Chapter Eight The Age of Romanticism

(1798—1832) (four class hours)

The first two hours

I. a very brief introduction to the essence of the movement

1. The glorification of instinct and emotion

2. a deep veneration of nature

3. a flaming zeal to remake the world

II. Historical background

This was a turbulent period, during which England experienced the trial of change from a primarily agricultural society, where wealth and power had been concentrated in the landholding aristocracy, to modern industrial nation, where wealth was controlled by the large industrialists, who found themselves ranged against an immensely enlarging and increasingly restive working class. This change occurred in the context of the three revolutions: the American Revolution, then of the much more radical French Revolution, through whose influence national liberation movements and democratic movements which swept across many European countries, and the Industrial Revolution.

The industrial revolution, the shift in manufacturing from hand labor to power- driven machinery, began in the mid 18th century and was given great force when James Watt perfected the steam engine in 1765. In the succeeding decades steam replaced water and wind as the primary source of power in one after another type of manufacturing. And there began that fast change in economic and social conditions. A new labouring population massed in the big mill town that emerged in central and northern England. In the countryside the destruction of the home industry was accompanied by a rapid process of enclosing the old open-field and combining small farms into big ones. Thus it created a new landless class who either migrated to industrial towns or remained agricultural labors. The industrial revolution benefited the middle class, the industrialists and population increasingly became polarized into what Disraeli later called the “Two Nations,” the poor and the rich. There were pressures for political and social reforms.

III. The Intellectual Background The shift in literature from emphasis on reason to instinct

and emotion was intellectually prepared for by a number of thinkers in the later half of 18th century.

Rousseau (1712—1778), the French philosopher, is generally regarded as the father of the Romanticism: the return to nature, the noble savage and the depraved animal

Edmund Burke (1729—1797): the relationship between the sublime and the beautiful

Thomas Paine (1737—1809), The Rights of Man

IV. The Time Spirit Though romanticism is a term applied to the period by later c

ritics, their contemporaries grouped the authors at the time into various schools as “the Lake School,” “the Cockney School,” and “the Satanic School.” This indicates that at the time there were authors representing different styles yet there was really something distinctive about the time, a pervasive intellectual and imaginative climate, which can be called time spirit. The imagination of many Romantic writers was indeed attracted by the French Revolution. In the early period of the revolution, all of them except Edmund Burke were in sympathy with it. Later even after the first disappointing events in France, the younger writers, including Byron, Shelly, felt that its example, purged of its errors, still constituted humanity’s best hope. The Revolution generated a pervasive feeling that this was an age of new beginning when everything was possible. It was a time of promise, a renewal of the world and of letters. Old things seemed passing away and nothing was dreamed of but the regeneration of the human race. It was an age of burgeoning free enterprise and revolutionary hope.

V. Characteristic features of the Romantic movement

We can start our topic from Wordsworth’s definition. So the question: What does William Wordsworth mean by saying that poetry is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings?”

1. Subjectivism: the source of the poetry is the inner world instead of the outer world.

subjectivism objectivism the inner world, the outer world, the mind within the outer reality heart head emotions reason instincts analytical power intuitions feelings thoughts personal experiences imagination

2. spontaneity: emphasis on the poet’s immediate understanding of life and the world, the naturalness in the writing of the poetry, in another word poetry should come out of the mind naturally. This is opposed to the “rules” and “regulations” imposed on the poets by neo-classic writers

3. singularity: emphasis on the uniqueness of the poetry and closely related to it the romantic poets prefer to the supernatural, the remote, picturesque, mysterious, etc.

4. worship of nature: 1) poets’ love of nature as to present nature as friendly

and beneficial to human beings and nature is the mother of man.

2) a tendency to write symbolist poetry in which a tree, a rose , a cave etc is presented as an object filled with a significance beyond itself

5. simplicity——the glorification of the commonplace: closely linked with the time spirit to strive for equality, liberty of man. Kings and queens are dethroned. The humble people in the countryside become the heroes in literature and their language is adopted of course.

6. individualism, infinite striving, love of solitude and nonconformity and a dominating note of melancholy, the theme of exile:

(1) individualism, infinite striving The romantic period, the age of burgeoning free enterprise and

revolutionary hope, was also an age of radical individualism in which both the philosophers and poets put an immensely higher estimate on human potentialities and powers. In the romantic authors’ views, human mind is not passive but made in God’s image. Thus he is both a creator creating the world and a receiver perceiving the world. They agreed that the mind could have access to the infinite through a special faculty they called either reason or imagination and glorified human desire beyond human limits. That is the human beings refuses to submit to limitations and though finite, persists in setting infinite, hence inaccessible goals. This infinite longing or infinite striving is, in Shelly’s words, “the desire of the moth for a star.” This ceaseless striving enterprise encouraged the writers experimented boldly and made the romantic writers achieved a lot.

(2) love of being single, solitary, alone. The great 18th century writers had typically dealt with men and women as members of an organized and usually an urban society; of this society authors regarded themselves to be integral parts (in another words, 18th century authors emphasized the society.) Some romantic writers however deliberately separated themselves from the society in order to show their individual vision. We can often see the words such as single, solitary, alone , by oneself in the great romantic authors such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, more strikingly Byron and Shelly

(3) nonconformity and a dominating note of melancholy, the theme of exile

7. It was an age of poetry in which poets liked to use freer verse forms

The second two hours: 　 The representative authors

I. poets 　　 a. William Wordsworth (1770——1850): striking worshi

p of nature and the harmony between the nature and the man

b. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772——1834): striking presentation of supernaturalism. 　

