Romanticism and Wordsworth

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by a legendary Gaelic warrior who lived in the 3rd century in Scotland. Melancholy and suffering. (James Macpherson). 4) Graveyard poetry: melancholy tone and the choice of cemeteries, ruins and stormy landscapes as the setting of their poems. (Thomas Gray and Edward Young). THE GOTHIC NOVEL: In the second half of the 18th century, there's an interest in individual consciousness marked by a taste for the strange and the mysterious and an impulse for freedom. Today's ghost and horror novels and films are inspired by the Gothic novels. The adjective 'Gothic' was first applied to architecture before it was used in literature. Horace Walpole established a link between the 2. He wrote The Castle of Otranto. FEATURES: Intention to arouse fear in the reader with the threat of realizing all the potentialities of the mind beyond reason. There's disillusionment with Enlightenment rationality and by the Revolutions in America and France. Setting: Influenced by the concept of the sublime. Isolated castles, mysterious abbeys. The most important events take place during the night, darkness is a powerful element used to create an atmosphere of gloom. Characters: The Gothic hero is isolated either voluntarily or involuntarily. The heroine is afflicted with unreal terrors and persecuted by a villain. Plots: are complicated by the supernatural beings, like monsters, vampires, ghosts and witches that increase the suspense and mystery. ROMANTIC POETRY: the en of the 18th century the beginning of the 19th, the poetry is most used form for Romantics to express emotional experiences and individual feelings. Imagination had a primary role and allowed the poet to interpret and modify the external world of experience. Romantic poets could see beyond surface and discover a truth beyond the powers of reason. The poet is a visionary, a prophet. CHILDHOOD: Interest about the experience and insights of childhood. Augustan Age: Childhood was considered a temporary state, necessary. Romantics: a child was purer than an adult because he was unspoilt by civilization. INDIVIDUALISM: emphasis on the individual. Augustan Age: man is a social animal. Romantics: a men is in a solitary state, importance of special qualities of each individual's mind. Exaltation of the atypical, the outcast, the rebel. The conventions of civilization represented intolerable restrictions on the individual personality and behavior. Being unrestrained and impulsive is good. (=noble savage) CULT OF THE EXOTIC: Romantic poets liked the picturesque in scenery, the remote and the unfamiliar in custom and social outlook. VIEW OF NATURE: Nature is a living force, in a pantheistic way. It's the expression of God and a main source of inspiration, a stimulus to thought. POETIC TECHNIQUE: Breaking free from models and rules. Search for a new, individual style through the choice of a language. More vivid and familiar words replaced the complicated language of 18th century literature. GENERATION OF POETS: English Romantic poets are grouped into 2 generations. 1°gen: Wordsworth and Coleridge. They are characterized by the attempt to theorize about poetry. Wordsworth wrote on the beauty of nature. Coleridge wrote about the supernatural and mystery. 2°gen: Byron, Shelley and Keats. They experienced political disillusionment which is reflected in their poetry. They are characterized by individualism and escapism and alienation of the artist from society. They were anti-conformist and they had a cynical attitude. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NOVEL: The novel was the most popular form of fiction. 1) deeper psychological insight. 2) detailed description of the relationships between social classes. 3) development of dialogue to bring the characters to life. THE NOVEL OF MANNERS: The changes in the social hierarchy of English society in the 19th century provided the background for the rise of the novel of manners. Wealth and influence passed from the aristocracy to the middle class. The novel of manners dealt with how these classes behaved in everyday situations. The most important poet of this genre was Jane Austen. There is a relationship between manners, social behavior and character. Stories are set in the upper and middle levels of society. They deal with the codes and conventions of daily behavior like balls and teas or occasions for meeting. Their main themes are marriage and the complications of love and friendship. A third-person narrator is employed and dialogue plays a central role and irony. Emotions are subtle. THE HISTORICAL NOVEL: At the beginning of the 19th century. It reflects the Romantic interest for the past, particularly the the Middle Ages. The founder was Sir Walter Scott with Waverley. He got people to realize that history was not a list of political and religious events, but the product of human decisions. He narrated about the past of Scotland as his main subject and mixed it with imaginative adventures. New concept of history based on the lives of ordinary people. Scott influenced the Italian writer Manzoni that wrote "I promessi sposi". Both of