British Romantic Period

1. The THS English Department presents . . . British Romantic Period 1798-1832

2. Revolution, Ballads, and Emotions • The Romantic Period begins with the French Revolution and the publication of Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798 and ends with the death of Sir Walter Scott and the Reform Bill of 1832. • The English people were facing many changes. • The French and American Revolutions were inspiring and frightening much of the world • King George III was going mad • The Industrial Revolution left many without land while giving rise to laissez-faire economics. • The Romantic literary movement stresses youth, innocence, and growing up to trust emotions. It does not reflect mainstream thinking, but it is a movement of reform, protest, and personal freedom.

3. Romantic Philosophy The philosophy behind the movement comes from the French moralist Jean Jaques Rousseau. He said: • Evil is not inherent in human nature or the natural world (nature and people are essentially good.) • Evil is the result of society’s corruption

4. Romantic Ideals B. Romantics held up nature, youth, ordinary men, the individual, simplicity, and emotions. • These ideas brought renewed interest in medieval ballads and the Elizabethan works of Shakespeare, Spencer, and Milton, as they were emotionally based works. • Children, uncorrupted by society, became the focus of British literature for the first time. • Unruly forces of nature like storms, seas, and mountains were also praised, as they were incapable of being dominated by society. •  British Romantic movement is closely related to the American Transcendentalist movement.

5. Romantic Literature A. Poetry 1. Romantic Literature is best known for its poetry as Romantic ideals are best shown by the poets of this time period; William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, William Blake, Robert Burns, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, andJohn Keats. 2. Popular themes included the glorification of the individual, importance of spontaneity and freedom, a love of nature, importance of the commonplace and an interest in the imaginative and supernatural. 3. While both narrative and lyrical forms of poetry were popular, all poetry veered away from the strict formats of the neoclassical writers with their heroic couplets and inflexible formats.

6. More literature . . . B. The Novel • Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott were important in advancing the English novel and increased the novel-reading public. • Austen's use of dialogue and small middle-class societies advanced the novel in terms of realism and concentrated storylines. • Scott's softening of the gothic and medieval romance themes were highly popular for their beautiful and wild settings and their enthusiasm for the Romantic themes and ideals.

7. And more on literature . . . C. The Essay • Tried to interpret literature from a humane, appreciative sensitive, understanding, and positive point of view. • NOT the dogmatic, cynical, or narrow-minded style of the neoclassical.

8. Language Development A. Emphasis on the common man introduced slang, dialects, and colloquialisms into proper literature, and gave it a more natural sound. B. Noah Webster gave America its own language by publishing his American Spelling Book and American Dictionary of the English Language. • He purposefully changed standard British spellings of “re" to "er" like in centre, and dropped the “u" in words like colour, and the “k" in at the end of words like traffick to further America's independence.