Early Romantics Lecture

Romanticism

“Spirit of revolution”

• Innate goodness of humanity

• Nature as inspiration

• Democracy

• Imagination and emotion

Romantic Interests

• Common man, individual - anti-authoritarian

• Medieval, country, wild landscapes - anti-society

• Night & death - terrifying and supernatural

The Big Six of Romantics

Early 20th Cent

• Blake - Woodsworth - Coleridge

Late 20th Cent

• Byron - Shelley - Keats

Revolutionary Thinkers

• John Locke (England) - natural rights

• Robespierre - radicalism

• Rosseau - soc corrupts ppl; social contract

Romantics: The French Revolution

Violent revolt

• Apocalypse, active God

• Consequences:

  • Reign of Terror in France

  • Repression in England

Romantics: The Industrial Revolution

Destroying nature

• Agriculture → manufacture

• Capitalist expansion

• Consequences:

  • Pollution

  • Mass poverty

William Wordsworth: Early Life

Chooses individual imagination

• Born in the Lake District

• Orphaned at 13

• Studied at Cambridge (and returned)

• Explored France during the Revolution

• Marries Annette Vallon, births Caroline

Lyrical Ballads

Wordsworth & Coleridge (publ. anon)

• Collections of short verse (lyrics)

• Influenced by popular folk anthologies

William Wordsworth: Poetry

“Return to a lost ideal”

• Overflow of powerful feeling

• Criticizes Neoclassical Values

• Lyric: short, personal, focus on individual

….Tintern Abbey

• Internalized quest

• Power of memory

• Sublime: experience of the transcendent ~ nature

• Encounter b/w mind and nature

William Wordsworth: Later Life

• Poet Laureate

• Conservative

• Lost poeticism

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Personal Life

• “Potential man” - great in promise but not performance

• Opium addiction

• Lecturer; Sage of Highgate, intellectual circle

• Conservative

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poetry

• Fantastic

• Folk material, allusive

• Continuity of mind and nature

Kubla Khan

• Destructive sources of inspiration

• Art & relig - supernatural

Themes

• Poetry - intuitive, emotional, irrational

• Sublime - unconscious nature of man

• Poetic temperament, tormented prophet

• Redirection of destructive forces