THE ROMANTIC AGE

HISTORY

THE YEARS OF REVOLUTION

The period between 1760 and 1837 was full of conflicts:

French Revolution (1789). Cause: absolute monarchy, corruption, unfair land distribution, unfair
taxation, rigid social class structure, privileges to upper class, poor harvest, inflation, enlightenment
ideals. It was influenced by Enlightenment (Voltaire, Rousseau promoting ideas of equality,
fraternity, liberty. Attack to privileges of aristocracy and absolute monarchy)

Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge supported the French Revolution but then remained disillusioned
by the violent consequences.

Napoleonic wars (1792-1815). What happened? Napoleone wanted to rule the Europe but was
defeated by Horatio Nelson in Trafalgar (1805). On the subsequent Congress of Vienna the victors
(England, Austria, Prussia, Russia) drew new political map of Europe. Consequence for England: huge
cost of war, impoverishment, lost of jobs, higher cost of living.

Industrial Revolution (1750-1900). Brought: mechanization, enlightenment, demand for products,

low farm wages, importance of science and utilitarianism, migration of poor people to city to live in
poor conditions (this caused riots like Luddite Riot = workers destroyed machines; Peterloo
Massacre = a peacefull event of complaining poor people 18 people killed, 700 seriously injured).
Imperial expansion (access to raw materials and open new market for British products), technological
innovation (textile machines, steam engine, transport systems = canals, railway, steamships), free
trade (laissez-faire = excessive liberalism), coal and iron increased prodution to feed the need of the
industry.

GEORGE III AND WILLIAM PITT THE YOUNGER

George III was the ruling king and was supported by the prime minister William
Pitt the Younger (1783-1801 and 1804-1806).William Pitt strenghten his power
as prime minister and lead a foreign politics of opposition against France
(French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars) => his government was rigid and
repressive of any revolts just to avoid spreading the values of French
Revolution in United Kingdom.POVERTY AND EXPLOITATIONThe consequence
of the industrial revolution was a mass exodus of people from agrarian life to
city life and consequent exploitation of workers (=extreme working conditions,
long working hours, low wages).Also children were exploited (schooling wasn't
compulsory and no age limit for hiring a boy). On 1870 Forster Education Act
(elementary school became compulsory and free)Poor Women worked in factories
but were more subject to discrimination as well as low wages.Mid and High class
women didn't work but they got a basic education.Vast majority of population
remained poor while mid business class were increasing in wealth and quality
life.The prevailing economic theory was regulated by Adam Smith: unregulated
competition would bring the best economic results. The state didn't partecipate
to the economic question.
A TIME OF REFORM

• After George III we have George IV (1820-1830) and William IV (1830-1837). In this period
we have many reforms:

• FIRST REFORM BILL 1832. Extension of the right to vote to middle class men. The majority
of population had no right to vota anyway

• FACTORY ACT 1833. Made illegal to employ children under 9 years old in factories and
limited the working hours up to 17 years old children (teenagers could work up to 13 hours
per day)

• POOR AMENDMENT ACT 1834. Gave houses and lodgings to homeless working people

• ABOLISHMENT OF SLAVERY 1833.

• IMPORTATION ACT / CORN LAW 1815. A protectionist antifree trade measure to protect
British agricolture by prohibiting the importation of grain from abroad => rapid rise in the
price of bread and foods (sugar, beer, tobacco, tea, candles, soap) and causing pain on poor
people and unemployed

THE ROMANTIC AGE

LITERATURE

TOWARDS AGE OF SENSIBILITY

Romanticism (1760-1837) represents a change in human lifestyle and literary style:
sensibility and immagination replace rationality and harmony.
Romantic tendency in UK were anticipated by German literary movement (Sturm und
Drang. Famous poets were Goethe, Schiller): rebellion against classicism; focus on
individual feelings, freedom, equality of human beings and a passion for nature,
strong autobiographical reference

KEY CONCEPT
Key concepts were emotions and immagination: the inner self had the power to reshape
reality (subjective interpretation)
Romanticism refused: ideas of Enlightenment, Reason and Neoclassicism, rules of
decency, rationality, precision, classical poetry.
Romanticism was a complex cultural and literary phenomenon: in Italy it acquired a
political meaning, in Germany philosophical, in England was associated to nature,
the reaction against Napoleonic wars, French revolution and industrial revolution.

Inspiration was at first place (use of creativity, dreams, visions. Drugs like opium helped
to reach the inspiration).

