1. Romanticism and Romantic Poetry

2. What does the term “Romantic” mean to you?

3. What is Romanticism?
British Romantic writers responded to the climate of their times.
Their new interest in the trials and dreams of the common people and their desire for radical change developed out of the democratic idealism that characterized the early part of the French Revolution.
The basic idea of Romanticism is that reason cannot explain everything.
A reaction against Enlightenment, Romanticism searched for deeper, often subconscious appeals.
Romanticism holds that pure logic is insufficient to answer all questions.

4. Characteristics of Romanticism
An emphasis on nature
Focus on human feelings/emotion
Compassion for mankind
Freedom of the individual
Romantic hero
Rebellion against society
Rebellion against the commercial, inhuman, standardized expectations
The 5 I’s of Romanticism
Imagination
Intuition
Innocence
Inner Experience
Inspiration

5. Characteristics of a Romantic Hero
Outcast or rejected from society
Non-conventional in ideas and ways of life
Often on some kind of quest (physical or emotional/spiritual)
Often innocent but intuitive
Often alienated or disillusioned
Brooding; somewhat of a moody rebel
Drawn to nature
Adhere to their own code of morality and justice

6. Romantic Poetry
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge defined as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”
They also explained that Romantic poetry “takes its origin from emotion and recollected in tranquility” --emphasis on EMOTION
Deals with “incidents and situations from common life”
Presentation of common life in an unusual way
Emphasis on NATURE as a wild, free force of inspiration
Second generation Romantic poets were more REBELLIOUS (Gordon, Lord Byron, Shelley, Keats)

7. “I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s.”
William Blake
Strove to break free from patterns or thought that defined common experience
As if to emphasize the difference between his views and the ordinary, he claimed mystical visions were the source of his inspiration
Blake came to believe that a return to innocence was not, at least by itself, sufficient for people to attain true self-awareness: they must also recognize and accept the parts of themselves that religion and morality teach them to reject.
He believed in a union of opposites: a fusion of innocence and experience
“I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s.”

8. William Wordsworth
Wordsworth took generations of assumptions about proper style, words, and subject matter for a poem and calmly put them aside
Gone was flowery language, wittily crafted figures of speech, and other elements that defined poetry in the past.
Instead, Wordsworth offered an intensified presentation of ordinary life and nature using common language
Wordsworth’s ballads showed how the lives and experiences of ordinary people, when properly viewed, were truly extraordinary
Wordsworth is known as the father of English Romanticism

9. George Gordon, Lord Byron
Came from a long line of handsome but irresponsible aristocrats
He became known as “Mad, bad, and dangerous to know” and became an overnight celebrity after the publication of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, which depicted a young hero similar to himself--moody, sensitive, and reckless
The Byronic Hero
Lord Byron often wrote about dark, brooding protagonists who were impassioned by a cause

10. Percy Bysshe Shelley
A passionate reformer who believed that his time had betrayed the ideal of a perfect society
Much of his poetry and even his nature poems express the view that government and other institutions should be reshaped to conform to the will of the people
While married, he fell in love with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin; after his wife’s tragic death, he and Mary Godwin married
His radical politics, tract about atheism, separation from his wife, elopement--all made him an outcast from his homeland
He, Mary Shelley, and Lord Byron were close friends who lived in Italy, and a storytelling session inspired Mary Shelley to write her famous Frankenstein
Shelley died in a boating accident at the age of 29

11. “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”
John Keats
Although he died at the age of 25, Keats left his mark on literature, making many wonder what he might have accomplished had he lived longer
Keats was born to working-class Londoners (unlike Byron and Shelley)
Keats’ life was full of tragedy; he lost siblings in infancy, both his mother and father died at a young age, and he beloved brother Tom died in 1818
During 1818, he also met the love of his life, Fanny Brawne, but in 1821, he lost his battle with tuberculosis
Keats wrote his own epitaph: “Here lies one whose name was writ in water”
Keats’ poetry is known for holding beauty to the highest value and the pursuit of beauty of utmost importance
He explored the beauty he found in ordinary circumstances
“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”