1. Historical and Social background

Lecture 5. Romanticism (1780-1830)

1. Historical and Social background

2. Romanticism: predecessors and basic principles

3. The Older Generation Poets

4. The Younger Generation Poets

5. The Novel

1. Historical and Social background

During the second half of the 18th century, economic and social changes took place in England. During the reign of King George III (1760-1820) the face of England changed. Britain continued to develop economically and politically. Both the French and industrial revolutions placed enormous pressure on the stability of British society but judicious reform brought about enough changes to save the country from a social revolution.

The Industrial Revolution, which had begun in the middle of the 18th century, was no sudden change from home manufacturing to large-scale factory production. In the second half of the 18th century that the process became rapid and spread all over Britain. New industries sprang up and new processes were ap­plied to the manufacture of traditional products. The Industrial Revolution brought two kinds of changes, technological- and socio-economic-cultural changes. The non-industrial changes included agricultural improvements, economic changes, political changes (new political innovations corresponding to the needs of an industrialized society), sweeping social changes such as growth of cities, development of working-class movements, the emergence of new patterns of authority, cultural transformations. Mines and factories had changed the face of the country. But mechanization did not improve the life of the common people. Most people continued to live and work in the same dreadful conditions. The cities became even more overcrowded and unsanitary. Conditions in the factories didn’t improve either. Now the economic and social ills were clearly seen by the people: the diseases of industrial towns, the misery of child labour, the crowds of underpaid workers.

Those who were horrified at the exploitation of factory workers and the degradation of the cities found inspiration in the ideas of the French revolution. (‘French Revolution’ means the movement in France, between 1787 and 1799, which reached its first climax in 1789 (Revolution of 1789). The toppling of a despotic regime by Napoleon’s republican forces was greeted by some in Britain as a chance to channel the discontent of the masses into social revolution. A high point in the process was a rally of over 60 000 people new Manchester in 1819 to protest against the rise in the price of bread. Eleven people were killed in what is now known as the Peterloo massacre. It was an example of the government’s policy of coercion which aimed at stifling all forms of protest by force. In 1817 a Coercion Act was passed that banned all public meetings. However, faced with an increasingly difficult situation and realizing that the society would have to change to keep pace with economic progress, the government introduced an ambitious package of reforms:

1. In 1825 Trade Unions were recognized and factory owners formed their own associations;

2. 1829 police force was established

3. Non-protestants were allowed to have state jobs

4. Businessmen and industrialists were given the vote (1832)

5. The Factory act of 1833 limited working hours and prevented children under nine from working

6. A taxation system was introduced

7. A system of national primary education was set up in1834

8. A local government was established in every town.

This changes didn’t change Britain overnight and the process of reform continued into Victorian times.

British domestic life was greatly influenced by the war with France that lasted for more than 20 years. During the Napoleonic wars, there was no stop to Britain colonial expansion. Over 20 new territories became British possession. Besides, to secure British rule in Ireland, the Act of Union was passed in 1801. Ireland was now an integral part of the UK.

The above mentioned historical events changed Britain radically. A large rural society, where people lived in small communities and led relatively simple lives, became urban and industrialized. The social price for economic progress was high. Many people worked and lived in appalling conditions. This profound social changes produce the climate of turbulence and instability. A strong desire to break with the past emerged.

2. Romanticism: predecessors and basic principles

The Romantic period in Europe saw the end of the dominance of Renaissance tradition. It saw the fragmentation of consciousness away from the cultural authority of classical Rome. One result was the rediscovery of local cultures, and the flowering of vernacular literatures.

The word ‘romantic’ comes from the French word for medieval epic sagas “roman”. The term was initially used in mid-seventeenth century in a derogatory way. It was thought that the characters of medieval sagas were unrealistic and so the word ‘romantic’ was used to mean ‘exaggerated, unconvincing’. Later, it took on a positive meaning and was used to describe the expression of feelings and emotions. Romanticism was a European movement which involved writers, artists and philosophers in Germany, France, Italy and England.

The date that is conventionally linked to the start of the Romantic period is 1798 – the year in which Wordsworth and Coleridge published the ‘Lyrical Ballads’. However evidence of a new cultural sensibility had already emerged in the 18^th century in the following forms:

1. The sentimental, melancholic introspection of Thomas Gray and Graveyard poets.

2. The growing interest in the irrational side of man’s nature which is evident in the appearing Gothic works (Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe)

3. The influential work of the French philosopher Jean-Jacque Rousseau, who questioned the importance of reason

4. The theories of German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who questioned the validity of scientific empiricism

5. The basic principles of the German literary movement known as Storm and Stress: revolted against literary conventions, believed in the cult of genius and regarded nature as a man’s true spiritual environment

6. The reawakening of the interest in ancient Celtic and Nordic literature which foreshadowed romantic interest in the literature of the past

7. Scottish poet Robert Burn’s poems which are chiefly about the simple daily life of rural Scotland. His interest in the beauty of nature and simplicity of rural life foreshadowed the poetic themes of the Romantic period.