The poet is a prophet, a teacher, a shaman: he/she speaks for everyone (not for a
selected intellectuals).
This means: use of popular expressions, popular themes and popular forms (ballads).
ROMANTIC THEMES

• Nature, forests, coutryside, little towns: source of inspiration (against hostile

places created by Industrial Revolution: the city)

• The Solitude of the poet with his journeys and visions

• Childhood: poet look at the world from a child's perspective

PRE ROMANTIC POETS

They gave voice to anti-classical reaction and anticipated the features of Romanticism.
They used classical forms to express Romantic themes, they revaluate the role of nature
over civilization, exaltation of primitive life in contrast with dehumanisation of
progress, use a meditative tone, rediscovered the Middle Ages, treatment of unusual
theme (the exotic, the strange, the sublime).

James McPherson (1736-1765): gave birth to the Ossianic poetry → melancholy,

paganism, heroism, representation of primitive forces of nature.

Thomas Gray (1716-71): gave birth to the Graveyard poetry → was interested in humble
poor people, death, mortality. He used classical forms and romantic themes. Admired by
Ugo Foscolo.

William Blake (1757-1827): was a visionary writer, painter and printer. Impressive in his
immagination and expressed the duality between the innocence and experience in the
human life.

THE ROMANTIC POETS

Romantic poets are divided in 2 generations:

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). They

wrote the manifesto of Romanticism Lyrical Ballads and the Preface to Lyrical Ballads.
They were concerned and disillusioned about the bloody and violent consequences
of French Revolution.
Wordsworth poetry focus on the spontaneous overflow of feelings caused by emotions
recollected in tranquillity in nature. Coleridge works are pervaded by mysterious
characters and supernatural elements.

Lord Byron (1788-1824), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), John Keats (1795-1821).
These poets remained revolutionary in lifestyle and poetry but they were longing to a
better world (justice, freedom, beauty).
Byron rejected social conventions and hypocrisy and focused on satanic elements, he
was a rebel and passionate for freedom.
Shelley focus on political rebellion and mysticism, he believed in the power on poetry to
change the world.
Keats focus on introspection and emotions. He meditated on beauty, love, death, mortality.

The most important document that gave birth to Romanticism was the Preface to the
Lyrical Ballads (by Wordsworth&Coleridge, 1801). This work contains the traits of the
Romanticism:

• Predominant role of nature

• Distrust in progress and factories
• Use of immagination to understand the beauty of the Universe
• Interest in humble simple life
• Rejection of Neoclassical poetry
• Spontaneous poetry
• Spontaneous feelings and emotions
• Interest in the personal inner world
• Poetry expresses the truth
FICTION DURING ROMANTIC AGE

We have 4 main trends:

• Gothic Novel: novels are embedded with the supernatural and mysterious and
set on castles, monasteries, mansions. There are cruel stories but sad at the same
time. Dark settings, ghosts, monsters, pricess in distress, the positive and
negative hero, mysterious events and transformations. It was also a reaction
against Neoclassicism and Rationalism. There is a revaluation of the irrational
part of human mind and the fantastic / supernatural world opposed to reason.
Gothic novels were linked to aesthetic of the sublime and were forerunners of the
horror movies. Important writers: Percy Bisshe Shelley (Frankenstein) and Edgar
Allan Poe.

• Novel of manners: there is a revival of the comedy of manners but in prose.

Stories focus on marriage, love, social and private relationships. Themes are
love, freedom, social conventions, friendship, irony. The set is always in the
English countryside. Important writer: Jane Austen (1775-1817). Works: Sense
and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice.

• Novel of purpose: here the novel is used to spread philosophical and political
ideas

• Historical novel. Here the novel deals with past events set in the Middle Ages and
the interest in folktales. Writer: Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). Work: Ivanhoe.

OTHER GENRES

Edmund Burke (for philosophy and idea of Sublime), Adam Smith (for economy ), Mary
Wollstonecraft (for education of women and social/political rights of education)
THE SUBLIME

Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and
Beautiful (1757) as the landmark treatise on the sublime. Burke defines the sublime as
"whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger... Whatever is in any
sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to
terror." Burke believed that the sublime was something that could provoke terror in the
audience, for terror and pain were the strongest of emotions. Burke also believed
there was an inherent "pleasure" in this emotion. Anything that is great, infinite or
obscure could be an object of terror and the sublime, for there was an element of the
unknown about them.Sublime is terror mixed with astonishment, suspension, horror,
admiration, reverence, respect, danger, grater than human comprehension, obscure.
Sublime is love & death.Kant distinguishes the sublime from the beautiful: the latter is in
fact referable to the object, to what we look at. The Beautiful can be a painting by
Magritte, a song by Pear Jam or a technical gesture by Messi. In all these cases we
experience the beauty, but in relation to something that is finished, concluded and that
therefore we are able to bring back into our rational schemes. The sublime starts
from something indefinite or unknown, which is not concluded in a limitation of an
object. It can be mathematical or dynamic sublime: mathematical identifies what is
absolutely great, beyond any comparison, the dynamic sublime is instead something that
arouses fear and fascination at the same time, like the sight of a volcanic eruption or a
storm, something that makes us feel human finitude.