Revolution

&

Romance

. . . a transition period.
 REVOLUTION
• The term Industrial Revolution
applied to technological change
was common in the 1830s.
Louis-Auguste Blanqui in 1837
spoke of la révolution industrielle.
Friedrich Engels in The Condition
of the Working Class in England
in 1844 spoke of "an industrial
revolution, a revolution which at
the same time changed the
whole of civil society."
The Industrial Revolution started in England around
1733 with the first cotton mill. A more modern world
had begun. As new inventions were being created,
factories followed soon thereafter. England wanted to
keep its industrialization a secret, so they prohibited
anyone who had worked in a factory to leave the
country. Meanwhile, Americans offered a significant
reward to anyone who could build a cotton-spinning
machine in the United States. Samuel Slater, who had
been an apprentice in an English cotton factory,
disguised himself and came to America. Once here, he
reconstructed a cotton-spinning machine from
memory. He then proceeded to build a factory of his
own. The Industrial Revolution had arrived in the
United States.
The Industrial Revolution brought severe
consequences to society. Factory owners, needing
cheap, unskilled labor, profited greatly by using
children and women to run the machines. By the age
of 6, many children were already working 14 hours a
day in factories! These kids had no free time to do
anything else and earned low wages. Some got sick
and died because of the toxic fumes, while others were
severely injured and sometimes killed working at the
dangerous machines in factories. Obviously, the
Industrial Revolution had both good and bad sides
•
Romanticism
Romantic writing, included poetry, prose (essays of various kinds and informal writings such as
letters), and the Gothic fiction that was being written at the same time. The best known poets who
wrote during the period were
• Blake, “Auguries of Innocence”
• Wordsworth, “Mutability”
• Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner “
• Byron, “She walks in beauty”
• Shelley, “Time”and
• Keats, “How Many Bards Gild the Lapses of Time!”
but yhere were other poets, including many women poets whose work is now arousing
considerable interest. The poets were accompanied by a brilliant group of essayists, such as Lamb,
Hazlitt, De Quincey, and Peacock, and a remarkable group of Gothic fiction authors, such as
• Ann Radcliffe, “A Sicillian Romance”
• Matthew Lewis, “The Monk”
• Mary Shelley, and “Frankenstein”
• Charles Maturin. “Melmoth the Wanderer”
This literature has come to be known as Romantic, a term that has been much debated: no single
definition appears to meet all the different aspects (and paradoxes) of the period. Nor is the period
itself well defined: while the most important writing associated with the term takes place between
1789 (when the French Revolution began) and 1824 (the death of Byron), we include many other
important selections written before and after these dates, from Thomas Warton to the early
Tennyson.
Romanticism
The writers were dependent on various features peculiar to their time:
• a reaction against previous literary styles, arguments with eighteenth century and earlier
philosophers,
• the decline in formal Anglican worship and the rise of dissenting religious sects,
• and the rapid and unprecedented industrialization of Britain and consequent changes in its
countyside.

Above all, however, it was the impact of the French Revolution which gave the period its
most distinctive and urgent concerns. Following the Revolution itself, which began in 1789,
Britain was at war with France on continental Europe for nearly twenty years while massive
repression of political dissent was implemented at home. Against this background much of
the major writing of the period, including its Gothic fiction, can be seen as a response to
changing political and social conditions in one respect or another. Given the political
repression, for example, much of the fiction can be understood as an indirect exploration of
issues of gender and power whose direct expression was either unthinkable or censored.

• http://www.ualberta.ca/~dmiall/ROMCDINF.HTM
 Romanticism
• It was a revolutionary time for poetics: arguably it was during this time that the
foundations of modern poetry were laid. The poets debated the new
significance they wished to see in poetry: they wrote accounts of their
theoretical beliefs, and wrote too with a remarkable openness in letters, diaries,
and notebooks about the process of writing, their friendships, their travels, and
their metaphysical inquiries. The significance of the period can sometimes be
grasped more readily from such incidental writing than it can from the poetry.

• The poets are also notable as a group for their travels and for making important
and often precise use of landscape. To help the reader locate the sites in Britain
and Europe which were important to the Romantic poets.

• The poets knew one another to various degrees, or were linked in significant
ways to other contemporary writers, such as Godwin: these relationships
influenced and at times were responsible for the poems they wrote. It is also
important to gain a sense of what contemporary political events were taking
place.
• The industrial revolution started in England with the invention of the steam engine in the late
1600’s and continued with various inventions like steam locomotives, cars, textile mills and
machines that can shape and treat metal. The consequences of these inventions and all they
brought with them have played a vital part in how the world is today. A thing that will be focused
upon in this text is the cultural aspect of the changes the industrial revolution brought with it.

• This lead to the creation of a new social class, this was the middle class. The middle class were a
class of people who did “intellectual” work such as being doctors, lawyers, journalist, teachers
etc. These people made enough money to get by and still have spare time at their disposal. They
didn’t have to worry about starvation or not having enough money to pay their rent.

