Facultad de Lenguas y Educación

Dra. Elsa del Campo Ramírez

Grado de Educación
Literature and Culture

UNIT 4
ROMANTICISM (1789–1832)
THE VICTORIAN AGE (1830-1901)
Prof. Dra. Elsa del Campo Ramírez
Materials: Dra. María Porras Sánchez

1.Historical, cultural and social background 3

2. Characteristics of Romanticism 4

3. The Romantic poets 5

First generation Romantics: William Wordsworth and S. T. Coleridge 5
The second-generation Romantics: Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats 6

4. Historical, cultural and social background 8

5. Charactersitics of Victorian literature 9

6. The (realist) novel 9

7. Main authors: novelists 9

8. The turn of the century: fin de siècle decadence and aestheticism Error! Bookmark not
defined.

UNIT 4 ROMANTICISM (1789–1832) 2 Sep. 2017

Prof. Dra. Elsa del Campo Ramírez
Materials: Dra. María Porras Sánchez

English Romanticism is inscribed within the general context of the European Romanticism. This is a cultural
movement which priced feelings, emotions, and imagination over logic and facts, where excesses and
extremes were idealized and pursued, where the individual aims at separating from the masses, where
subjectivity is explored, sometimes in its extreme forms (madness, melancholy, etc.). In England, it is
eminently a poetic movement, with 6 major poets writing in the first quarter of the 19 th century who would
“transform the literary climate” (Alexander 227) of the British Isles (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Walter Scott,
Byron, Shelley, and Keats). In fiction, the rise of the novel continues with authors as important as Jane Austen,
Walter Scott and Mary Shelley.

1. Historical, cultural and social background

This short but fruitful period is most emphatically marked by a Europe ripped apart by the French and
American Revolutionary Wars. It also witnesses the high point of the European Romantic movement in the
arts. The beginning and ending dates of the Romantic period are identified differently by various scholars,
though these dates always coincide with major literary, cultural, political, or social events. In the British
context, the later part of the period experiences developments in political, religious and social reform which
will become one of the hallmarks of the Victorian period to follow 1.

Historical, cultural and social context2:

REVOLUTION AND REACTION

• England at this time was transforming from a primarily agricultural nation to one focused on
manufacture, trade, and industry.
• Revolutions outside of England’s borders had considerable impact within those borders, including the
revolutions in America and in France. Yet, while many English people initially supported revolutionary
efforts like those in France, just as many came to abhor the violent tyrannies that followed. The Reign
of Terror that followed the French Revolution is a primary example.
• Early efforts to abolish slavery met with little success.
• England at this time was often described in terms of “Two Nations”: (1) the rich and privileged who
owned the nation’s burgeoning means of industrial production, and (2) the poor and powerless who
were more and more forced from agricultural roots to life in industrial cities. Of course, it is this latter
group upon which the Industrial Revolution depended, though it is the former group who benefitted.
• Women authors, though they did not enjoy anything like social equality with their male counterparts,
did at least enjoy greater prominence and wider readership than had previously been the case.

1 Adapted from Widdowson, p. 88.

2Source: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol D.
http://wwnorton.com/college/english/nael9/section/volD/timeline.aspx

UNIT 4 ROMANTICISM (1789–1832) 3 Sep.

2017
Prof. Dra. Elsa del Campo Ramírez
Materials: Dra. María Porras Sánchez

2. Characteristics of Romanticism3

Romanticism represents a reaction to Classicism and Neo-Classicism, which were held to have dominated art
and thought from the 17th century, and which denied expression to the emotional and irrational depths of the
human psyche (Romanticism’s exploration of such experience opened the way for psychology and
psychoanalysis to develop in the course of the 19th century). Although Romanticism is differently inflected in
different countries and periods, the following characteristics apply to literature in this period:

1. Romanticism exalts individual aspirations and values above those of society and is personal and
subjective in inclination.
2. It turns for inspiration to the Middle Ages (regarded by the Augustans as barbaric), to earlier forms of
language (e.g. in Old English poetry), to folklore and folk-tales, to the supernatural as a means of
expressing ‘strange states of mind’, and to Nature, celebrating both its specificity and the spiritual and
moral bond between humanity and the natural world.
3. It generally follows Rousseau’s belief in human goodness and the innocence of children and
‘primitive’ peoples (‘the noble savage’), and is optimistic about human progress.
4. Aesthetically, it is characterised by the privileging of the Imagination rather than canonic models, by
freedom of subject, form and style, by the elevation of feeling (‘Sensibility’) over reason (‘Sense’), and
in poetry – arguably the dominant literary genre in the British context at least – by rejecting Augustan
poetic diction, by the use of traditional forms and by the quest for a simpler, more direct style.

3. The Romantic poets

First generation Romantics: William Wordsworth and S. T. Coleridge

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was born in Cumbria, England, near the Lake District, to which his works has
been widely associated. His mother died when he was eight and this experience shaped much of his later
work. Wordsworth attended Cambridge and almost before finishing his studies, he set out on a walking tour of
Europe, an experience that influenced both his poetry and his political sensibilities. While touring Europe,
Wordsworth encountered the French Revolution; he was fascinated by the Republican movement, but the
Reign of Terror led him to become estranged to the Republic, and the war between England and France caused
him to return to England. However, his experience as well as a subsequent period living in France brought
about Wordsworth’s interest and sympathy for the life, troubles, and speech of the “common man,” a central
idea in his work.

In 1795 he developed a close friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with whom he collaborated in the 1797-
1799 period to write Lyrical Ballads. This collection of poems marks the beginning of the Romanticism in
England. While the poems themselves are some of the most influential in Western literature, the preface to

3 Adapted from Widdowson, pp. 91-92.

UNIT 4 ROMANTICISM (1789–1832) 4 Sep.

2017
Prof. Dra. Elsa del Campo Ramírez
Materials: Dra. María Porras Sánchez

the second edition has become the informal “manifesto” of Romanticism. It remains a lucid document about
the poet’s views on both his craft and his place in the world.

The poet and poetry according to Wordsworth: Ideas from the “Preface” to Lyrical Ballads (1800)

Wordsworth is the poet of the remembrance of the things past. He considered poetry as “emotion recollected
in tranquility”. To start writing, he needed to discover some object or event in the present that triggered a
sudden renewal of feelings he had experienced in youth. The result is a poem exhibiting the sharp discrepancy
between what Wordsworth called “two consciousnesses”: himself as he is now (calm), and himself as he once
was (turmoil). The result is a poetry of excitation in calm.

Thus, poetry is defined as the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”: it takes its origins from emotion
recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the tranquillity gradually
disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually
produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

He was born the son of a clergyman in Devonshire. His career as a poet and writer was established after he
befriended Wordsworth and together they produced Lyrical Ballads in 1798. For most of his adult life he
suffered through addiction to laudanum and opium. This might have influenced the composition of some of his
most famous poems –“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, “Kubla Khan” and “Christabel”– all featuring
supernatural themes and exotic images. Coleridge was as much a prose and theoretical writer as he was a
poet.

Coleridge offered a theory of creativity. He divides imagination into primary and secondary. Primary
imagination is common to all humans: it enables us to perceive and make sense of the world. It is a creative
function and thereby repeats the divine act of creation. The secondary imagination enables individuals to
transcend the primary imagination – not merely to perceive connections but to make them. It is the creative
impulse that enables poetry and other arts. He also coined the phrase ‘suspension of disbelief’, or the reader’s
attitude to defer one's critical faculties and believe the unbelievable.

The second-generation Romantics: Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John

Keats

The younger Romanics were comparatively more radical than the previous generation. They felt that
Wordsworth, who had become more conservative over time, had become part of the Establishment. Also, the
premature some of the members of this generation also contributed to their mystique. As time passed they
attained iconic status. The Romantic poets continue to exert a powerful influence on popular culture.