It is hard to see the significance of the romantic movement without looking at what it was reacting against. In philosophy the Romantic period saw the reaction against the rationalism of the 18^th century. It was a reaction against a view of the physical world dominated by science, and of mental world by the theories of Locke. The Romantic poets rebelled against the emphasis on the material and on ‘common sense’ that dominated the preceding period. Romantics differed from their predecessors in their attitude to society. The eighteen century had regarded society as a great work of man. For the Romantics society had become an evil force, limiting action and obscuring perception. Thus, the Romantic poets on the whole fled from the city and turned to nature. For them, the nature rather than society was man’s proper setting: man needed the help of nature to fulfill himself. They considered nature to be morally uplifting. They frequently expressed the idea that men had a deep relationship with the natural world.

The Romantic period saw also a shift in religious ideas. Many writers failed to find Christianity satisfying. Romantic poets are noticeable for their search of spiritual reality. In the search for spiritual truth, RP used feelings and imagination.

Imagination had a special role for the Romantics. They viewed the artist as a creator, who used imagination to explore unfamiliar and unseen. Through the power of imagination, the poet could imitate the process of divine creativity. The Romantic poet viewed himself as a prophet preaching in the wildness, a visionary who lived outside respectable society. That’s why the heroes of many Romantic novels and poems are social outcasts.

Another important element in Romanticism was the cult of childhood. RP saw the child as pure and uncorrupted.

Linked to the cult of childhood was Romantic nostalgia for the past. The Middle Ages with its stories of knights were especially popular. Thus old literary forms such as ballads became popular.

The use of symbolism gained popularity as the Romantics struggled for ways to communicate the complexity of human emotions. Elements of nature were often used as symbolic elements, combining two characteristics of Romanticism. Myths and symbols were used within literature to create visual imagery and further illustrate new concepts and ideas

In style, the Romantics preferred boldness over the preceding age's desire for restraint, maximum suggestiveness over the ideal of clarity, free experimentation over the "rules" of composition, genre, and decorum, and they abandoned the accepted conventions for writing. They rejected the idea of imitating classical models as too restrictive of the creative imagination. They wrote in the ‘simple language really used by men’.

Nevertheless, the term Romantic obscures the many differences between the poets and writers of the period. Each of them was highly individual and never considered themselves as part of the movement.

3. The Older Generation Poets

The romantic poets are traditionally grouped into two generations. The poets of the first generation are William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. They were greatly influenced by the French Revolution.

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge are the only two of the Romantic poets who worked for a time in collaboration. Their early carriers show a number of parallels. William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was born in Cockermouth, a little town in the Lake district. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the son of the vicar in Devon. They both went to Cambridge University. Wordsworth was in France in 1791-1792. The spirit of the French Revolution had strongly influenced Wordsworth, and he returned to England strongly influenced by the principles of Rousseau and republicanism. In 1793 “An Evening Walk” and “Descriptive Sketches” were published. They were written in the stylized idiom and vocabulary of the 18th century. After receiving several small legacies, he settled with his sister Dorothy in a small village in Dorset. In 1793 he published his first two books of verse, which received little notice from either the critics or the public.

The young Coleridge wrote and lectured to support republicans. Later he turned from political to social revolution. In 1794 he met the poet Robert Southey, who shared his political and social idealism, and together they planned to establish a small utopian community in the United States. The plan failed due to practical reasons. In 1795 Coleridge married Sarah Fricker, the sister of Southey's fiancée, with whom he was never happy. They settled in Nether Stowey in 1797.

Thus in 1797 Wordsworth and Coleridge were living near each other. The result was one of the most important publications of the Rom. period - a collection of “Lyrical ballads” (1798). The book is a landmark in English Literature. The long preface written by Wordsworth for the second edition (1800) is often considered to be sort of manifesto for the Romantic movement. In it Wordsworth expresses his view on poetry:

1. The language of poetry should be the simple language really used by man;

2. The subject of poetry should consist of ‘incidents and situations from common life’

3. The poets imagination can reveal the inner truth of ordinary things, to which the mind is blind;

4. Poetry is unrestrained spontaneous expression of emotions;

5. The poet is ‘a man speaking to man’. He uses his special gift to show other men the essence of things.

Wordsworth declared his opposition to the convention of ‘poetic diction’, which he thought made the language of poetry artificial. He believed that intuition not reason should guide the poet. He argues that poetry should offer access to the emotions contained in memory. This becomes the subject of his well-known poem “Tintern Abbey” (included into LB).

