The Romantic Literature

The Romantic Literature

1. Poetry

   • 1st Generation
     • The beginning of the British Romantic Movement is generally considered to have been marked by the collection of poems titled Lyrical Ballads, first published in 1798
     • Wordsworth - Coleridge
       • WILLIAM WORDSWORTH LIFE W.Wordsworth was born on April 7 1777, in Cockermouth located in the english lake discrict. He was educated at st john's college,Cambridge, and in 1790 he went on a walking tour of france and the alps. In 1795 he moved to somerset to be near Samuel taylor Coleridge. Their friendship proved crucial to the development of English romantic poetry: they produced a collection of poems called Lirycal Ballads which appeared anonymously in 1798. the second edition of 1800 also contained Wordsworth's famous Preface, which was to become the Manifesto of English Romanticism. In 1802 william married a childhood friend. THE MANIFESTO OF ENGLISH ROMANTICISM Wordsworth did not want to write following the standars of eighteenth-century poetry. In his Preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads ,he stated what the subject matter and the language of poetry should be. Poetry should deal with everyday situations or incidents and with ordinary people, especially humble, rural people. Even the language should be simple ,the objects mentioned homely and called by their ordinary names. MAN AND THE NATURAL WORLD Wordsworth is interested in the relationship between the natural world and the human consciousness. His poetry therefore offers a detailed account of the complex interaction between man and the nature. The idea that man and nature are inseparable; man exists not outside the natural world but as an active participant in it, so that nature to wordsworth means something that includes both inanimate and human nature, each is a part of the same whole. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SENSES Nature means also the world of sense perception. For Wordsworth there are three ages of man: childhood, youth and adulthood. In fact, wordsworth was most interested in the growth of his relationship with nature, in the ways it influenced him at different points in his life and the ways in which his awareness of it changed. CHILDHOOD AND THE MEMORY He regarded childhood as the most important stage in man's life. What the child sees is both more imaginative and more vivid than the perceptions of the adult. Memory is a major force in the process of growth of the poet's mind and moral character, and it is memory that allows Wordsworth to give poetry its life and power. RECOLLECTED IN TRANQUILLITY All genuine poetry "takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity" so that what we read in the poems results from the active,vital relationship of present to past experience.the poet has greater sensibility and the ability to penetrate to the heart of things. Wordsworth used blank verse,that is, unrhymed iambic pentameter. He proved skilful at several verse forms such as sonnets, odes, ballads and lyrics with short lines and simple rhymes.
       • SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE He was born in Devonshire in 1722. He was the son of a clergyman, and his father died when he was 9 years old. He went to school in London at charity school, where he met Charles Lamb. He was very intelligent and good at school. Then he went to Cambridge at University but he didn't finish it. He was interested in French revolutionary ideals and he became a republican. In Pennsylvania he planned a communist community called "Pantisocracy" with his friend Robert Southey. In 1975 he married SARAH Fricker, the sister of the wife of Southey. With his friend William Worst word he wrote Lyrical Ballads. After the return form German he went to Lake District with William and his sister. He had many problems with his marriage and had problems with drugs. Later he fall in love with Sarah Hutchinson. Between 1804 and 1806 he went to Malta and later he returned in England, where he became teacher of literature and journalist. He died in 1834. IMPORTANCE OF IMMAGINATION For him the imagination was very important. He sayd there was 2 type of imagination: primary and secondary imagination. The primary imagination is the perception that men have about the world around use. Is possible using the sense. Secondary imagination is the possibility for the poet to build new worlds using metaphors and other poetical forms. THE POET'S TASK (IL COMPITO DEL POETA) The poet is a prophet, that can tell everybody the truth, using the imagination and his memory. IMPORTANCE OF NATURE The poet doesn't think that the nature is a moral guide. He doesn't think that nature is divine , but it is the reflection of the world of "ideas". THE EXOTIC AND THE MIDDLE AGES The poet was very interested in exotic places and in the middle ages, infact many poems were setted in these places and ages. BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA It is a classic text of literary criticism and autobiography. In this text is explained the difference between Coleridge and Wordsworth. Wordsworth usually wrote about ordinary life, and Coleridge about extraordinary things. His poems are characterized from mistery and supernatural. He use musical and archaic language, connected to medieval ballads. THE RIME OF ANCIENT MARINER It is the first poem of the collection The lyrical Ballads. It is the story of a crime and its punishment. The subject is a mariner that is condemned to expiate his crime by travelling from land to land telling his story and teaching the love for all the creatures. It is composed by 7 parts In the first part the mariner stops a wedding guest (ospite di nozze) to tell him about his story. he tell him how he went to equator and to South pole. When he saw an albatross he killed it. So the story talks about a crime against nature. In the second part the mariner begin his suffer for the crime. The world around him and the ship stop to move. The only moving things are the creature