1) His life story: One of the three Lake Poets Coleridge like Wordsworth was progressive in his early years.

His education: Cambridge without taking a degree His enthusiasm about the French Revolution and Robert

Southey and he, inspired by the idea of egalitarianism, decided to set up a new community, a utopian society in America and name it Pantisocracy. Live in the lake area after 1800

His health: suffer from cute pain in the head, take opium, became an addict of it

2) His literary achievements: poems: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: ballad form, the theme is about sin and expiation, the musical effect, subtle elements, the interesting story. The author is good at making supernatural things appear real and true to life; the irresistible language

Kubla Khan: Criticism: Biographia Literaria: emphasize the importa

nce of the imagination: a good writer should be able to transform reality into something higher

A good lecturer: lectures on Shakespeare Play: Remorse

ｃ .George Gordon Byron (1788——1824): in the style of Alexander Pope, biting satire and the Byronic hero

1) His life story: He was born of a noble blood both on the paternal and maternal lines. Because of the scandal of his marriage, he was to leave his country forever and spent his rest of his life abroad.

His education: attained his M.A. from Cambridge His health: died of fever in Greece 2) His literary achievements: Don Juan his masterpiece, a sati

rical epic The chief reason that he is considered an arch-Romantic is th

at he provided his age with a model of personage, the Byronic hero. This personage appears in various guises in Byron’s writings. This persistent character is that of a moody, passionate, and remorse-torn but unrepentant wanderer. In his developed form, as we find it in Mansfred, he is an alien, mysterious, and gloomy spirit, immensely superior in his passions and powers to the common run of humanity, whom he regards with disdain.

ｄ． Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792—1822): best known for his political lyrics full of enthusiasm to break the old world and establish a new one

1) His life story: Born of noble blood. At eighteen, he entered the Oxford university, but was expelled from the university for the publication of a pamphlet On the Necessity of Atheism(1811).

2) His literary achievements: allegorical poems: Queen Mab(1813), Alastor(1816), The Revolt of Islam(1818), The Mask of Anarchy(1819).lyrics (best known), elegiac poem: Adonais(1821). Lyrics: Ode to the West Wind(1819)

lyrical dramas and prose: Prometheus Unbound(1820), Hellas(1822), Cenci(1819), The Defence of Poetry(1821)

e. John Keats (1795—1821): best known for his pursuit of beauty and his sensuous description in the style of Shakespeare

1) His life story: born of a lowly origin. His guardian forced him to leave school at fifteen and apprenticed him to a surgeon. In 1617 he abandoned his profession and published his first collection of poems. But most of his poems were written in the short three years from 1817 to the time of his death.

2) His literary achievements: poems. Ode to a Nightingale. In it, Keats identifies the nightingale wit

h his Ideal Beauty and hopes that the song of the nightingale will help him to escape from the world of actuality, where “ to think is to be full of sorrow”, into the world of Ideal Beauty, a place of eternal beauty.

To Autumn. This poem is also a representative of his poetic creation. Through a series of images he presents to the reader a picture of golden autumn, which , according to Keats, is no less beautiful than spring.

Essayists Charles Lamb (1775——1834) 1) His life story: After leaving school. He worked as a small cle

rk, and in 1792, he entered the East India House where he worked steadily for thirty- three years. He never married and he devoted his life to the care of his sister, who appears in his essays as Cousin Bridget.

2) His literary achievements: a. his major works and his contribution :Lamb’s most well know

n literary work is Tales from Shakespeare, which he wrote with his sister in 1807.He emphasized the importance of imagination. Lamb’s essays are expressions of his own feelings, taking as their subject matter insignificant things and daily events, especially the recollections of the good old days, the remembrance of the childhood. Recollection and nostalgia play an important partin his essay

Thomas de Quincey (1785——1859) 1) His life story: He received good education and studied i

n Oxford. He began to take opium because he suffered from a sharp pain in the head. Then he became a lifelong opium addict.

2) His literary achievements: a. his major works: The Confessions of an English Opiu

m-eater. On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth. b. his stylistic characteristics: His essays are marked by a

n exploration of the subconscious. He emphasized the importance of the imagination. He stretched the his imagination in his criticism. He studied the psychological reaction of the audience in a play. He was one of the founders of the psychological analysis, which has become very popular in the twentieth century.

Novelist Sir Walter Scott (1771——1832) 1) His life story: In his early years he took great interest in collecting

the ballads of the old times written by Scottish bards and he published a number of narrative poems. But after publishing his Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage in 1812, Scott gave up writing poetry and turned to novels. In his remaining 18 years, he wrote more than twenty novels.

His health: A stroke of paralysis hit him in 1830, for which he never recovered.

2) His literary achievements a. his major works: Ivanhoe, Waverley, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage b. his stylistic characteristics and contribution: His contribution to

English literature, and even to world literature, is his historical novels. The stories of his novels are about incidents of historical significance, usually about the turning point of a nation’s history. They are unfolded on a vast scale and cover a wide range of actions.

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