Wordsworth’s contribution to the collection commonly explore the submerged tragedies of society, sufferings of the old age, poverty, desertion. He writes about basic relationship especially that of parent and child. Some of poems take form of monologues overheard by the poet (The Mad Mother, The Female Vagrant). Others are shaped round the encounter of poet and another person (The Old Cumberland beggar, we are seven). A third sort are tales often founded on some slight incident or anecdote that Wordsworth had heard (the best known is “Idiot Boy).

Wordsworth’s poetry emphasizes the value of childhood experience and the celebration of nature. He glorifies the spirit of man, living in harmony with the nature environment, far from spiritually- bankrupt city. He identified nature with God, and was more pantheistic in his vision than Christian. His poetry celebrates the lives of rural people, whom he saw as being more sincere than people living in the city.

Wordsworth’s insistence on the morally educative influence of nature, on the interrelation of love of nature and love of humanity pervades his long autobiographical poem ‘The Prelude’. The poem was first drafted in 1799, expanded in 1805 and finally published posthumously in 1850. The poem consists of 24 books, it records the ‘growth of the poet’s mind’, describes the crucial experiences and stages of the poet’s life. ‘The Prelude’ is an introspective account of his emotional and spiritual development. It is considered to be his greatest achievement.

His next collection, Poems in Two Volumes (1807), included the well-known “Ode to Duty,” the “Ode: Intimations of Immortality,”, “I wandered lonely as a cloud’ and a number of famous sonnets.

Coleridge’s reputation as a poet is based on a small but magnificent corpus of work. The best expression of his poetic vision came in his collaboration with Wordsworth in the LB. The contribution to the collection of the two poets was very different. Unlike Wordsworth, Coleridge’s work cannot be understood through the lens of the 1802 preface to the second edition of that book. While Wordsworth wrote poems inspired by the simple things of everyday life, Coleridge turned to the past for mystery and took the readers into the fantastic world of the imagination. Wordsworth asked the readers to enjoy his natural descriptions, Coleridge on the other hand lead them into mysterious and supernatural worlds. Although both poets agree on the importance of nature, they don’t take an identical view. Nature for Wordsworth is more autonomous force, than it’s for Coleridge. Coleridge usually celebrates the one Spirit which animates both man and the natural world. The language used is also quite different.

This can be clearly seen in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. It was the nearest in the LB collection to a true ballad. It tells a story with the stress on action, rather than character. Coleridge juxtaposes ordinary experience with supernatural events, uses powerful symbols (the sun, the moon), striking images. All these create weird, otherworldly atmosphere which stimulates the reader’s imagination. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is a tale of a voyage beyond the limits of inhabited world, it’s a tale of death, nightmare, hallucination. As for the language, the intentional archaisms of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” do not imitate common speech, creating instead a more strikingly stylized effect.

Kubla Khan started in 1798 and published unfinished in 1816 was apparently inspired by a dream in an opium-induced sleep. Colerifge woke up with a clear idea of the poem, but lost the vision when a visitor disturbed him. The poem’s theme is the fabulous ancient Orient and its magic rites. Kubla Khan – a 13^th century Mongol emperor is described in the first part of the poem. The work is strange and enigmatic. It is full of images that have clarity but are inexplicable like in a dream. Its most striking features are suggestive imagery and musical rhythm.

The same year Coleridge published another unfinished poem, “Christabel”. The poem is a medieval romance of the supernatural, which includes many Gothic elements. Coleridge was very disappointed when Wordsworth refused to include it in the second edition of the LB.

“Dejection: An Ode,” published in 1802, was the last of Coleridge's great poems. It shows the influence of (or affinity to) some poetic ideas of Wordsworth, notably the meditation upon self, nature, and the relationships among emotion, sense experience, and understanding.

Though he is best known today for his poetry, Coleridge wrote articles and dissertations on philosophy, political analysis and theology. His “Biographia Literaria” containing accounts of his literary life and critical essays on philosophical and literary subjects is considered to be his greatest critical work.

Seminar questions:

1. The Romantic period: historical and social background.

2. Literary background of Romanticism. Main features.

3. William Wordsworth

4. Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

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