Week 4: Romanticism Overview http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/rom.

html Not romantic love may be subject international artistic and philosophical movement redefined peoples vision of self and world echoes people's fears, hopes, and aspirations Romantic Period 1798 Lyrical Ballads 1832 (death of Sir Walter Scott) Internationally: 1770-1870 Early period - coincides with revolutions (American 1775-83, French 1789 and Industrial Revolutions) Lyrical Ballads - 1789 (1800/1802) - William Wordsworth & Samuel Taylor Coleridge Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800/2) Revolutionary manifesto for poetry A deliberate experiment in style and subject matter Subject: ordinary men (farmers, paupers etc.) building up sympathy for them Language: ordinary language of real men role of poetry: aid in keeping the individual sensitive in spite of the effects of growing alienation in the new industrial age Poet: a man speaking to men, is not a distant observer or moralist the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, recollected in tranquility NEOCLASSICISTS Restraint Clarity Rules - composition, genre, decorum Artist as maker technical master Dismissed Middle Ages and & Shakespeare Absolute systems (religion , philosophy, science, etc.) ROMANTICS Boldness Suggestiveness Free experimentation Artist as inspired creator Embraced Middle Ages & Shakespeare Each person must create system whereby he/she shall live

Imagination Supreme faculty of the mind (not reason!) The ultimate shaping or creative power = nature or divine power ultimate synthesizing faculty - enables humans to reconcile differences and opposites in the world of appearance The reconciliation of opposites is a central ideal for the Romantics

Nature Work of art, created by divine imagination as a healing power, as a source of subject and image, as a refuge from the artificial constructs of civilization, including artificial language Rationalists: nature system of mechanical laws Romantics: nature is organic Accurate descriptions of natural phenomena and captured sensuous nuance Romantic nature poetry is essentially a poetry of meditation Symbolism and Myth Symbols - the human aesthetic correlatives of nature's emblematic language could simultaneously suggest many things the desire to express the inexpressible the infinite symbol at one level and myth (as symbolic narrative) at another Emotion the importance of intuition, instincts, and feelings a necessary supplement to purely logical reason good poetry the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings (Wordsworth) The Self Ultimate source of all poetry no mechanics involved Tradition valued art as imitating life Romantics: art illuminates the world within Lyric Poetry Led to first-person lyric poetry Poetic-speaker less a persona, and more the direct person of the poet The interior journey and the development of the self The artist-as-hero Individualism: The Romantic Hero Importance of individual, the unique, even eccentric Literary types: o overachiever (Prometheus, Captain Ahab) o Outcasts (Ancient Mariner, Creature) o Byronic Hero The Byronic Hero Admirable romantic traits o passionate conviction, o absolute individualism and independence, o a disregard for restrictive authority and the outmoded or unjust laws it represents 2

Also: a flawed individual, highly intelligent, possessing a secret, moody The Everyday Local colour in works (common man) Social realism subordinate to imaginative suggestion the ideals suggested - simplicity or innocence The Exotic in time and/or place Combinations of natural and supernatural (Wordsworth & Coleridge) o Wordsworth: tries to present something familar in a new way o Coleridge: tries to show in the supernatural what was psychologically real Concept of the beautiful soul in an ugly body (Mary Shelley's Frankenstein) Romantic Artist in Society 2 trends: o Socially and politically conscious artist influenced by the revolution(s) and trying to make a stand against injustice o Withdrawal from confining boundaries of bourgeois life (hermits, odd-balls, etc.)

Edmund Burke Reflections on the Revolution in France 1790 On the beginning of the French Revolution Revolutionaries characterised as ruffians, assassins; monstrous tragi-comic scene Conservative: condemns the revolutionaries and defends the rights of King Louis XVI divine King our liberties are our inheritance Considers the behaviour of the ruffians as destroying the centuries-long tradition of civilisation and learning. He believes that tradition must be upheld at all costs to give society a sense of continuity. The age of chivalry is gone Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. Their liberty is not liberal. Their science is presumptuous ignorance. Their humanity is savage and brutal. Thomas Paine: The Rights of Man - 1791 Very sharp rebuke of Burkes Reflections No one has the right to rule till the end of time What a whole nation chooses to do, it has a right to do. Where then does the right exist? I am contending for the rights of the living, and against their being willed away, and controuled and contracted for, by the manuscript assumed authority of

the dead; and Mr Burke is contending for the authority of the dead over the rights and freedom of the living. Revolution not against Louis XVI, but against his despotic government, whose origins go back centuries... They were become too deeply rooted to be removed, and the augean stable of parasites and plunderers too abominably filthy to be cleansed, by anything short of a complete and universal revolution. when the French Revolution is compared with that of other countries, the astonishment will be, that it is marked with so few sacrifices; but this astonishment will cease when we reflect that principles, and not persons, were the meditated objects of destruction. The mind of the nation was acted upon by a higher stimulus than what the consideration of persons could inspire, and sought a higher conquest than could be produced by the downfall of an enemy.

Kubla Khan or, A Vision in a Dream, a Fragment - Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge - (1772-1834) Lyrical Ballads (with Wordsworth) (1798) The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Christabel (1816) Kubla Khan; or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment (composed 1797-1800; published 1816) Biographia Literaria (1817) Lines 1-5 In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. The Exotic Kubla Khan Mongolian ruler main character Setting: Xanadu, the river Alph disappearing underground (into the Underworld) Pleasure-dome: palace or entertainment parlour Lines 6-11 So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round: And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. Walls built around paradise to keep in/out 4

Fertile ground, incense-bearing trees, ancient forests, sunny clearings Perfection man trying to confine nature Lines 12-16 But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover! Trouble in Paradise! Deep romantic chasm covered by cedars A savage place potential for evil Holy, enchanted hints at mystical aspects Qualified as an accursed place

Lines 17-24 And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail: And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river. The Chasm Ceaseless turmoil panting A mighty fountain forced = an eruption: A geyser with rocks, the Alph resurfaces (?) A volcanic eruption lava and rocks (?) which later ejects the river in spurts (?) Sexual intercourse (?) Lines 25-30 Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean: And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The lava, river, ejaculate meanders five miles until it disappears underground Natural disaster bad omen to be accompanied by man-made disaster - war War: loss of pleasure-dome; loss of lives

Lines 31-36 The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves; Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! Images of waning paradise Shadow dark/evil side appears to be moving on the waves Mingled measure (cave and fountain) The miracle: paradox sunny pleasure-dome and caves of ice Lines 37-47 A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 'twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! Vision of paradise regained - power of the imagination Abyssinia paradise; Abora mountain of the gods He would like to reproduce and reexperience this vision in his mind Would build paradise through poetic genius Pleasure-dome: commanding geniuss material place doomed Dome in air immaterial and indestructible paradise Lines 48-54 And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise. Beware! Beware! Expected reaction from those who can perceive his paradise fear/awe Supernatural being (god-like or demonic?) Protective ritual 6

Flashing eyes blind humans Floating hair moving on wind/storm In awe of supernatural being Entitled to his share of privileges of the gods (ambrosia/nectar) He absolute genius of paradise regained Damsel muse inspires him to attain the status of poetic genius in command of a paradise of imagination