Romanticism: Cultural movement of the early 19 th century

1. Romanticism: Cultural movement of the early 19th century White horse, Constable

2. Romanticism; basics • Revolt against classicism and the enlightenment • Classicism: too many rules, structure • Enlightenment: Too much emphasis on the rational approach to truth • Primarily concerned with expressing new forms of feeling and thought • Influence of Rousseau and the French Revolution • Brought into question all traditional beliefs and institutions. The youth of the early 19th century felt it had to build something new or perish. This urge was the essence of the romantic temperament.

3. Romantic basics, cont. • Characterized by a belief in emotional exuberance • Unrestrained imagination and spontaneity • Tremendous emotional intensity • Suicides, duels to the death • Bohemian lifestyle-long, unwashed hair, no visible means of support • Driven by a sense of the unlimited universe and by a yearning for the unattained, the unknown, the unknowable. • Nature was portrayed as awesome and uncontrolled-not pristine as classics saw it.

4. Romantics, basics, cont. • Idealized the middle ages • Idealized untouched and exotic lands. • Untouched example-the Lake District in England • Exotic lands example-Morocco • Romanticism can be seen in the literature, art and music of the early 19th century

5. Romantic Literature- English poets • William Wordsworth 1770-1850 • Ode: Intimations of immortality from the recollections of early childhood • Daffodils • George Gordon, Lord Byron 1788-1824 • Don Juan • John Keats • Ode on a Grecian Urn

6. William Wordsworth 1770-1850 • WW sought inspiration from the Lake District of England • Defied classical rules • Abandoned flowery poetic conventions for the language of ordinary speech • Wrote of love of nature in very democratic form which could be appreciated by everyone. • Poetry was the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling recollected in tranquility”

7. Daffodils, Wordsworth I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze …… And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.

8. Ode: Intimations of immortality from recollections of early childhood-WW • “There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The Earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparell’d in celestial light, The glory and freshness of a dream”

9. Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792-1822 • Shelley expressed the desire of many English romantics for art itself to become more “natural” Ode to a skylark Hail to thee, blythe spirit! Bird thou never wert- That from heaven or near it Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of premeditated art.

10. George Gordon, Lord Byron 1788-1824 • In Don Juan, Byron exhibited another side of the romantic temperament: the restless and aimless hero • Through Byron the romantic’s continued the loss of faith in old ideas, the boredom with conventional civilization into a flirtation with life and death. • The concept of the Byronic hero. • “On this day I complete my 36th year” • “Prometheus unbound” • “she walks in beauty”

11. Form: • irregularly rhyming • Composition Date: • July 1816 • 1. • The Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus, in which Prometheus, chained to the Caucasian mountains and fed on by a vulture, suffers for his gift of fire to man and his defiance of Zeus, was one of Byron's favourite books. • Titan. The Titans belonged to the faction of Saturn, whom his son Zeus replaced as chief of the gods. Defeated but unsubmissive, the Titans (and Prometheus in particular) were popular in the nineteenth century as symbols of revolution or resistance to tyranny

12. Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,36       To render with thy precepts less37       The sum of human wretchedness,38   And strengthen Man with his own mind;39   But baffled as thou wert from high,40   Still in thy patient energy,41   In the endurance, and repulse42       Of thine impenetrable Spirit,43   Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,44       A mighty lesson we inherit:45   Thou art a symbol and a sign46       To Mortals of their fate and force;47   Like thee, Man is in part divine,48       A troubled stream from a pure source;49   And Man in portions can foresee50   His own funereal destiny;51   His wretchedness, and his resistance,52   And his sad unallied existence:53   To which his Spirit may oppose54   Itself--and equal to all woes,55       And a firm will, and a deep sense,56   Which even in torture can descry57       Its own concenter'd recompense,58   Triumphant where it dares defy,59   And making Death a Victory.

13. 1     She walks in beauty, like the night 2         Of cloudless climes and starry skies;3     And all that's best of dark and bright4         Meet in her aspect and her eyes:5     Thus mellow'd to that tender light6         Which heaven to gaudy day denies.7     One shade the more, one ray the less,8         Had half impair'd the nameless grace9     Which waves in every raven tress,10       Or softly lightens o'er her face;11   Where thoughts serenely sweet express12       How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.13   And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,14       So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,15   The smiles that win, the tints that glow,16       But tell of days in goodness spent,17   A mind at peace with all below,18       A heart whose love is innocent! • Composition Date: • June 1814 • 1. • "She" is Byron's cousin, Mrs. Wilmot, whom he met at a party in a mourning dress of spangled black

14. John Keats 1795-1821 • Represented romantic belief that truth could best be discovered through intuition and that aesthetic truth was the highest kind of truth • Keats believed in spirit as the source of poetic inspiration and identified it with the spontaneous creative power of language • Ode on a Grecian Urn Beauty is truth, and truth beauty,-that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know

15. William Blake 1757-1827 • The chimney sweeper A critique of industrial England When my mother died I was very young And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry “weep, weep, weep” So your Chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep

16. Victor Hugo- French 1802-1885 • The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Exemplified romantic fascination with fantastic characters, strange settings and human emotions

17. Romantic literature potpourri • The love of the grotesque • Victor Hugo-Hunchback of Notre Dame • Mary Shelley- Frankenstein

18. Romantic Art- French • Delacroix 1798-1863 • Massacre at Chios • Liberty leading the people • Death of Sardanapalus • Delacroix was fascinated with remote and exotic subjects; lion hunts, Sultans harem • Gericault • Raft of the Medusa

