Romanticism-in-England.doc

Romanticism in England
Principles of Romanticism:
1 Romanticism was a reaction against convention:
As a political movement, this reaction was reflected in the new democratic ideals that opposed monarchy and feudalism.
In art, it meant a turn away from Neoclassicism and the ancient models of Greek perfection and Classical correctness.
Philosophically, romanticism would contend with Rationalism—the belief that truth could be discerned by logic and reason.

2 Romanticism asserted the power of the individual:
Romanticism marked an era characterized by an idealization of the individual.
Politically, the movement influenced democratic ideals and the revolutionary principles of social equality.
Philosophically, it meant that the idea of objective reality would give way to subjective experience; thus, all truth became a matter of human perception.
In the art world, romanticism marked a fascination with the individual genius, and elevated the artist, philosopher, and poet above all others.

3 Romanticism reflected a deep appreciation of the beauties of nature:
For the romantics, nature was how the spirit was revealed to humankind.
The romantic philosophers believed in the metaphysical or spiritual nature of reality.
They thought that a higher reality existed behind the appearance of things in the physical world.
Nature appeared to people as a material reality; however, because it evoked such strong feelings in humankind, it revealed itself as containing a higher, spiritual truth.
Romantic artists tried to capture in their art the same feelings nature inspired in them.

4 Romanticism emphasized the importance of the subjective experience:
The romantics believed that emotion and the senses could lead to higher truths than either reason or the intellect could.
Romantics supposed that feelings, such as awe, fear, delight, joy, and wonder, were keys that could unlock the mysteries of the world.
The result was a literature that continually explored the inward experiences of the self.
The imagination became one of the highest faculties of human perception, for it was through the imagination that individuals could experience transcendent or spiritual truths.

5 Romanticism was idealistic:
On one hand, romanticism was philosophically rooted in idealism.
Reality existed primarily in the ideal world—that is, in the mind—while the material world merely reflected that universe.
In other words, the ideal world was “more real” than the real world.
On the other hand, romanticism was literally idealistic; it tended to be optimistic in its outlook on life.
Political and social romantics asserted that human beings could live according to higher principles, such as the beliefs in social equality, freedom, and human rights.

Romanticism in Literature
The romantic period began in 1789 the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s , and end in 1832 with Sir Walter Scott’s death

Background
1).after the Industrial
2).social contradictions
3).proletariat无产阶级，工人阶级
4).Liberty, equality and fraternity
5).Jacobinism雅各宾主义: radicalism 激进主义
6).Holy Alliance 神圣同盟
7).Peterloo Massacre彼得卢屠杀

The Nature of Romantic Movement
(1) The Romantic Movement expressed a more or less negative attitude toward the existing social and political conditions that came with industrialization and the growing importance of the bourgeoisie.
(2) The Romantics demonstrated a strong reaction against the dominant modes of thinking of the 18th-century writers and philosophers. When their predecessors saw man as a social animal, the Romantics saw him essentially as an individual in the solitary state. They emphasized the special qualities of each individual’s mind.
(3) Romanticism constitutes a change of direction from attention to the outer world of social civilization to the inner world of the human spirit. In essence Romanticism designates a literary and philosophical theory which tends to see the individual as the very center of all life and all experience.
(4) Romanticism places the individual at the center of art, making literature most valuable as an expression of his or her unique feelings and particular attitudes, and valuing its accuracy in portraying the individual’s experiences.

The features of the Romantic writings:
1)  Dissatisfaction with the bourgeois society.
2) Their writings filled with strong-willed heroes or even titanic images, formidable events and tragic situations, powerful conflicting passions and exotic pictures.
3) pay attention to spiritual and emotional life of man. Most works are supernatural and full of imagination.
4) interest in the past, the unusual, the unfamiliar, the bizarre
5) strong desire to escape from the reality.
6) concerned much about the influence of nature.
7) Their writings free from any rules, they fight against the tenure of new classicism: order, harmony, balance, reason. They ask for the freedom of expression.
8) A feeling of loneliness & a note of melancholy
9) The glorification of the commonplace--- the aim of good poetry is “to choose incidents and situations from common life” and to use a “selection of language really spoken by men”, and to awaken in the reader “freshness of sensation” in the presentation of “familiar objects”.
10) characterized by 5 “I”s: Imagination, Intuition, Idealism, Inspiration, Individuality.
Imagination:a)A revolt of the English imagination against the neoclassical reason, a rebellion against the rationalism characterized by the “Age of Reason.”
b)Creative powers of the imagination over the “rules” in art.
c)Imagination was considered necessary for creating all art.
d)Samuel Coleridge called it “intellectual intuition.”
Intuition: a)Romantics placed value on “intuition,” or feeling and instincts, over reason. Emphasis on feeling over reason --- Cult of Sensibility.
b)Emotions were important in Romantic art.
c)William Wordsworth described poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”
Idealism: a)Idealism is the concept that we can make the world a better place.
b)Idealism refers to any theory that emphasizes the spirit, the mind, or language over matter – thought has a crucial role in making the world the way it is.
c)Immanuel Kant held that the mind forces the world we perceive to take the shape of space-and-time.
Inspiration :a)The Romantic artist, musician, or writer, is an “inspired creator” rather than a “technical master.”
b)What this means is “going with the moment” or being spontaneous, rather than “getting it precise.”
Individuality ：a）Romantics celebrated the individual.

