Introduction to Romanticism

1. Introduction to Romanticism

2. Context • Late 1700s—Mid 1800s • Response to Neoclassicism, Age of Enlightenment, and Industrial Revolution • Movement away from logic, reason, rationality, proportion • Influenced by French Revolution

3. Key Elements • Values emotion, passion, spontaneity • Interest in the supernatural • Emphasis on the individual • Art, the creation of the individual, is highly valued • Only through the imagination can we understand the infinite • Common use of nature, pastoral imagery in poetry • Often warns of the dangers of technology “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” – William Wordsworth

4. Key Players William Blake • Professional artist throughout his long life in London • Pursued poetry, painting, drawing, and engraving • Believer in Christianity, but criticized English Church for using religion as a form of social control • Like fellow Romantics, believed in the power of the imagination to understand the infinite • Famously for Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794)

5. Key Players William Wordsworth • Published Lyrical Ballads (1798) with Samuel Tyler Coleridge, which is considered the beginning of the English romantic movement • Short, lyrical poems that focused on healing power of nature and illustrated basic truths of human nature • Central figure of Romantic period: • Cultivated a new attitude toward nature and man’s relationship with the natural world • Explored his own self/sensibility/psychology, resulting in a deep understanding of human nature • Placed poetry at the heart of human experience • Quality declined as he grew olderand more orthodox in his views on life

6. Key Players Percy Bysshe Shelley • Remembered for his passionate search for personal love and social justice • Valued social rebellion over stability, social acceptance • Married to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, also known as Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein • Constantly in debt, always on the move, and generally radical in the face of social norms • Mostly posthumous fame for his work, which includes “Ozymandias”

7. Key Players John Keats • Prodigy of the Romantic poets • Despite early death (age 25), very prolific poet • Obsessed with maintain artistic independence, so his style is unlike others • Aimed to express philosophy through classical legend, vivid imagery • Best known for his sonnets and odes, such as “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

8. Key Players Lord Byron Samuel Tyler Coleridge • Published Lyrical Ballads with Wordsworth, though his role is often overshadowed by Wordsworth • One of the Lake Poets (group of writers who lived in the Lake District of England) • Most famous for “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” • Good friends with Percy Shelley, but enmity with the Lake Poets • Writing resembles 18th Century poetry more than Lake Poets • Most famous for Don Juan • Major contribution is the Byronic hero: “boldly defiant but bitterly self-tormenting outcast, proudly contemptuous of social norms but suffering for some unnamed sin” (Baldick 31).