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Romanticism

Discover the artistic, literary, and intellectual movement of Romanticism from the 18th century Western Europe to its exploration of strong emotions, heroic narratives, and idealized characters in literature.

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Romanticism

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  1. Romanticism A World of Perfection and Exploration to the Dark

  2. Definition • An artistic, literary and intellectual movement • Originated in 18th century Western Europe during the Industrial Revolution • A revolt against aristocratic, social, and political norms of the Enlightenment period • A reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature in art and literature

  3. Definition • Strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience • New emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror, and the awe experienced in confronting the sublimity of untamed nature • “Romantic" ("romance“) – a prose or poetic heroic narrative originating in medieval literature and romantic literature

  4. Romance • A narrative mode • Employing exotic adventures and idealized emotions • Idealistic depiction of characters and actions • People, actions and events are depicted more as we wish them to be • Heroes are always very brave, whereas the villains are at all times bad – rather than the complex ways they usually are

  5. Romance • Medieval romances: chivalric tales of kings, knights, and aristocratic ladies • Modern romances: adventure novels which embodied the symbolic quests and idealized characters of earlier, chivalric tales in slightly more realistic terms • Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe • Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables • Star Wars and James Bond films

  6. Romantic Comedy • A form of comic drama • The plot focuses on one or more pairs of young lovers • Overcoming difficulties to achieve a happy ending, usually marriage • Characters: not with withering contempt but with kindly indulgence • Takes place in everyday world, or perhaps in some never-never land (the forest of Arden in Shakespeare’s As You Like It) • Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  7. The Romantic Period (1785 – 1830) • Literature: "Romanticism" the late 18th century – the 19th century • Recurring themes: • Criticism of the past • Emphasis on women and children • Respect for natures • The supernatural/occult and human psychology (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

  8. Important Historical Events in the Romantic Period • 1789 – 1815 Revolutionary and Napoleonic period in France • 1789: French Revolution broke out • 1793: King Louis XVI executed • 1793 – 94: The Reign of Terror • 1804: Napoleon crowned emperor • 1815: Napoleon defeated in Waterloo • 1820 Accession of George IV in England

  9. Major Writers in Romantic Period • Poets: • William Wordsworth (Lucy Gray, The Prelude) • John Keats (Ode to a Nightingale, To Autumn) • Percy Bysshe Shelly (Ode to the West Wind, The Cloud) • Lord George Gordon Byron (She walks in beauty, Don Juan) • Novelists: • Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma) • Sir Walter Scott (Rob Roy, The Heart of Midlothian)

  10. “The Spirit of the Age” and the French Revolution: The Yearning for Change • A pervasive intellectual and imaginative climate – the French Revolution had seemed “the dawn of a new era, a new impulse had been given to men’s minds” (Hazlitt, William. The Spirit of the Age.) • A literary renaissance: • Release of energy • Experimental boldness • Abundant creative power • Accompaniment of political and social revolution

  11. “The Spirit of the Age” and the French Revolution: The Yearning for Change • A pervasive feeling: an age of new beginnings when everything was possible • By throwing away the inherited procedures and out-of-date customs in different sectors of life • Including the political and social branch, as well as the intellectual and literary activities.

  12. Theories in Romantic Period (1):Concept of Poetry and the Poet • Wordsworth: “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” • The source of the poem: not located in the outer world, but in the individual poet • The essential materials of the poems: the inner feelings of the author, or external objects only after these have been transformed by the author’s feelings • Poetry as the “expression” / “utterance” / “exhibition” of emotion

  13. Theories in Romantic Period (1):Concept of Poetry and the Poet • Major Romantic form: Lyric poems written in the first person • “I” (often not the lyric speaker) with recognizable traits of the poet in his own person and circumstances • Example: Wordsworth’s Prelude– a poem of epic length, about the growth the poet’s own mind • Prelude as the central literary form of Romanticism: • A long work about the formation of the self • Centering on a crisis • Presented in the radical metaphor of an interior journey in quest of one’s true identity and destined spiritual home

  14. Theories in Romantic Period (2):Poetic Spontaneity and Freedom • Emphasis on free activity of imagination • Insistence on the essential role of instinct, intuition and the feeling of “the heart” to supplement the judgments of the purely logical faculty, “the head”

  15. Theories in Romantic Period (3):Romantic “Nature Poetry” • Prominence in natural landscape – to raise an emotional problem or personal crisis whose development and resolution constitute the poem • Endowing the landscape with human life, passion and expressiveness – a deliberate revolt against the world views of science (a mechanical world of physical particles in motion)

  16. Theories in Romantic Period (3):Romantic “Nature Poetry” • Natural objects correspond to an inner or a spiritual world • Tendency to symbolist poetry – a rose, a mountain, or even a cloud can be presented with meanings beyond itself (Shelly: “I always seek in what I see the likeness of something beyond the present and the tangible object.”)

  17. Theories in Romantic Period (4): The Supernatural • Writer’s frank violation of natural laws and the ordinary course of events in poems • Opening up poetry to areas of mystery and magic: materials from ancient folklore, superstition and demonology • To impress the readers with the sense of magical powers and unknown modes of being • Set in the distant past or in faraway places, or both (Example: milieu of Kubla Khan exploits the exoticism both of the Middle Age and of the Orient)

  18. Theories in Romantic Period (4): The Supernatural • The rise of Gothic Novel: • Frequent setting in a gloomy castle of the Middle Ages • Possibilities of mystery and terror in dark, rocky landscapes • Common images: decaying mansions, secret passages and sneaky ghosts • Opening up the dark, irrational side of human nature – the savage egoism, the perverse impulses, and the nightmarish terrors lying beneath the controlled and ordered surface of the conscious mind

  19. Theories in Romantic Period (4): The Supernatural • The rise of Gothic Novel: • Powerful and influential writings by female writers (e.g. The Champion of Virtue: A Gothic Story by Clara Reeve and The Italian by Ann Radcliffe): • A fictional release for the hidden desires and compensatory fantasies of the rigidly restricted and disadvantaged class

  20. Theories in Romantic Period (4): “Strangeness to Beauty” • Unusual modes of experience • Examples: • Visionary states of consciousness (common among children but not in adult judgment) • Mesmerism (Hypnotism) • Dreams and nightmares

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