b）During this time period, Women’s Rights and Abolitionism were taking root as major movements.
c)Walt Whitman, a later Romantic writer, would write a poem entitled “Song of Myself”: it begins, “I celebrate myself…”

Two schools of Romanticism
A: escapist romanticists, “the Lake Poets”湖畔派, represented by William Wordsworth华兹华斯, Samuel Taylor Coleridge柯勒律治 and Robert Southey骚塞.
B: active romanticists, “the Satanic school”撒旦派, with Byron拜伦, Shelly雪莱 and Keats济慈 as representatives
湖畔派Lake Poets
18～19世纪的英国浪漫主义诗歌流派。主要成员有华兹华斯、柯尔律治和骚塞。由于他们三人曾一同隐居于英国西北部的昆布兰湖区，先后在格拉斯米尔和文德美尔两个湖畔居住，以诗赞美湖光山色，所以有“湖畔派诗人”之称。
在诗歌题材上，他们主张写下层人民的日常生活，强调诗人的内心探索和感情的自然流露；在诗体方面，主张发展民间诗歌的艺术传统，采用民间口语，发挥诗人的想象力。他们的理论和实践结束了英国古典主义诗学的统治，对英国诗歌的改革和发展起了很大作用。但是他们否定诗歌的社会作用，美化中世纪的田园生活，提倡唯心主义、唯灵主义、神秘主义；把“听天由命”看成是人的“天性的永恒部分”；拜伦和雪莱对此进行过激烈的批评。
湖畔派诗人起初都同情法国革命，随着革命的深入，由害怕革命而退却，进而逃避现实，迷恋过去，美化中世纪的宗法制，幻想从古老的封建社会中去寻找精神的安慰与寄托。当湖畔派诗人的消极倾向日益明显的时候，青年诗人拜伦、雪莱开始登上文坛，向湖畔派诗人展开论争。拜伦在一八O九年完成的讽刺长诗《英格兰诗人和苏格兰评论家》中，不仅回答了消极浪漫主义者操纵的刊物《爱丁堡评论》对拜伦诗作的攻击，而且还严厉地谴责了湖畔派诗人的消极倾向。由于他们敢于向湖畔派诗人作斗争，因而被英国绅土们斥之为撒旦(恶魔)，所以文学史上称拜伦、雪莱和济慈为“撒旦派”。
一般说，湖畔派诗人代表消极浪漫主义倾向，撒旦派代表积极浪漫主义精神。虽然湖畔派诗人在与古典主义的斗争中有过贡献，在诗歌的艺术上有较深的造诣，但其历史地位远不及撒旦派重要。

“The Big Six” Romantic Poets
William Blake威廉·布雷克
William Wordsworth威廉·华兹华斯
Samuel Taylor Coleridge塞缪尔·泰勒·柯尔律治
Percy Bysshe Shelley波比·雪莱
John Keats约翰·济慈
George Gordon, Lord Byron乔治•戈登•拜伦勋爵

William Wordsworth
life
1.Born in 1770 in a lawyer’s family
2.Orphaned when he was 14
3.Went to school in Hawkshead, developed a deep love for nature
4.1787-1791 Studied at Cambridge--political enthusiasm roused
5.1790-1792 visited France twice
6.In 1797, moved to Somerset with his sister Dorothy and made friends with Coleridge, all devoting their time writing poetry
7.Published Lyrical Ballads together with Coleridge.
Two periods of his literary career
A revolutionist with liberal politics idea and ambiguous religion
A conservative, coming to believe that man’s wild spirit is needed taming by the church
His principles of poetry
1 Subjects:
1)The great subjects of poetry are “essential passions of the heart” and “the great and simple affections” (Preface to Lyrical Ballads(2nd ed.)).
2) incidents and situations from common life
2. Source of poetry:
feelings
1) “all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (ibid)
2) emotion recollected in tranquility
3. language: ”real language of men in a state of vivid sensation” (no poetic diction)
4. function of poetry: to produce pleasure (aesthetic pleasure) ”Nor let this necessity of producing immediate pleasure be considered as a degradation of the poet’s art….It is and acknowledgement of the beauty of the universe…””
(Preface to Lyrical Ballads)
His major works:
1) Lyrical Ballads 《抒情歌谣集》
followed by “The Preface to the Lyrical Ballads”—served as the manifesto of the English Romantic Movement in poetry.
2) famous short poems：
About nature: “I wondered Lonely as a Cloud” “独自漫游似浮云”，
“The Daffodils” “咏水仙”
“Intimation of Immortality” “不朽颂”
“Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” “丁登寺” ;
“To the Cuckoo” “致布谷鸟”;
“My Heart Leaps up When I Behold” “我心雀跃” ;
“To a Butterfly” “致蝴蝶”
“An Evening Walk” “黄昏漫步 ”
About human life:--sympathy for the poor
Lucy Poems 《露西组诗》
“The Solitary Reaper” “孤独的收割者” (pathetic(忧郁、感情上的) pictures
of the working people)
“The Old Cumberland Beggar” “康伯兰的老乞丐”
“Michael” “迈克尔”
“We are Seven” “我们七个”
3) “The Prelude” “序曲”--Wordsworth’s autobiographical poem in 14 books published after his death, a spiritual record of his mind, showing his own thought and sentiment.

