Romanticism in Five Great Poems

Overview

The Romantic Movement was a major artistic, literary, and intellectual shift in Europe from the late 18th to mid-19th centuries, emphasizing emotion, individualism, imagination, and nature as a reaction against Enlightenment rationalism and the Industrial Revolution's mechanization, celebrating intense feelings, the sublime in nature, and the unique human spirit. Key figures included poets like William Wordsworth and Lord Byron, painters like J.M.W. Turner, and composers such as Tchaikovsky, who all explored personal experience, freedom, and a deep connection to the natural world. Core Characteristics & Themes included: • Emotion over Reason: Valued intense feelings, intuition, and personal experience over logic and intellect. • Nature's Majesty: Celebrated the beauty, power, and untamed vastness of the natural world as a source of truth and spiritual connection, contrasting it with industrial cities. • Individualism: Focused on the unique self, personal freedom, and the solitary, often heroic, individual. • Imagination: Prized the power of the imagination to create new realities and understand the world. • The Sublime: Explored awe-inspiring, often terrifying, aspects of nature that evoke powerful emotions. • Rebellion: A backlash against Neoclassicism, societal norms, and the materialism of the growing modern world. Key Figures were: • Literature: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, John Keats, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe. • Art: J.M.W. Turner, Eugène Delacroix, Caspar David Friedrich. • Music: Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, Peter Tchaikovsky

Suggested Media

Characteristics of 18th Century English/American Literature

• Emphasis on Social Issues versus personal stories. I.e. We/They versus I/Me • Didacticism, Morality • Satire • Journalism (as a teaching tool for ethics and morality) • Reason over Emotion • Science and Logic versus Religion and Monarchy • Classical Greek and Roman architecture (Neo-classicism)

The Age of Sensibility


• Sensibility refers to an acute perception of or responsiveness toward something, such as the emotions of another. This concept emerged in eighteenth-century Britain and was closely associated with studies of sense perception as the means through which knowledge is gathered.
Blake
William Blake, Newton, 1795-1805. Collection of Tate Britain

On the Cusp: William Blake

William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter and printmaker. Largely unrecognized during his life, Blake has become a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. What he called his "prophetic works" were said by the 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". While he lived in London his entire life, except for three years spent in Felpham, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich collection of works, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God", or "human existence itself". Although Blake was considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, he came to be highly regarded by later critics and readers for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterized as part of the Romantic movement and as "Pre-Romantic".[6] A theist who preferred his own Marcionite style of theology, he was hostile to the Church of England (indeed, to almost all forms of organized religion), and was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American Revolutions. Although later he rejected many of these political beliefs, he maintained an amicable relationship with the political activist Thomas Paine; he was also influenced by thinkers such as Emanuel Swedenborg. Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify. The 19th-century scholar William Michael Rossetti characterized him as a "glorious luminary", and "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors". Collaboration with his wife, Catherine Boucher, was instrumental in the creation of many of his books. Boucher worked as a printmaker and colorist for his works. "For almost forty-five years she was the person who lived and worked most closely with Blake, enabling him to realize numerous projects, impossible without her assistance. Catherine was an artist and printer in her own right," writes the literary scholar Angus Whitehead.

Characteristics of English/American Romanticism

© adapted from enotes.com
• Individuality/Democracy/Personal Freedom• Spiritual/Supernatural Elements• Nature as a Teacher• Interest in Past History especial Medieval Period or mythological Greece and Rome• Celebration of the Simple Life• Interest in the Rustic/Pastoral Life• Interest in Folk Traditions• Use of Common, Everyday Language• Use of Common Subjects, Personal Subjects• The Misunderstood Hero, the Wanderer, the Suffering/Starving Artist• Idealized Women/Feminine• Women’s Rights• Frequent Use of Personification, the Anthropomorphizing of Nature• Examination of the Poet's Inner Feelings © adapted from e-notes
Beethoven
Music
Friedrich
Art
Wordsworth
Literature

Romantic Movement: Video Resources

Caspar David Friedrich Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1818)
Francisco Goya Third of May (1808)
John Constable The Hay Wain (1821)

Romantic Period Artists

Felix Mendelssohn
Frederic Chopin

Romantic Period Composers

Tintern Abbey
Wordsworth

Wordsworth

Coleridge
Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Coleridge

Byron
Manfred

Byron

Percy Shelley
Ode to the West Wind

Percy Shelley

Keats
Ode on a Grecian Urn

Keats