Lecture Notes prepared by

Rhea Agibuay
Romanticism
William Wordsworth: Poetry is the
spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings…recollected in tranquility.

Ann Wodlief: Literature should

have a heart, not rules.
Part of the American Renaissance in Literature

Masterpieces:
• Emily Dickinson’s poems

• Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin

• Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-reliance

• Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and The

House of Seven Gables
• Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick
• Henry David Thoreau’s Walden
• Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass
Asserted the lofty ideals of democracy, the
value of individuals regardless of class and
education.

Literary nationalists called for a unique

American literary style to distinguish it from
British literature.
I wander’d lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch’d in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I in a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
 Theory that things exist objectively: the
theory that things such as universals, moral
facts, and theoretical scientific entities exist
independently of people's thoughts and
perceptions.

 Theory that statements have truth values: the

theory that every declarative statement is
either true or false, regardless of whether this
can be verified.
 Broadly defined as "the faithful representation of
reality", realism in the arts is the attempt to
represent subject matter truthfully,
without artificiality and avoiding artistic
conventions, implausible, exotic and
supernatural elements.

 Realism as a movement in literature was based

on "objective reality", and focused on showing
everyday, quotidian activities and life, primarily
among the middle or lower class society, without
romantic idealization or dramatization.
 The literary critic Ian Watt states in The Rise of
the Novel, modern realism "begins from the
position that truth can be discovered by the
individual through the senses" and as such "it has
its origins in Descartes and Locke, and received
its first full formulation by Thomas Reid in the
middle of the eighteenth century."

 19th-century realism was in its turn a reaction to

Romanticism, and for this reason it is also
commonly derogatorily referred as traditional or
"bourgeois realism".
 Artistic movement advocating realistic
description: in art or literature, a movement
or school advocating factual or realistic
description of life, including its less pleasant
aspects.

 Belief in religious truth from nature: a belief

that all religious truth is derived from nature
and natural causes, and not from revelation.
 Doctrine rejecting spiritual explanations of
world: a system of thought that rejects all
spiritual and supernatural explanations of the
world and holds that science is the sole basis
of what can be known.

 In literature, it is applied especially to Zola,

Maupassant, and other 19th-century French
writers.
 A literary movement or tendency from the 1880s
to 1930s that used detailed realism to suggest
that social conditions, heredity, and environment
had inescapable force in shaping human
character..

 Naturalistic writers were influenced by Charles

Darwin's theory of evolution. Whereas realism
seeks only to describe subjects as they really are,
naturalism also attempts to determine
"scientifically" the underlying forces (e.g., the
environment or heredity) influencing the actions
of its subjects.
 Naturalistic works often include supposed
sordid subject matter, for example, Émile
Zola's frank treatment of sexuality, as well as
a pervasive pessimism.
 Naturalistic works tend to focus on the darker
aspects of life, including poverty, racism,
violence, prejudice, disease,
corruption, prostitution, and filth. As a result,
naturalistic writers were frequently criticized
for focusing too much on human vice and
misery.
 Emphasize that the larger function of
literature is to teach morality and to probe
philosophical issues.

 Literature is interpreted within a context of

the philosophical thought of a period or
group.
 Existentialism, humanism.
 Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus –
existentialism
 Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter – the
effects of sin on the human soul.
 Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Evening – duty takes precedence over beauty
and pleasure.
Why am I here?
 philosophical movement centered on
individual existence: a philosophical
movement begun in the 19th century that
denies that the universe has any intrinsic
meaning or purpose.

 It requires people to take responsibility for

their own actions and shape their own
destinies.
IF A THORN WOUNDS ME
Amado Nervo

If a thorn wounds me, I draw back from it,

I do not hate the thorn. If hating me
Some base hand pierces me with malice blind,
Silent I turn away, and go to find
A purer air of love and charity.
Rancor? For what? Has good e’er sprung from it?
No wound it staunches, puts no evil right.
Scarce has my rose tree time to bear its flowers;
It wastes no vital sap on thorns of spite,
And if my foe should near my rose tree pass
He shall pinch from it many a fragrant bud;
And if he sees in them a vivid red,
And taint will be the redness of my blood—
Blood drawn by his will of yesterday,
In hatred that it seemed could ever cease,
And which the rose tree now in perfume sweet
Returns to him, changed to a flower of peace.
 Belief in human-based morality

 A system of thought that is based on

the values, characteristics, and
behavior that are believed to be best
in human beings, rather than on any
supernatural authority.
GOD SAID, “I MADE A MAN…”
Doveglion

God said, "I made a man Then spoke he the man of gold:
Out of clay- 'I will not
But so bright he, he spun Murder thee! I do but
Himself to brightest Day Measure thee. Hold

Till he was all shining gold Thy peace.' And this I did.
And oh, But I was curious
He was handsome to behold! Of this so regal head.
But in his hands held he a bow 'Give thy name!'- 'Sir! Genius.'"

Aimed at me who created

Him. And I said,
'Wouldst murder me
Who am thy Fountainhead!'
 Criticism which states that an author’s
experiences affect the way he or she develops
a literary work.
 Sylvia Plath (1932-1963), American poet and
prose writer, noted for her intensely personal
and brutally honest poems. Plath’s work has
grown in influence and popularity since her
suicide at age 30. She is widely regarded as
one the first feminist poets and an icon of the
women’s movement.
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
 The criticism which states that the historical
events in which a story is written influences
how the literary piece is developed.
 Science of interpreting texts: the science and
methodology of interpreting texts, especially the
books of the Bible.
 Theology of religious concepts: the branch of
theology that is concerned with explaining or
interpreting religious concepts, theories, and
principles.