• big departure from science, emphasis on arts

• best world was nature, emphasized truth & beauty

• instead of man being in charge of nature, man would admire nature

KEY FIGURES:

• Wordsworth

• Shelley

• Keats

• some other ones that olivia didn’t get

REVOLUTIONS:

• American Revolution - pre romantic era

  • lots of Brits sided with American ideas of freedom and equality

• French Revolution

  • many people liked the ideas of the revolution

  • they did not have any French family so they cared less about it

    • unlike American revolution where they did have colonizer family and therefore did care about whether they lived or died and such

  • brits were however a little iffy about overthrowing the government

  • and then the Reign of Terror made them hate reform

    • england had an anti-political reform kick for a while after this

• France declared war on England

  • which made the Brits even more patriotic and hate France even more

• Napoleon happened: “emperor” of France (self-declared)

  • expanded French control to the edge of Russia

  • he was initially successful (key word initially)

  • he was defeated at sea by some Lord named Nelson during his attempt to attack England

  • he was defeated fully at Waterloo, Belgium, by a Duke named Wellington

    • Nelson and Wellington then became heroes

• despite Patriotism, there was social conflict

• industrialization really messed things up

  • workers protested new machinery (Luddites)

  • some (workers? i think?) were made to die, which the British did not like

  • the government sided with employers though

    • polarization between employers and workers started

• Things That Were Legalized At This Time:

  • labor unions

  • Catholicism

• Reform Act (1832) - extended voting rights to non-landowners (middle class)

• slavery was abolished

• factory safety laws were put into place

GEORGE IV & OTHER ROYALS

• Kings during the Romantic Era were kind of shit

• George was originally regent and couldn’t really do anything

• he was very unpopular

• considered “dandy,” which meant he cared a lot about his looks

• artistic, bought a lot of expensive artwork

  • people felt like this was a waste of money but jokes on them bc this art is worth a fortune now

• he was married to a woman named Caroline, but he hated her

  • he actually hated her so much he had to get drunk to bring himself to marry her

• the people, however, loved Caroline

• George also had a girlfriend, Ms. Fitzherbert, who was an older woman i believe (cougar)

  • some stories say he eventually secretly married her, but since she was a widow it wasn’t allowed

• When George IV died, his brother William took the throne

  • he was a good guy, but also a shit king

• after that was Queen Victoria, who started the next Era

LITERATURE

• Writers:

  • Likes: freedom

  • Dislikes: indistrualization

• wrote about the glory of nature

• rejected old forms of poetry and created new forms and topics

• 3 GROUPS:

  • Pre-Romantics

  • First Generation Romantics

  • Second Generation Romantics

• First Generation:

  • Wordsworth, Colridge, etc

  • inspired by Rousseau, who wanted man to abandon social conventions and live on instinct

    • i have no idea what this means and i don’t think they did either

  • Lyrical Ballads: a book by Wordsworth and Colridge

    • poetry should spring from “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” … “reflected on in tranquility”

    • poetry should be emotional rather than logical or thought through

    • subjects of poetry should be ordinary events or ones “colored by imagination”

    • book wasn’t well received at first, but later it became the pinnacle of the Romantic Era

  • Second Generation:

    • periodicals became a part of everyday life

    • Shelley, Austen, Sir Walter Scott → novelists