• New brilliant minds in literature such as Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson on the Brönte
sisters gave out bestsellers in their own lifetime in which they criticized the direction in which the
society was developing. Philosophers like John Locke and John Stuart Mill came up with many
interesting thoughts concerning the democracy. There was a grand wakening in the general
population as a consequence of the industrial revolution. Because people made more money and
had more spare time they had more time to realize themselves. This combined with the
astounding amounts of colonies the English were in possession of and the amount of people
speaking the language, England was well on its way to be the leading power in the world both
when it came to political power and cultural power.
 http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com/entry/2007-06-21T05_25_11-07_00

• She Walks in Beauty

•

•        1 She walks in beauty, like the ______________

•               2      Of cloudless climes and starry _____________;
•        3 And all that's best of dark and ______________
•               4      Meet in her aspect and her ________________:
•        5 Thus mellow'd to that tender _______________
•               6      Which heaven to gaudy day _______________.
•

•        7 One shade the more, one ray the ___________,

•               8      Had half impair'd the nameless _____________
•        9 Which waves in every raven _______________,
•             10      Or softly lightens o'er her __________________;
•             11 Where thoughts serenely sweet _____________
•             12      How pure, how dear their dwelling-___________.
•

•             13 And on that cheek, and o'er that _____________,

•             14      So soft, so calm, yet ______________________,
•             15 The smiles that win, the tints that ____________,
•             16      But tell of days in goodness ________________,
•             17 A mind at peace with all ___________________,
•             18      A heart whose love is _____________________! George Gordon Lord Byron (1788-1824)
 Romantic Poetry samples
Mutability
From low to high doth The most famous of Blake's lyrical poems
dissolution climb,
is Auguries of Innocence, with its
And sink from high to
low, along a scale memorable opening stanza:
Of awful notes, whose
concord shall not fail:
A musical but To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a
melancholy chime, Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Which they can hear
who meddle not with Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
crime,
Nor avarice, nor over- And Eternity in an hour.
anxious care.
Truth fails not; but her
The Ancient of Days
outward forms that bear
1794; Relief etching
with watercolor, 23.3
The longest date do melt like frosty rime, x 16.8 cm; British
That in the morning whitened hill and plain Museum, London
And is no more; drop like the tower sublime
Of yesterday, which royally did wear
His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain
Some casual shout that broke the silent air,
Or the unimaginable touch of Time. William Blake
William Wordsworth
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner relates the
supernatural events experienced by a mariner on a long sea
voyage. The Mariner stops a man who is on the way to
awedding ceremony, and begins to recite his story. The
Wedding-Guest's reaction turns from bemusement and
impatience to fascination as the Mariner's story progresses.
• The Mariner's tale begins with his ship descending on their
journey; despite initial good fortune, the ship is driven off
course by a storm and, driven south, eventually
reachesAntartica. An albatross appears and leads them out
of the Antarctic; even as the albatross is praised by the
ship's crew, the Mariner shoots the bird down: (with my
cross-bow / I shot the albatross). The other sailors are angry
with the Mariner, as they thought the albatross brought the
South Wind that led them out of the Antarctic: (Ah, wretch,
said they / the bird to slay / that made the breeze to blow).
However, the sailors change their minds when the weather
becomes warmer and the mist disappears: ('Twas right, said
they, such birds to slay / that bring the fog and mist). The crime
arouses the wrath of supernatural spirits who then pursue
the ship "from the land of mist and snow"; the south wind which
had initially led them from the land of ice now sends the ship
into uncharted waters, where it is becalmed.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
• Here, however, the sailors change their minds again and
blame the Mariner for the torment of their thirst. In anger,
the crew forces the mariner to wear the dead albatross
about his neck, perhaps to illustrate the burden he must
suffer from killing it (Ah! Well a-day! What evil looks / Had I
from old and young! / Instead of the cross, the albatross / About
my neck was hung). Eventually, in an eerie passage, the ship
encounters a ghostly vessel. On board are Death (a skeleton) and the
"Night-mare Life-in-Death" (a deathly-pale woman), who are playing
dice for the souls of the crew. With a roll of the dice, Death wins the
lives of the crew members and Life-in-Death the life of the mariner, a
prize she considers more valuable. Her name is a clue as to the
mariner's fate; he will endure a fate worse than death as punishment
for his killing of the albatross.
One by one all of the crew members die, but the Mariner lives on,
seeing for seven days and nights the curse in the eyes of the crew's
corpses, whose last expressions remain upon their faces. Eventually,
the Mariner's curse is lifted when he sees sea creatures swimming in
the water. Despite his cursing them as "slimy things" earlier in the
poem, he suddenly sees their true beauty and blesses them (a spring
of love gush'd from my heart and I bless'd them unaware); suddenly,
as he manages to pray, the albatross falls from his neck and his guilt
is partially expiated. The bodies of the crew, possessed by good
spirits, rise again and steer the ship back home, where it sinks in a
whirlpool, leaving only the Mariner behind. A hermit on the mainland
had seen the approaching ship, and had come to meet it with a pilot
and the pilot's boy in a boat. This hermit may have been a priest who
took a vow of isolation. When they pull him from the water, they
think he is dead, but when he opens his mouth, the pilot has a fit.
The hermit prays, and the Mariner picks up the oars to row. The
pilot's boy goes crazy and laughs, thinking the mariner is the devil,
and says "The Devil knows how to row." As penance for shooting the
Albatross, the Mariner is forced to wander the earth and tell his story,
and teach a lesson to those he meets:
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
The agony returns and his heart burns
until he tells his story.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
 How Many Bards Gild the Lapses of Time!