the authors set their novels in historical contexts that point out the political and cultural conflicts. Scott used Scottish dialect but Manzoni removed any regional inflections from the language. AMERICAN PROSE: American independence marked an important step in the development of a national unity. Need for an American culture. In prose that American characteristics emerged. The short story is a distinctive form, that circulates in cheap magazines. The novel features fantastic stories, legends and myths. BLAKE: was born in London in 1757. His origins were humble. He was a political freethinkers, he supported the French Revolution. He witnessed the evil effects of industrial development. He has a sense of religion. His most important literary influence was the Bible because gives a complete vision of history. He's an early Romantic, he rejected neoclassical literary style and themes. He emphasized the importance of imagination. Songs of innocence: was produced before the French Revolution. It's filled with enthusiasm and liberal ideas. The narrator is a shepherd who is inspired from a child in a cloud to pipe his songs celebrating the divine in all creation. Symbols: lambs, flowers, children: innocence, connected to happiness. The language is simple and musical. Songs of Experience: during the period of the Terror in France. The narrator is the bard, a counterpart of the shepherd, who questions the themes of the previous collection. Complex, pessimistic view of life. Experience: identified with adulthood. IMAGINATION: the means through which man can know the world. SOCIAL PROBLEMS: Blake was concerned with the political and social problems. He supported the abolition of slavery. He believed in revolutions as purifying violence. He focused his attention on the evil consequences of the Industrial Revolution. He sympathized with the victims of it. STYLE: Blake's poems have a simple structure and an original use of symbols. A central group of symbols: the child, the father and Christ, representing the states of innocence. His verse is linear and rhythmical. Frequent use of repetition. WORDSWORTH: was born in Cumberland in 1770. He supports the French revolution and democratic ideals. The developments of the Revolution brought him to the edge of a nervous breakdown so he moved to Dorset with his sister Dorothy. He met Coleridge, they produced a collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads. The Preface become the Manifesto of English Romanticism. THE MANIFESTO: Before, English poetry was composed with sophisticated words. For Wordsworth, poetry was a solitary act, originating in the ordinary. He would deal with man, nature and everyday things. In his Preface he explained that the poet should deal with everyday situations. The language should be simple. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MEN AND NATURE: He shared Rousseau's faith in the goodness of nature and excellence of the child. His poetry offers a detailed account of the complex interaction between man and nature. When a natural object is described the main focus of interest is the poet's response to that object. Man and nature are inseparable. Nature is a source of pleasure and joy. IMPORTANCE OF THE SENSES: Nature gives perceptions using the eye and the ear. Sensations lead to simple thoughts, which later combine into complex and organized ideas. Memory is a major force in the process of growth. STYLE: The poet has a great sensibility and an ability to see into the heart of things. Power of imagination. His task consists in drawing attention to the ordinary things of life, to the humblest people. He used a blank verse, he proved skillful at several verse forms such as sonnets. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MAN AND NATURE: The subordination of nature to the self is emphasized in the new concept of the sublime by Edmund Burke. In German Idealism, the concept of nature implied a gradual passage from the inorganic to the organic state. Primitive, wild landscape or night scenes. The concept of nature is from a consoling view. In Romanticism nature also meant an escape from familiar experiences and from the limitations of reality. They were attracted by faraway exotic places as a means of expanding the consciousness. MY HEART LEAPS UP: (William Wordsworth) This poem is composed by 9 lines and embodies a simple idea: from an ordinary episode, the sight of a rainbow, the poet reflects on how childhood experiences influence adult life. The Child is innocent and pure. He has imagination that that makes him better and wiser than the Man. LONDON: (Blake) London is a poem about the evil consequences of the Industrial Revolution. It is set in London, at night. The poet is the speaker and he uses the first person pronoun. He his in the city and he perceives the scene through his senses, mainly sight and hearing. He sees a child, a soldier la prostitute, he hears child crying, the soldier sighing and young prostitute cursing her new born infant child. These people stand for the victims of industrial society. The language is simple, the poet makes use of repetition to underline some key ideas. Blake thinks