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824). Fame precedes Lord Byron: born in a noble (but dilapidated) Scottish
family, he had a club foot, good looks, and was possibly bisexual. His life was linked to scandal due to his sexual
exploits, but also to political activism, becoming actively involved in the struggles for Italian nationalism and

UNIT 4 ROMANTICISM (1789–1832) 5 Sep.

2017
Prof. Dra. Elsa del Campo Ramírez
Materials: Dra. María Porras Sánchez

the liberation of Greece from Ottoman rule. His work achieved European reputation during his lifetime: his
influence was felt among major poets and novelists (Goethe in Germany, Balzac and Stendhal in France,
Pushkin and Dostoyevsky in Russia, Melville in America) and composers (Beethoven and Berlioz).

Accused of incest with his half-sister, Byron settled in Italy and began writing his masterpiece, Don Juan (1818-
1824), an epic-satire novel-in-verse loosely based on a legendary hero. He died before finishing it, but
managed to complete 17 cantos. His early death after contracting a fever has added a certain mystery to his
figure. His own life and that of some of his characters set a literary stereotype, the Byronic hero. According to
Forward, “The melancholy, dark, brooding, rebellious ‘Byronic hero’, a solitary wanderer, seemed to represent
a generation, and the image lingered. Subsequently a number of complex and intriguing heroes appeared in
novels: for example, Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Edward Rochester in Charlotte
Brontë’s Jane Eyre”4.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was, like Byron, an aristocratic radical, as he made clear in his university
years. According to Alexander: “He believed in vegetarianism, pacifism, and free love –for marriage, he
thought enslaved women. Expelled from Oxford for challenging the authorities to refute atheism, Shelley was
soon known on a revolutionary who had absconded with two 16-year-olds in two years” (Alexander 239). The
second was Mary Shelley.

Beyond his revolutionary ideas, Shelley was a gifted poet. In his essay A Defence of Poetry (written in 1821)
Shelley proclaimed the social function of poetry and the prophetic role of the poet. It was published
posthumously in 1840, as most of his work. He died at the early age of 30 in a boat accident.

John Keats (1795-1821) was born in a humble family that became prosperous in business (they owned a
stable), but his parents died when he was young. He started medical studies and became qualified to practice
as apothecary-surgeon, but he left this occupation for poetry. Had he not died so young, he may have become
one of the best poets of all times. He started to write when he has 18 and immediately produced works of
great quality. He died of tuberculosis in Rome in 1821, at 25.

Unlike Shelley and Byron, he was not a revolutionary. In fact, there are critics who consider him the less
complex of the Romantic, perhaps because his themes are simple: beauty in art and nature; the death drive;
happy and unhappy love; the glamour of a classical past. For many critics, the great power of his poems comes
from their awareness that beauty dies. Some others see in Keats a man of great intellectual insight through his
letters. One of his main contributions to literary theory is the notion of “negative capability”. "Negative
capability" can be taken to characterize an impersonal, or objective, author who maintains aesthetic distance,
as opposed to a subjective author who is personally involved with the characters and actions represented in a
work of literature, and as opposed also to an author who uses a literary work to present and to make
persuasive his or her personal beliefs.

4 “The Romantics”, in https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-romantics

UNIT 4 ROMANTICISM (1789–1832) 6 Sep.

2017
Prof. Dra. Elsa del Campo Ramírez
Materials: Dra. María Porras Sánchez

4. The Victorian Period: Historical, cultural and social

background 5

The Victorian period formally begins in 1837 (the year Victoria became Queen) and ends in 1901 (the year of
her death). However, 1830 (beginning of William IV’s reign) is usually considered the end of the Romantic
period in Britain, and thus makes a convenient starting date for Victorianism. Victorians are usually considered
“prudish, hypocritical, stuffy, [and] narrow-minded” (Murfin 496). This may apply to large sections of society,
but not to many literary works. This definition particularly applies to many members of a growing middle-class,
who aspired to join the ranks of the aristocrats, and felt that the only way to do it was acting “properly”.
Another important aspect of this period is the large-scale expansion of British imperial power, which enhanced
English pride. In literature, Victorianism is a fertile period especially in fiction. The Victorian Age is not
homogeneous.

