1. The Age of Transition (1760 – 1798)

2. A new sensibility: ROMANTICISM
Reaction against the faith in reason of the Augustan Age
Classical features Early romantic features
Imitation - originality, creativity
‘social’ writer - focus on the individual
Reason - feelings, emotions
Established rules - free imagination
Classical Greece and Rome - interest in the Middle Ages
Routine-life, domestic environment - exotic places
Nature as an abstract, - nature as a real, living being
philosophycal concept

3. INFLUENCES
Sturm und Drang (70s): strongly nationalistic literary movement
Mme De Staël : De l’Allemagne
J. J. Rousseau: the theory of the noble savage  importance of childhood and nature

4. Features Nature Feelings and emotions Strong individualism Melancholy
The sublime
Discovery of the popular traditions of the Middle Ages
Taste for the desolate; love of ruines…
Imagination
Cult of the exotic
Nationalism/patriotism

5. C. D. Friedrich, The Monk by the Sea (1808-10)
C.D.Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea Fog (1818)

6. Historical background
Under the reign of George III the main events were:
The loss of the American colonies
The French Revolution
The Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions

7. The loss of the American colonies
The Americans: not represented in English Parliament
1773: Boston Tea Party: ‘no taxation without representation’
1775: war broke out
1776: Declaration of Independence (Thomas Jefferson)
G. Washington: 1st President
1783: Treaty of Versailles
American society: a melting pot
Birth of the ‘American Dream’

8. The Boston Tea Party
A political protest whose demontrators, disguised as American Indians, destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company. The American colonies refused to pay taxes to the mother country (Tea Act, 1773) unless they had representatives in the British Parliament.

9. The thirteen American colonies declared their independence from the British Empire. They formed a new nation: the United States of America.

10. The French Revolution and Napoleon
Concepts of freedom, brotherhood, equality
Initial enthusiasm
Patriotic sentiments, nationalism
‘Terror’ period
Napoleon: at first England remained neutral but then, worried about a possible French egemony in Europe, it took part in the war against France.
English navy very strong: Napoleon defeated in 1805 by admiral Nelson (Battle of Trafalgar)

11. Trafalgar Square in London
Admiral Horatio Nelson

12. The Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions
England became a manifacturing country
Increase in population
Demand for goods/clothes
Improvement of technology / inventions
Raw materials in the North
Transport: roads, railway, canals
New industrial towns (mushroom towns)
Urbanisations  lack of hygiene, overcrowded slums
Working conditions: alienation, heavy drinking, diseases.
Use of fertilisers, crop rotation, machines
Inhuman working conditions, machinery broken by workers then punished by the Government
1799: COMBINATION ACTS (Trade Unions of workers = illegal)
1819: Peterloo Massacre

13. The spinning frame invented in 1764 by James Hargreaves

14. Pre-Romantic Poetry
GRAVEYARD POERTY: melancholy, a sombre mood, interest in graves, death, ruins, desert places.
- Thomas Gray: Elegy written in a country churchyard
OSSIANIC POETRY: new sources of inspitation found in Nordic and Celtic culture.
- James Macpherson: Fragments of Ancient Poetry Fragments of Celtic poetry attributed to OSSIAN, a legendary warrior and bard of the 3rd century.