British Literature Unit 4 Notes

The Romantic Era was highly influenced by the following:

• The Industrial Revolution 

• The French Revolution 

• The Napoleonic Wars

promoted no other reforms but abolitionism because of conservative backlash and the threat of Napoleon made the political climate unfavorable to other reforms

Prime Minister William Pitt

Napoleon’s final defeat was at?

Battle of Waterloo 

limited grain imports and increased the cost of food at a time when average citizens were already struggling financially.

Corn Laws

all knowledge is in some way a creation of the individual mind because people can be sure of only their own perceptions

Idealism

god is separate and absent from creation

Deism

god is within nature and mankind - a World Spirit

Transcendentalism

the belief that human society can be made better and better through reform

Progressivism

human misery is caused by society, so man needs to go back to nature to be happy

Primitivism

dominated Romantic literature

poetry

developed significantly in this Romantic era

Essay and novel

During the Victorian Age, England was called what because it led the world in its economic productivity and trade?

"workshop of the world”

replaced Paris as the center of European civilization

London

The two major legal reforms of the Victorianism era were?

expansion of the vote and the easing of labor inequities

resistant to government regulation

liberals

formerly Tories

Conservatives

The single most important invention of the Victorianism era?

railroad

lowered the price of goods, brought people closer together, and brought England wealth and power.

railroad

India was called what because it was rich in resources?

“jewel in the crown”

prime minister who encouraged expansion

Benjamin Disraeli

prime minister who resisted expansion from early in his career

William Gladstone

The most important genre during the Victorian Era

novel

also diversified in topic but tended to be addressed to an upper-class, well-educated, and male audience who had a taste for a more difficult style of writing

Essays

arose to encompass the identities (vocational, social, and interest of a wide variety of readers)

periodicals