ROMANTICS

1798-1832

Feelings and emotion, metaphors etc. Wanted traditional structure in romance, comes down to time and society.

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION- being used to make money. Scientific progress, is negative for the Romantics. Middle class becoming rich, mill owners become rich. England scared going the same way as France.

FRENCH REVOLUTION; 1789- revolution against the government! About getting rid of kings and queens to create an equal democracy. Notions of equality, religion challenging it and politics.

AMERICAN REVOLUTION; 1776- notions of colonial empire.

Romantic movement little to do with conventional notions of being romantic. It was an artistic and philosophical movement that redefined how people saw themeselves.

Start was the first edition of 'lyrical ballads' by Wordsworth and Coleridge. A highly influential manifest for poetry.

"Incidents and situations from common life."

Romanticism set out to change the practise of poetry but also the way the world was peceived. A revolution in ideas to match and respond to a revolutionary age.

Individualism- this gained prominance.

 Individual (equality sought in revolution). Challenged rules and comforming. An inspired creator of art rather than a technical master became the hero. Questioning a world around them, challenging systems of belief. E.g: organised religion.

Nation of beautiful soul trapped in a flawed body, e.g. Monster in 'Frankenstein', or 'Lamia' followed Byronic heroes who knew they are doing wrong but heroic in failure and in pursuit and individual needs.

Increasing use of first person and confessional prose, e.g;; byron's 'childe Harold' is a disguised autobiography.

The movement was seen as a reaction to Neo-Classism which, as an art movement, embodied the exploration of general human characteristics, not an individuals, and attempted to imitate human life and mirror the external world.

Romanticism challenged this by exploring individuals experience of the world and art illuminating the world 'within' experience!

"Imagination is God!"- William Blake.

Personal imagination was the ultimate creating power used to perieve and to the same degree create the world.

"Where man is not, nature is barren"