George Gordon Byron(1788-1824)---------satanic poet
-- Dedicated to pleasures of the senses
--Aided Greeks
-- Bouts of creativity and passion
-- Byronic hero
His major works
1.Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1809)《恰尔德·哈罗德游记》
2.Oriented Tales (oriental settings and heroic heroes)
3.Don Juan----his masterpiece
1) a long but great epic: “epic satire”, “a satire on abuses of the present state of society”.
2) original characterization: a Spanish youth of noble birth; a great lover and seducer of women.
3) invests in Juan the moral positives like courage, generosity and frankness. (from immoral to moral)
4) presents a panoramic view of different types of society.
Byronic heroes: heroic of noble ,birth passionate ,rebellious , individual

Percy Shelley(1792—1822) If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
Life :
1.born in Sussex; father a conservative narrow-minded country gentleman; though gentle by nature, he could not stand any injustice
2. In 1811, expelled from Oxford for an anti-religion pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism《无神 论的必然》
3 at 19, alone in London, homeless. married a 16-year-old schoolgirl Harriet
4. in 1812, went to Ireland, Address to the Irish People 《告爱尔兰人民书》
5. in 1813, back in England wrote Queen Mab《麦布女王》
6.in 1814, broke with Harriet
7. in 1816, married Mary Godwin, daughter of radical philosopher Godwin , and met Byron
8. in 1818, Shelley’s happy marriage was broken by the sudden death of Harriet who jumped into a river. The scandal made by political enemies compelled Shelley to leave England again, then he lived in Italy to support the independence wars of Italy, Spain and Greece. In 1818 The Revolt of Islam 《伊斯兰的反叛》
9. in 1819, Prometheus Unbound 《解放了的普罗米修斯》，Ode to the West Wind《西风颂》 Masque of Anarchy 《专制魔王的化妆旅行》,The Cenci 《钦契》A Defense of Poetry《诗 辩》
10.In 1820, To a Skylark 《致云雀》
11.in 1822. July 8th, a sudden tempest struck his boat, drowned. Inscription on his tombstone: “ P. B. Shelley. COR CORDIUM” = the heart of hearts 众心之心
Her major works:
A . “Queen Mab” 1813 《麦布女王》
A revolutionary poem condemning tyranny and exploitation and the unjust war waged by the rich to plunder wealth
B. “ The Revolt of Islam” 1818 《伊斯兰的反叛》
a revolutionary epic--a brother and a sister are united in their common ideal of liberty, equality and fraternity；they arouse the spirit of revolt among their Islam people against their tyrants.“a sister-comrade” --women’s position
C. “Prometheus Unbound” 《解放了的普罗米修斯》1820 , struggle against tyranny and oppression----masterpiece
lyrical drama in 4 acts.
Greek myth--Prometheus is reconciled to Zeus.But Shelley reinterpreted it. Prometheus is supported by public. He refuses to yield to the tyrant in heaven. At last Zeus is overthrown. Prometheus is released and throws off his fetters.
The figure of Prometheus has been symbolic of those noble-hearted revolutionaries, who devote themselves to the just cause of the people and suffer great pains at the hands of tyrants.
D. Ode to the West Wind 《西风颂》
best of Shelley’s lyrics
Expression of poet’s envy of the boundless freedom of the west wind
Melancholy in tune
But optimistic and resolute in theme
Poet’s conviction --- the good will certainly defeat the evil
frequently quoted epigram: “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”
E. Lyrics on Nature and Love
1.Ode to the West Wind
2.To a Skylark
3.Love’s philosophy
4.One word Is Too often Profaned
5.With a Guitar, to Jane
6.critical essays: Defense of Poetry

John Keats约翰·济慈(1795—1821)
Major literary works
1) Poems，《诗集》，his first book.
（1）“O Solitude”, “孤寂”, a sonnet published in Hunt’s The Examiner《检查官》.
（2)“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”,“初读查普曼译荷马史诗”, a sonnet.
（3）“Sleep and Poetry”, “睡与诗”
optimism; beauty of Nature; praises of Life; loves of poetry
2) Five long poems
Endymion,《恩底弥翁》-- his first long poem
Isabella 《伊莎贝拉》
The Pot of Basil芳香的草本植物
The Eve of St. Agnes