TOPIC 48: Romanticism in Great Britain. Novel and Poetry.

ABSTRACT
1. INTRODUCTION AND JUSTIFICATION
2. ROMANTICISM. MAIN FEATURES
3. POETRY. MAIN AUTHORS
3.1. OLDER GROUP. Wordsworth and Coleridge
3.2. YOUNGER GROUP. Byron, Shelley and Keats
4. NOVEL. MAIN AUTHORS. Walter Scott, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen
5. CONCLUSION
6. BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABSTRACT

Throughout this topic we will concentrate on the major features of the Romantic period in Great
Britain. Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in Europe
towards the end of the 18th century: beginning with the publishing of `Lyrical Ballads´in 1798 and
ending with the crowning of Queen Victoria in the 1840´s.
In the field of literature, we will focus on the major writers which contributed the British Arts shine
throughout history all over the world.

1. INTRODUCTION AND JUSTIFICATION

As above-mentioned, the Romantic period covers a span between the 1970´s (Lyrical Ballads)
and the 1840´s (crowning of Queen Victoria).
-Turbulent period in Great Britain: economic and political changes.
-Industrialization: employment in factories, machines driven by steam power.
-Agricultural Revolution: depopulation of the countryside, development of industrial cities.
-Expansion of the Empire overseas and of the middle class.
-Emergence of Liberalism, women emancipation, suffrage, Communism, Socialism. Social
reactions in political, economic and social traditions.
-18th century had been the age of the Enlightenment with classical influences.
-ROMANTICISM as a reaction to the importance gained by reason during previous periods. 

It emphasized:
-Emotions, freedom and imagination.
-Reaction to the Industrial Revolution.
-Against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of the Enlightenment.
-Against the scientific rationalisation of nature.
-Inspired in nature, childhood, pureness, exotic scenes and supernatural events.

Concerning the implications of the topic within the Educational System:

The relevance of this topic and the didactic implications in our teaching practice can be supported
with our current legal background.

Chapter III LOMCE, Art.23:

-i) students “are able to understand and express themselves in one or more foreign
languages in a suitable way”
-j) “to know, value and respect on one´s and other´s culture and history”
Chapter IV, Bachillerato, Art.33:
-f) “express with fluency and correction in one or more foreign languages”
-d) “reinforce reading habits as means of personal development”
-h) “know and value the realities of contemporary world and its historical
background”
English Language Curriculum according to Royal Decree 1005/2014:
Linguistic competence, social and civil competencies, cultural expression and conscience.
TOPIC 48: Romanticism in Great Britain. Novel and Poetry.
This topic seems ideal to unify criteria with other cross curricular areas (history, geography or
Universal Literatura) and work on CLIL in bilingual section.

This type of knowledge, graded and revised in our syllabus, can teach them not only to develop
productive and receptive processes but also knowing other cultures and getting involved in the
multicultural and globalised world we all are immersed nowadays.

2. ROMANTICISM. MAIN FEATURES

It seems quite difficult to give a simple definition of Romanticism, but as a general idea we could
say that it was an international artistic movement that redefined the fundamental ways in
which people in Western countries thought about themselves and about the world they
lived in.

It was a reaction to the former social, political, historial and literary events of the
Enlightenment.

Early influences:
-Mid. 18th century Old Ballads.
-Shakespeare´s works: taste for language, breaking of common principles in literature.
-Gothic romance, linked to Medieval culture: fairies, witches, angels, horror, irrational
emotions.

MAIN FEATURES:
-Subjective poetry, interest in mysterious and infinite.
-Care about the individual, intuition and imagination.

IMAGINATION:
-Supreme faculty of the mind, creative power for art.
-A way to transcendent experience and truth.
-Union of reason and feeling (perceive and create the world).

NATURE:
-Poetry of meditation, love of nature, natural feelings as a guide to conduct (as opposed to
rationality).
-Idealized country life and belief that many of the ills of the society are a result of urbanisation.
-Nature=means for divine revelation.
-Symbolism: human-nature language.

MEDIEVAL PAST EXOTISM:

-Interest in the Medieval Past, the supernatural, the mystical, the Gothic and the exotic (far away
places).

REVOLUTION FREEDOM:
-In favour of rebellion and revolution, especially concerned with human rights, individualism,
freedom from oppression.

EMOTION, LYRIC POETRY, SELF-ROMANTIC HERO:

-Introspection, psychology, melancholy and sadness.
-Often deals with death and mankind’s feelings.
-Individual artist, intuition, feelings, instrospection.
-Artist as a hero, idealised and imperfect.

LITERATURE was the artists´ only hope towards the process of dehumanisation -> revolutionary
ideas.
TOPIC 48: Romanticism in Great Britain. Novel and Poetry.

3. THE ROMANTIC POETRY

GENERAL FEATURES:

-Expression of emotions, spontaneous, free from rules and manipulation.

-Catch the role of `instinct´, the heart as a supplement of the head.
-`Nature poetry´due to the importance of landscapes, related to human life and activity.
-Language: -regulare metre is rejected / blank verse
-emphasis on imagery: sea (passion and disorder), desert and island (voyages to
exotic places), palace (ideal world) and magic boat (vehicle of imagination).
-Poets: older group and younger group. Father of Romantic poetry: William Blake.

