Romanticism • Romantic writers insisted on the uniqueness of cultures by idealizing history and community. • Germany: the Volk (the common people) Volksgeist (the spirit of the people)

  13. Nationalism & Romanticism • The state was itself a natural historic organism. Future rested on understanding a nation’s past.

  14. Extreme nationalism • German racial nationalists • “Like their Nazi successors, Volkish thinkers claimed that the German race was purer than, and therefore superior to, all other races. (453) --Taken from W.C. by Marvin Perry

  15. The Romantic Hero

  16. The Romantic Hero • Gifted with intellect and imagination, the hero is at odds with the “common herd” of mankind. • The hero’s desires are insatiable; his is a will not satisfied with ordinary things. • The Promethean hero: an over-reacher who unsettles traditional moral categories.

  17. Types of the Romantic Hero • The Faustian hero: Goethe’s unique treatment of the Faust myth (the fact that he never finds satisfaction on earth is what ultimately redeems him) ; Victor Frankenstein • The abolitionist: see Frederick Douglass’ defense of stealing from his slave-masters: “The morality of free society can have no application to slave society”. • The Byronic hero: aristocratic, darkly handsome, manly, brooding, brilliant, erotic, melancholy, indomitable. • The Gothic villain-hero • http://www.georgiasouthern.edu/~dougt/hero.htm

  18. Napoleon Bonaparte • An example of the Romantic hero and its contradictions: • a Corsican peasant who crowns himself emperor • a champion of the “revolutionary ideals of liberty, fraternity, and equality” (Fiero 30) who yet went on to wage an imperial war against nations of Europe

  19. Napoleon Bonaparte • a brilliant military tactician who over-reached himself in the Russian campaign (lost 500, 000 men!) • an individual with petty habits and towering egotism • http://www.georgiasouthern.edu/~dougt/hero.htm

  20. Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon Crossing the Great Saint Bernard Pass, 1800

  21. Ingres, Napoleon on his Imperial Throne1806

  22. Jacques-Louis David. Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon I and Coronation of the Empress Josephine on 2 December 1804. 1808.

  23. Jean-Léon Gérôme, Napoleon and His General Staff in Egypt, 1867

  24. Antoine-Jean Gros,Napoleon Bonaparte Visiting the Plague-stricken at Jaffa, 1799

  25. Food for Thought • What makes Napoleon a Romantic hero?

  26. The Promethean Hero • Shelley, Prometheus Unbound • Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

  27. The Gothic Novel • Mary Shelley, Frankenstein Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto • Features Anti-rationalism (horror & the supernatural) A revived interest in the medieval past

  28. Food for Thought • Who is the modern Prometheus in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein?

  29. The Byronic Hero • Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1813-1814) • Don Juan (1819-1824)

  30. The Byronic Hero • A rebel • Isolated from society • Moody by nature or passionate about a particular issue • Arrogant, confident, abnormally sensitive and extremely conscious of himself • Rejects the values and moral codes of society

  31. The Byronic Hero • Characterized by a guilty memory of some unknown sexual sin. • A figure of repulsion as well as fascination • http://www.umd.umich.edu/casl/hum/eng/classes/434/charweb/CHARACTE.htm

  32. Goethe’s Faust

  33. paradox and problems • the conflicted political background and legacy • what does this mean for women? • scrutinizing romantic mythmaking:  the noble savage and the mythology of imperialism. • the tricky morality:  an ethics based on the imagination, emotions? • http://www.georgiasouthern.edu/~dougt/rom.htm

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