that society and institutions oppress man depriving him of the innocence and happiness of childhood. DAFFODILS: This poem, written in 1804 and published in 1807, recounts the experience of a walk the poet went for with his sister, near their home in the Lake District. The poem was inspired by the sight of a field full of golden daffodils waving in the wind. The key of the poem is joy, as we can see from the many words which express pleasure and delight. All nature appears wonderfully alive and happy in fact the cloud floats on high, the stars shine and twinkle, the waves dance and sparkle in glee. The daffodils, too, are not static like in a painting, but alive with motion. The sight of the flowers brings the poet delight but he doesn't realize that at the moment but only later, when memory brings back the scene. It is clear that the daffodils have a metaphorical meaning. They may represent the voice of nature, which is scarcely audible except in solitude, the magic moment. THE LITTLE BLACK BOY: (Songs of innocence) A black child tells the story of how he came to know his own identity and to know God. The boy explains that though his skin is black his soul is as white as that of an English child. He is told that his black skin "is but a cloud" that will be dissipated when his soul meets God in heaven. DAI POWER POINT: *é una ripetizione* NEW SENSIBILITY: Period in which new ideas and attitudes arose in reaction to the dominant 18th-century ideals of order, calm, harmony, balance, and rationality. ENLIGHTENED TRENDS: 1) emphasize reason and judgement. 2) focus on impersonal material. 3) elevated subjects 4) interest in science and technology. ROMANTIC TRENDS: 1) emphasize imagination and emotion 2) value subjective, autobiographical material. 3) look for freedom. 4) represent common people. 5) interest in the supernatural. ENGLISH ROMANTICISM: influence by the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. A revolt of imagination against enlightened reason. THE ROMANTICS: 1) expressed a negative attitude towards the existing social or political conditions. 2) placed the individual at the centre of art. 3) argued that poetry should be free from all rules. ROMANTICS KEY IDEAS: 1) interest in humble and everyday life. 2) focus on melancholy, associated with meditation, on the suffering of the poor and death. 3) use of creative imagination. 4) exaltation of emotion and senses over reason and intellect. 5) view of the artist as an individual creator 6) fascination with the irrational, the past, the mysterious, the exotic. CONCEPT OF NATURE: 1)Opposed to reason: an alternative to the ordered world of Enlightenment thought 2) A real and living being, with its uncontrollable power, unpredictability, and potential for cataclysmic extremes 3) A source of sensations 4) An expressive language. 5) appreciation of landscape, and especially of wild or what was often termed "romantic" scenery. 6) Natural forces and iconic landmarks were also associated with the 'sublime'. 7) Nature was the principle or power that animated or even created the objects of nature, alluding to the idea of pantheism where God is inherent within nature, or even the creative power of man himself. THE SUBLIME:(Edmund Burke): A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) THE SUBLIME:1) No emotion is stronger than fear, not even pleasure. 2) Fear is the source of the sublime. 3) The sublime is founded on terror. 4) Whatever is terrible is sublime because it arouses a sense of danger and terror. 6) To make things even more terrible, two conditions are essential, obscurity and mystery. THE GOTHIC NOVEL: It came to popularity at the end of the 18th century. GOTHIC CONNOTATIONS: 1) Medieval, linked to the architecture of the 12th-14th centuries. 2) Irregular, barbarous, opposed to Classicism. 3) Wild, supernatural, in the sense of mysterious. The Castle of Otranto: The first gothic novel, published in 1764. The author is Horace Walpole, but it seems to be a translation of a work printed in Naples in 1529 and newly discovered in the library of a Catholic family in the north of England. THE SETTING: 2) Great importance to terror, characterized by obscurity and uncertainty, and horror, caused by evil and atrocity 2) Darkness was a necessary ingredient for the mysterious, gloomy atmosphere. 3) Ancient settings: isolated castles and mysterious abbeys with hidden passages, underground cellars, secret rooms. 4) Catholic countries: setting for the most terrible crimes, due to Protestant prejudices against Catholicism. THE CHARACTERS: Dominated by exaggerated reactions in front of mysterious situations or events. 1) Sensitive heroes: they save heroines. 2) Heroines stricken by unreal terrors and persecuted by the villains. 3) Satanic, terrifying male characters: victims of their negative impulses. 4) Supernatural beings: vampires, monsters and ghosts. DAFFODILS: (William Wordsworth) This poem records the experience of a walk the poet went for with his sister Dorothy, near their home in the Lake District. It is one of Wordsworth's most famous poems, in which he vividly conveys his love for nature. Written in 1804, it was published in 1807