3.1. OLDER GROUP: William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH:

-Innovator and stimulator through the `Romantic Manifesto´ published in co-authorship with
Coleridge in the 1798 edition of `Lyricall Ballads´.
-Childhood surrounded by nature and cottages reflected in his books.
-Journey on foot through France, he fell in love but it was impossible, he suffered an emotional
breakdown.
-In his poems, he remembers past things, emotions.
-Main works: Lyricall Ballads, The Prelude, The Excursion, Lucy.

COLERIDGE:

-Together with his colleague Wordsworth, founded the Romantic movement in England, His
contribution to Lyricall Ballads was `The Rime of the Ancient Mariner´. Psychodrama related to
guilt, deep poetic force. Use of narrative techniques.
-Other important poems, which do not appear in Lyrical Ballads:
`Christabel´ and `Kubla Khan´, unfinished but full of magic.
-They included elements from the Medieval world + Romantic tradition.
-Full imagery, caused by an opium addiction.

3.2. YOUNGER GROUP: Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and John Keats.

They were not merely of a younger generation but also of a different age. The ideas and
aspirations of the older group evaluated and poetry in their hands lost almost entire touch with the
national life and historic traditions of England.

LORD BYRON:

-Discussion about his belonging to Romanticism: he used conventional forms and admired the
Pope.
-Travelled around Europe, especially Italy where he even lived. Then joined the Greek War of
Independence and was seen as a national hero.
-Flamboyant and notorious: excesses, debts, love affairs.
-Created the byronic hero, a man socially rejected due to his past sins, who can be found in some
of his most famous works: `Cain´, `Manfred´, `Don Juan´.
TOPIC 48: Romanticism in Great Britain. Novel and Poetry.

PERCY SHELLEY:

-Controversial private life, his concubine was Mary Shelley. He was married once before.
-He did not have a happy childhood -> fight against injustice and oppression.
-Declared atheist, took part in the Movement for Catholic Emancipation.
-Main works: `Queen Mab´, `The Revolt of Islam´, `Prometeos Unbound´.

JOHN KEATS:

-He was a surgeon who abandoned medicine for poetry.

-Heavily criticised during his lifetime, nowadays considered one of the finest poets.
-His main feature is the delicate imagery, very sensual.
-Main works: `Bright Star´, `Isabella´ and his odes = elaborated poems glorifying an event or
individual, `On a Grecian Urn´, `Ode to a Nightingale´.

4. THE ROMANTIC NOVEL: Sir Walter Scott, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen.

Although the Romantic period is commonly associated with poetry, the novel achieved its modern
form at that time within the writing of female authors.

We find two types of fiction in the late 18th century:

-The Gothic Novel: setting in a dark castle, church or graveyard in the Middle Ages and
misterious landscapes.

-The Novel of Purpose: combined Gothic terror and historical events inspired in the
French Revolution and the presence of a female hero.

SIR WALTER SCOTT:

-He admired Austen, but wrote totally different.

-Experienced a short Romantic period and wrote historical novels.
-Humour, picturesque descriptions full of details, he loved the Scottish environment.
-Themes: Elisabethan England, Norman Conquest.
-Most famous works: `The Waverly Novels´, `The Pirate´, `Ivanhoe´.

MARY SHELLEY:

-Surrounded by an intellectual background during her childhood, at sixteen she met Shelley, they
got married and ran off to Europe.
-Encouraged by her husband, she published anonymously `Frankenstein´. It began as a literary
experiment during her holidays near Geneva with Lord Byron and some other writers. They
proposed to write a ghost story.
-Frankenstein tells the story of a man obsessed with finding the principle of life: sensationalist
contents and moral ideas. It is a critique to sentiment and overconfidence in natural science.

JANE AUSTEN:

-She had a love for learning because her father was a scholar. Quiet observer of life.
-She died single in her middle age -> she wrote about her own experience and values of men and
women and their relationships. She highlights the dependence of women on marriage in a comic
way.
-Main works: `Sense and Sensibility´, `Pride and Prejudice´, `Emma´, `Persuasion´.
TOPIC 48: Romanticism in Great Britain. Novel and Poetry.

5. CONCLUSION

So far we have tried to cover the whole literary background during the Romantic period. We have
given an overall view of the main characteristics of literature of the period: poetry + novel, paying
attention to the most representative authors of the era.

Romanticism influenced in the subsequent authors either imitating / refusing realism.

Dealing with teaching practice, we can say that essays of literature can easily be treated under
the light of teaching and learning. Reading is a pleasure for the senses and it helps us understand
the culture and society of the country whose language we are learning.

Reading permits us:

-use the skills through reciting poems, silent reading, listening audio CDs, writing a simple poem
-increase linguistic knowledge, introducing new vocabulary, structures, functions
-deal with sociocultural aspects of the era
-deal with value contents

Furthermore, most of these novels can be easily found through guided reading or filming versions
such as Frankenstein. We only have to choose one of them and start to work.

These uses coincide with the 4 BLOCKS OF CONTENTS established by Laws 2/2006 (LOE) and
8/2013 (LOMCE) and with OBJECTIVES OF THE SUBJECT 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

6. BIBLIOGRAPHY

-Council of Europe (2001): Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning,
Teaching, Assessment. Cambridge: CUP
-Organic La 8/2013
-Royal Decree 1005/2014
-Greenblatt, S. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Norton: New York. 2012.
-Ford, B. (Ed). The Pelican guide to English Literature. OUP, 1989.
-Morgan, K.O. (Ed) The Oxford History of Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
-Strong, R. The Story of Britain: A people´s history. Pimlico: London, 1998.
-http://www.britishempire.co.uk
-http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english