• During the Victorian Age, England reached its height as a world imperial power.
• Changes in industrial production techniques had a profound impact in almost all aspects of life for
every class of citizen. Unregulated industrialisation created great prosperity for a lucky few but great
misery for the masses. Victorian era writers were mixed in their reactions to industrialisation. Some
celebrated the new age of promise, progress, and triumph, while others challenged the so-called
benefits of industrial growth when so many were being affected so negatively.
• In many ways the Victorian age reflected values that Queen Victoria herself espoused: moral
responsibility and domestic propriety. However, there was as much evidence of social dissolution and
moral impropriety.
• Because the Victorian period lasted so long and because it was a time of such great change, it is hard
to characterise in any singular, overarching way. Thus, scholars often refer to three distinct phases
within the Victorian period: early (1830-1848); mid (1848-1870); and late (1870-1901). We often also
recognize the final decade of the nineteenth century (the 1890s) as an important transitional period
between the Victorian era and Modernism.

5. Characteristics of Victorian literature

1. Abundance: of literary works, authors, and readers. Authors are also especially prolific.
2. Serialisation: Many novels were published in parts, in newspapers, magazines, or different volumes.
At the same time, circulating libraries lend books for a small price.
3. Industrialisation: changes in society and economy and in the human and rural landscape were
reflected in literature, particularly after the appearance of new machines and technical advances.
4. Class: between the working class and the upper classes, in the 19th century there was an expanding
middle class and, subsequently, more class gradations to keep track of.
5. Science versus Religion: Victorians were the first to confront Darwin's theory of evolution.
6. Progress: at an individual level (class) or at a national level. The British Empire was at its height:
British colonies stretched as far away as India and Jamaica.

5 Adapted from http://wwnorton.com/college/english/nael9/section/volE/overview.aspx

UNIT 4 ROMANTICISM (1789–1832) 7 Sep.

2017
Prof. Dra. Elsa del Campo Ramírez
Materials: Dra. María Porras Sánchez

7. Englishness: The period saw the rise of a highly idealised notion of what “English” is or what an
“Englishman” constitutes. This notion is obviously tied very closely to the period’s models for proper
behavior and is also tied very closely to England’s imperial enterprises.
8. Nostalgia: literary authors and artists are frequently inspired by the past (historical novels and epic
poems). This might reflect a certain escapism and disillusionment with the present.
9. Women: the question of what women could (or should) do attracted a lot of debate in the Victorian
era.

6. The (realist) novel

Victorian literature is sometimes identified with Realism, especially when it comes to describe the novel.
Realistic fiction is often opposed to romance (and Romantic) fiction. Whereas the romance is said to present
life as we would have it be —more picturesque, fantastic, adventurous, or heroic than real life— Realism is
said to represent life as it really is. This leads to a tricky question; what is reality for an author? The notion of
reality may vary from one to another. It is more useful to identify realism in terms of the effect on the reader:
realistic fiction is written to give the effect that it represents life and the social world as it seems to the
common reader, evoking the sense that its characters might in fact exist, and that such things might well
happen. In this sense, Victorian novels, while retaining some Gothic elements, tend to be eminently realistic.

Novel subgenres
The novel, the most widely read genre (thanks to the periodicals and to the presence of circulating libraries)
proliferated in many different forms. These are the subgenres cultivated in the Victorian period:

1. Bildungsroman This subgenre deals with the development of a youthful protagonist as (s)he matures.
Also called "Education novel," which explores the youth and young adulthood of a sensitive
protagonist who is in search of the meaning of life and the nature of the world.
1. The Condition-of-England Novel Novels which approached contemporary social problems through
detailed descriptions of poverty and inequality, usually with the intention of denouncing the situation.
2. The Detective Novel In Britain, they are mostly Whodunit: the story of the crime and the story of the
investigation.
5. The Epistolary Novel
6. Ghost stories
7. Gothic Fiction
8. The Sensation Novel stories that mixed romance and suspense: bigamous marriages, romantic
triangles, drugs, potions, and/or poisons, trained coincidences aristocratic villains
9. The Medievalist Novel: set in the Medieval past.
10. The Utopian Novel: emphasis on scientific and technological themes. The Time Machine, by H. G.
Wells (1895) combined utopian narrative and science fiction while celebrating the power of the
machine.
11. The Victorian Governess Novel: the governess was a common figure of the period. Anne Brontë's
Agnes Grey (1847) and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847), are still read today, but most of the novels
belong to the mass of forgotten Victorian fiction.