How many bards gild the lapses of time!

A few of them have ever been the food
Of my delighted fancy, -I could brood
Over their beauties, earthly, or sublime:
And often, when I sit me down to rhyme,
These will in throngs before my mind intrude:
But no confusion, no disturbance rude

Time Do they occasion; 'tis a pleasing chime.

So the unnumbered sounds that evening store;
The songs of birds -the whispering of the leaves -
Percy Shelley The voice of waters -the great bell that heaves
With solemn sound, -and thousand others more,
That distance of recognizance bereaves,
Makes pleasing music, and not wild uproar.
Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years,
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears!
Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
Claspest the limits of mortality,
And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;
John Keats
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,
Who shall put forth on thee,
Unfathomable Sea?
• Mrs. Ann Ward Radcliff (b.1764-d.1823) is the English
novelist considered the mother of Gothic Romance Novels,
starring damsels in distress.  She introduced to a wide, popular
audience in her novels of the late 1700s:
– the beautiful, virtuous yet emotionally delicate (oft-
fainting) heroines 
– valiant, hunky, male love interests of royal or, better-yet,
secret royal or aristocratic birth
– exotic settings set in the past for the best romantic effect,
Italy and Latin lovers preferred
– weather conditions and landscapes that mirrored the
emotional states of the characters (Hers is the line 'It was
a dark and stormy night...'; think Wuthering Heights.)
– languid descriptions of the emotional states associated
with falling in love, and all the trials of being in love
– generous use of romantic castles, abbeys, convents,
palaces, ruins, all conveniently supplied with secret
doors, passages and dungeons
– revelations of unknown connections between
characters such as long-lost relations, secret parents,
brothers and sisters
– rigid codes of honor restricting the characters' choices
and attaching greater  risks to any tempting romantic
engagements
– loads of unbelievable coincidences, all adding to the fun
•

Shelley was challenged by Lord Byron and Percy
Shelley to write the most frightening ghost story of all
time.  Mary Shelley revealed in the 1831 edition of
Frankenstein that the story had come from a dream she
had, in which she described what she saw: “the hideous
phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the
working of some powerful engine show signs of life,
and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion.” 
Life, death, biology, anatomy, and the supernatural were
the main influences and themes used by Mary Shelley.
When I placed my head upon my
       pillow, I did not sleep, nor
could I be said to think. . . . I saw ­
with shut eyes, but acute mental
vision­I saw the pale student of
unhallowed arts kneeling beside the
thing he had put together. I saw the
hideous phantasm of a man
stretched out, and then, on the
working of some powerful
engine, show signs of life, and stir
with an uneasy, half-vital motion.
Frightful must it be; for  supremely
frightful would be the effect of any
human endeavor to mock the
stupendous Creator of the world.
               ­Mary Shelley,
Frankenstein

Lewis, Matthew G.
9 July 1775 - 10 May 1818
Like Mary Shelley, Lewis made a huge
impact with his teenage (and only) novel
The Monk, which more or less defined the
far edge of sensational Gothicism when it
was published in 1796. Indeed, the
notoriety of the novel was such that Lewis
was forever after known as "Monk" Lewis,
and the fact he served as a Member of
Parliament only heightened the shock
value. Lewis went on to write a number of
plays, poems, and translations, many of
which featured Gothic themes and motifs.
As a playwright Lewis was rather
successful, his melodramatic flair finding an
appreciate audience in the days of
Romantic drama, although Lewis
abandoned the theater when he inherited
his family's West Indian sugar plantations.
Irish writer (and great-uncle of
Oscar Wilde) best known as the
author of Melmoth the Wanderer,
the work considered by many to be
the last traditional "Gothic" novel.
Melmoth may be less the last of its
kind that one of the first of a new
kind, or at least a transitional work
that marks the evolution away
from conventional Gothic and its
reliance on external atmospherics
to a more psychological Gothic.
We're still a long way from "The
Turn of the Screw," to be sure, for
Maturin does not forsake
mouldering ruins, subterranean
spaces, depraved villains, skeleton
monks and the like, but his
powerful interest in the psychology
of suffering and alienation makes
this something much more
sophisticated than most early
Gothics.
Maturin, Charles
25 September 1782 - 30 October 1824