in the sea. In The third part the marinet understand what he did and he feels isolated from the world. He met a phantom ship with many skeleton. In the fourth part the mariner's sense of solitude increase(il senso di solitudine aumenta), and nature can't consolate the mariner. But after 7 days the mariner can have a contact with nature world. A new pact of peace with nature has been created In the fifth part the mariner starts to pray. It begins to rain and the wind starts to move the ship. In the sixth part the mariner is haunted by the died body of his mariners(è ossessionato dai corpi morti dei suoi marinai) In the seven part the mariner find a heremit on a ship in the sea that save him, and confessed him his crime. Now he has to travell for all his life and have to teach everyone the love for creatures. In this text nature can't help man, giving him happieness and consolation. Nature only judge, punish the man. This poem contains many feautures( caratteristiche) of ballads: dialogue and narrations, alliteration and internal rhyme. -It may be a description of a dream induced by drugs -it may be an allegory of life, that teaches the importance of the love between creatures. -it is a description of the poetic journey of romanticism. The mariner is the poet and he writes because he know his guilt(colpa). The guilt is the origin of poetry: the industrial revolution caused the loss of innocence of men. CHRISTABELL It is an unfinished poem, set in Middle Ages(ambientata nel medioevo), about an innocent girl, that met Geraldine and invite her to her castle. She discover that Geraldine is an evil supernatural creature. KUBLA KAHN It is the best example of the imagination of Coleridge. The content of the poem derive from a dream that the poet had after reading the book "Purchas his Pilgrimage". Coleridge dreams about Kubla Kahn and a palace that he commended to build. When the poet woke up he started to write the poem but he forgotten what he had dreamed. So the poem is unfinished. The poem is full of beautiful images with no geographical accuracy or connection to reality.
       • Thems
         • nature - imagination- picture of ordinary life
           • Nature Neoclassicism: a sort of machine engineered by God, so it has to follow some principles (Newton principles), it is static, mechanical, perfect, unchangeable, created. The two most important philosophers of that period (18th century) were Locke and Hartley.Romanticism was completely in opposition to Neoclassicism: universe and nature are dynamic, they always recreate, develop, move, evolve themselves.This dynamic theory was supported by Rousseau who sustained the need of human to have a close relationship with nature, but also human perfect ability, the idea of natural man (a man not jet corrupted by civilization, like children) and democracy. Another important philosopher of that time, Kant, had an idealistic philosophy that sustained that “creation never ends” (nature is a living power) and that objected world always interests in subjected human lives, so nature is not a fix background but influences man life (individualism).In the last years of the 18th century, two metaphors were used to express the idea of universe:1) Plant: it is the dynamic, vitalistic, organic idea of universe: it ever changes (Neoclassicism)2) Cclockwork: it is the static or mechanistic attitude of a created universe that follows specific principles.
           •  Imagination: Imagination in Romantic term is considered as an individual, creative, original faculty, (a personal quality/ability). Through imagination a poet can go beyond the sensorial reality and can get in touch with the truth. ( Plato thought that the sensorial experience is not the reality, so you have to go beyond reality to find the truth). Imagination is related with God (for many Romantics) and with Nature (for poets like Wordsworth) which becomes a primary poetic subject and men’s relationship with it.In Neoclassicism the theory of poetry was based on a mimetic conception of imagination art, so poets, imitates nature faithfully (it is a model).These precepts which the mind produces realty, was based on two associations of ideas: memory and fancy. Through memory the association of ideas has the same order of time and place, while through fancy the association of ideas has a new order of time and place.The Romantics substituted the organic idea for the mechanistic idea: art doesn’t imitate what realty offers, but it recreates reality according by a subjective sensibility/perception/vision.
           • Picture Of Ordinary Life: The Romantic Age was a period of great landscape painting. Until the 18th century, landscape painting was seen as a minor form of art: it was painted as a background, a visual record of place. Romanticism changed this view by focusing attention on the correspondence between the moods of nature and man. The style of landscape painting was set by the French Poussin and Lorrain in 17th century, and it was followed by Turner and Constable in 19th century.[Turner contributed the new appreciation of landscape painting with his depiction of atmospheric conditions and his tragic vision of the vanity of human effort in the face of the frightening power of nature. His style in painting anticipate late 19th century French Impressionism. Constable was the greatest painter of skies, his innovative technique was not very popular with contemporary critics. Later French Impressionism were much influenced by his idea about observing the effects of nature.]
       • Linguistic features
         • easy language
           • Language of poetry a ‘language really used by men’, plain and emphatic. Wordsworth believed that the common people and the ordinary events were serous subjects for poetry that was the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, sprang from sincerity. The primary role of poetry was to save human beings from a state of torpor. He changed the use of language in poetry that became comprehensible to everyone. 
   • 2st Generation