UNIT 4 ROMANTICISM (1789–1832) 8 Sep.

2017
Prof. Dra. Elsa del Campo Ramírez
Materials: Dra. María Porras Sánchez

12. The New Woman Novel: The final two decades of the Victorian era witnessed the beginning of a shift
in social attitudes regarding gender relations. One of the manifestations of this movement is the
emergence of the New Woman (= proto feminist) fiction.
13. The Newgate Novel: stories about jail, crime, the criminal underworld and gruesome murders.

7. Main authors: novelists

The Brontë sisters

Charlotte (1816-1855), Emily (1818-1848) and Anne (1820-1849) were born in Thornton, Yorkshire. They had
two sisters, both of whom died in childhood and a brother, Branwell. Their father, Patrick, was an Anglican
clergyman. Their mother died when they were young. All three sisters attended different schools as well as being
taught at home. All the Brontë children began to write stories at an early age, inventing complex imaginary
worlds and recording them in tiny handmade books. All three sisters were employed at various times as teachers
and governesses, an experience that Charlotte and Anne explored in their novels. Charlotte also spent some
years teaching at a boarding school in Brussels.

In 1846, the sisters published at their own expense a volume of poetry, Poems of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell,
their literary pseudonyms. They all went on to publish novels, with differing levels of success. Anne's Agnes Grey
and Charlotte's Jane Eyre were published in 1847. Jane Eyre was one of the year's best sellers. Emily's Wuthering
Heights was published in 1848.

Branwell died of tuberculosis in 1848. Emily died of the same disease some months later and so did Anne in the
following year. Left alone with her father, Charlotte continued to write. In 1854, Charlotte married her father's
curate, Arthur Nicholls. While pregnant, she died weakened by morning sickness in 1855.

Perhaps the best novels by the Brontë sisters are Charlotte’s Jane Eyre and Emily’s Wuthering Heights. In them,
they used nature with symbolic purposes, denoting a penchant with the Romantic period. Furthermore, Emily
incorporated supernatural elements derived from Gothic fiction.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

The most widely-read author of the first Victorian period is Charles Dickens, who enjoyed an immense
popularity during his lifetime. His works have been described as sentimental, his plots feeble, his prose full of
ungrammatical constructions. Regardless of these and other possible “failures”, Dickens remains a towering
figure. While his characters may lack psychological depth, they are described in such rich detail that some of
them have become 19th century stereotypes (the poor infant, the evil master, etc.). Despite his limitations,
Dickens remains “The Inimitable” --a nickname he earned in his lifetime—when it comes to his extraordinary
communicative talents.

Dicken’s sympathy for the poor and the oppressed stems from his own experience: when he was 12, Charles’
father was imprisoned due to his debts. He was withdrawn from school and forced to work on a factory that
handled 'blacking' or shoe polish to help support the family. This experience left a profound psychological
impact on Charles. It gave him a firsthand acquaintance with poverty and made him the most influential voice
of the working classes in his age. He would later become a reporter; perhaps that is the reason why his
descriptions show a wonderful eye for detail. He would combine his work as a journalist, magazine editor and

UNIT 4 ROMANTICISM (1789–1832) 9 Sep.

2017
Prof. Dra. Elsa del Campo Ramírez
Materials: Dra. María Porras Sánchez

writer for most of his life. He became a public figure and gave lectures in Europe and the US, while
campaigning for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.

Dickens wrote 15 major novels in a period of 33 years, most of which were published serialised. He also wrote
5 novellas (short novels), hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles.

UNIT 4 ROMANTICISM (1789–1832) 10 Sep.

2017