The Romantic Period (1785-1832)
Moved away from "empirical" and rational worldview
Looked to nature to stimulate imagination
Revolutionary and Napoleonic period in France (1789-1815)
Inspired liberation of self and expression from a totalitarian government
Was inspired by Haitian Revolution (1791)
Haitian Revolution (1791-1804)
Self-liberated slaves in revolt of French colonial rule in Saint-Domingue
Became an independent nation
Enclosure Act of 1845
Common farmland was divided among wealthy landowners
Forced many families to move to the cities
Expansion of the Middle Class
The Industrial Revolution
Created a large wealth disparity in England
Factory work instead of agricultural work
Class struggle
Broke down aristocracy/rules (Romantic theme)
Aesthetics and Politics
Heightened sense of "individuality" following revolutions (individual feeling and experiences)
Romanticism as a way to connect back to nature and past following industrialization
Slave Trade
Transatlantic Slave Trade (Europe, to Africa, to America) abolished in 1807
Emancipation of slaves in 1834-38
"The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa" by Olaudah Equiano
Abolitionist piece that illustrated the life of a slave in the slave trade with authenticity
Chronicled life as a slave from Nigeria to Virginia and England
People as property: "torture devices," denial of intellect and freedom (despite paying for it)
"Gustavus Vasa" (Swedish nobleman) as baptismal
"Code-switching" and humble tone in order to appeal to a white audience
DJ Vassa
Speculated that Equiano had not been born in Nigeria, but in South Carolina
Equiano as a "DJ" because he mixed different slave narratives to create a singular narrative
"Simon Lee" by William Wordsworth
Effect of Enclosure Act (Simon Lee's poverty)
Wordsworth's POV: poem is about how good a guy Wordsworth is for helping Simon Lee
"London, 1802" by William Wordsworth
Petrarch sonnet
Iambic pentameter
A call to return to older times
Nation needs someone like Milton (...Wordsworth)
Petrarch Sonnet
Octave: first 8 lines
Sestet: 6 lines
Volta: shift in the poem
Iambic Pentameter
5 iambs
Iamb: unstressed, stressed
Troches: stressed, unstressed
Conversation poem
Speaking to someone that doesn't respond
Describes the external natural setting
Uses the external setting to look internally
"Tintern Abbey" by William Wordsworth
The "Sublime" (to be swamped by wild + overwhelming rush of experience)
Material world vs your perception (lines 106-107)
One "Universal Being" that connects everyone (AKA transcendetalism) (lines 44-46)
Conversation poem
"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" by William Wordsworth
Drew from Dorothy Wordswoth's journal on dandelions
Happiness in the company of nature
Image of nature can be drawn on command (lines 21-22)
"The Eolian Harp" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Conversation poem
Use of similes: harp being played as a "lover" by the wind (lines 15-16)
Synesthesia: mixing up of the senses (lines 27-29)
Transcendentalism through "one intellectual breeze" (lines 47-48)
Spiritus: Latin word that links wind, breath, soul, and inSPIRation
God is incomprehensible; respects Christianity, speculates nature as evidence of God
"Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" by Percy Bysshe Shelley
"Intellectual:" nonmaterial, that which is beyond access to the human senses
Poem attempts to describe the undescribable
Mutually constitutive: cannot have good without bad; light without dark (lines 44-45)
Intellectual beauty comes in cycles like the seasons (lines 57-58)
Imagery of Intellectual Beauty casting as light over trees/landscape (first stanza)
"From the Grasmere Journals" by Dorothy Wordsworth
Detailed accounts of nature; her job as a "secretary" to William; close relationship with her brother
Thursday, April 15th: William Wordsworth used used Dorothy's prose to write in verse (dandelions in "I Wandered as Lonely as a Cloud"); literal and figurative language about nature
Tuesday, May 4: Wordsworth wrote "The Leech Gatherer" from Dorothy's account of a leech gatherer from Friday, October 3.
Satire
Use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to criticize people's stupidity or vices
Irony
-Two contradicting meanings of the same situation, event, image, sentence, phrase, or story
Refers to the difference between expectations and reality.
Parody
A work that imitates an existing original work in order to make fun of or comment upon it.
Derives from the Greek word "parodia," which referred to a type of poem which imitated the style of epic poems but with mockery and light comedy
Novel of Manners
Novel written by women for women in order to dictate how to be a gentlewoman/proper lady
The Gothic
Sensationalism, melodrama, and supernatural
Gothic castles with distinctive architecture, secret passages, ghosts, trap doors, and skeletons in closets
Radcliffe's Gothic: shifts emphasis to heightened consciousness of heroine
Gothic Preoccupation with incest, rape, and murder now understood as political allegory for the age of Revolution
Volume 1: "Northanger Abbey" by Jane Austen
Satirization of the "Novel of Manners"
Biographical Notice: Jane Austen's brother described his sister as a perfect, proper "heroine"
Catherine Morland as atypical heroine; loves "The Mysteries of Udolpho" by Anne Radcliffe; naive + honest
Chapter 3: Tilney and Catherine's first conversation (possibly poking fun at small-talk); Catherine does not keep a journal
Chapter 5: Austen addresses critics of the novel (poetic verse was seen as superior)
Chapter 14: Catherine sees history as, in a way, a construct just like the fiction that she reads; Jane Austen is sarcastic about "imbecility" being the only way a woman can charm a man
Volume 2: "Northanger Abbey"
"Gothic" section of the novel (as a backdrop for Catherine's maturity)
Isabella moving on from James Morland to Frederick Tilney because he's richer.
Henry fell for Catherine because she showed interest in him first.
Chapter 4: Catherine concerned for her brother and Isabella; Tilney asserts that Frederick is not serious with Isabella
Chapter 6: Catherine creates her own "gothic horror" scenario based on the story Henry Tilney told her.
Chapter 7: Catherine sees General Tilney as a villain from a gothic novel
Chapter 9: Catherine runs into Henry when trying to snoop in his mother's room; confronted about her behavior
Chapter 10: Catherine shows maturity by cutting Isabella out of her life.
Chapter 13: Catherine is booted out of Northanger Abbey by General Tilney without money or an attendant (he found out she wasn't rich); ironic because General Tilney DID end up becoming the villain
Chapter 16: Catherine and Henry's proposal i granted by General Tilney because Eleanor married rich; fast pace possibly poking fun at the "happily-ever-afters" in romance novels
Inversion of the Poetic Hierarchy
Changing the order of syntactically correct (as a critique on the elite; to emphasize certain subjects/objects)
"Simon Lee" example: "Few months of life has he in store" (line 57) ---> instead of "He has a few months of life in store"
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