19. Delacroix “Liberty leading the People”

20. Delacroix, Death at Sardanapalas 1828 Death of Assyrian King

21. Delacroix Algerian apartment

22. The Raft of the Medusa 1819 Gericault • In 1816, a French naval vessal (La Meduse) sank en route to West Africa. The captain and senior officers took the life boats and left a makeshift raft for the 150 passengers and crew. During 13 days adrift in the Atlantic, all but 15 people died. • Man vs. Nature

23. Gerricault “Raft of the Medusa”

24. Delacroix “Massacre at Chios”

25. Francisco Goya Third of May 1808

26. Romantic Art-English • Joseph M.W. Turner 1775-1851 • Depicted natures power and terror • John Constable 1776-1837 • Painted Wordsworthian landscapes

27. Turner “Snowstorm”

28. John Constable “White Horse”

29. John Constable, “Rainstorm”

30. Joseph M.W. Turner “Rain, Steam, Speed”

31. Romantic Music • Medium in which romanticism was most fully realized • Classical music had held to structures • Mozart • Romantics used range of forms-broke rules • Berlioz-The creator of Romantic music • Frederick Chopin- 1810-1849 “Revolutionary etude” • Franz Liszt- 1811-1880 Great Pianist • Beethoven- Bridge between classical and romantic music.

32. Romantic music • Music built around themes • Played up nature • Interest in death • Interest in the supernatural

33. Revolution in France 1848 • “the July monarchy in France was a platform of boards built over a volcano. Under it burned the repressed fires of republicanism put down in 1830, which since 1830 had become steadily more socialistic” • Radicals wanted universal suffrage and a republic, but liberals asked only for broader voting rights within the existing constitutional Monarchy • Louis Phillipe and his Prime Minister refused any change. Stupid move. What should they have done?

35. February revolution in France 1848 • Banquet in Paris planned for Feb. 22 • On February 21 the gov’t forbade such meetings-that night barricades went up throughout the city • Gov’t called the national guard-refused to move-King now promised electoral reform-too late. • Demonstration at Guizot’s house-20 killed • February 24 Louis Phillipe abdicates to…England • That leaves us with the liberal reformers and the radical republicans-now it gets interesting.

36. Creation of provisional government • Const. Reformers hoped to carry on with the son of Louis Phillipe • Republicans stormed the Chamber of Deputies and proclaimed a republic-no whiff of grapeshot this time. • Provisional government: • 7 political republicans-Lamartine • 3 social republicans- Louis Blanc • Blanc was interested in creating social workshops • Instead he got national workshops • By June there were 200,000 idle men in a city of 1 million

37. Election of Constituent Assembly • Elected in April 1848 by Universal Male suffrage across all of France • Immediately replaced provisional gov’t with temporary executive board of its own • This new exec board contained NO socialists

39. “June Days” of 1848 • One side: nationally elected constituent assembly • Other side: National workshops • NW unsuccessfully attacked the CA • CA declared martial law giving all power to General Cavaignac (the butcher) • The bloody June days followed June 24-26 • Class war raged in Paris-CA won

40. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte • After the June Days the CA sought to create a republican constitution and elect a new President • Louis Napoleon Bonaparte won in a landslide. • Defeated Lamartine, Blanc, Cavignac

41. Revolution in Austria 1848 • Began in Hungary • Louis Kossuth-Demanded national autonomy from Austrian Empire, full civil liberties and universal male suffrage • Austrian gov’t hesitated • Viennese students and workers took to streets-added own demands • Aust. Emp. Ferdinand I gave in-promised reforms and a liberal constitution • Metternich fled to London

43. Weaknesses in Austrian revolutionary coalition • Peasants, who made up most of the army, were satisfied by the Gov’ts aboliton of serfdom • Hungarian revolutionaries wanted to unify the diverse groups in Hungary-opposed by minority groups-croats, serbs, rumanians-soon were locked in armed combat with the new Hungarian government • Middle class wanted liberal reform • Urban poor rose in arms-wanted socialist workshops, universal voting rights • MC and UP soon were opposing eachother

44. Reassertion of Conservative forces • Ferdinand I abdicates in his place his nephew Francis Joseph • Windishgratz-smashed Czechoslovakia • Austria defeats revolutionaries in Italy • Army (peasants) attacked student workers in Vienna • Hungary brought back after Russia went in with 130,000 troops • The attempts to liberalize and break up the Austrian empire were unsuccessful.

45. Revolution in Prussia 1848 • Prussia’s middle class wanted a liberal constitutional monarchy that would unite Germany into a united and liberal German nation. • Prussian middle class pushed demands after the French rev of 1848 • Demands not granted • Workers in Berlin exploded • Frederick William IV gave in to demands • FWIV promised Prussia liberal const. + merge into German state • Workers wanted more

46. Delacroix “Liberty leading the People”

47. Prussian workers demands • March 26 workers issued a series of radical demands: universal voting rights, minimum wage, 10 hour day • The Prussian middle class could not go along with it • While the tensions in Prussia escalated , an elected body met in Berlin to write a constitution for a Prussian State

48. Frankfurt Assembly • Self appointed from various German States successfully called for a national constituent assembly to begin writing a Const. For a unified German State • Denmark distraction: Schleswig/Holstein • March 1849, Frankfurt assembly finally offered throne to FWIV • By early 1849 reaction had been successful in Prussia • FWIV refused the Frankfurt assemblies “crown from the gutter”

49. Romanticism: Cultural movement of the early 18th century White horse, Constable