Romanticismo inglese

Materie:	Appunti
Categoria:	Lingue
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Data:	13.12.2001
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Romanticismo inglese

Enlightenment is born consequently the Industrial Revolution. In fact the many discoveries, made by the science, bring about a great progress in society and also optimism. It starts to believe in human perfectibility (or better in the ability of every man), especially in his reason. The reason begins so important that every human range of activities is seen in a rational view.
1) It was a materialistic society; it believes in a rational sense to universe, in a mechanistic world with patterns, laws and meaning.
2) There is strong respect for authority, because who has the power must be enlightened and he is the only one who can improve society.
3) Together with authority, hierarchy begins more important and human starts to be seen as social beings (product of social order)
4) A desire for balance, symmetry and harmony could be observed in all arts, so measure and proportion and imitation of the real, in general, begin important.
5) Tradition is the consequence of imitation
Romanticism is born consequently Napoleonic wars. In fact Enlightenment artists fervently supported the French Revolution with its ideals of freedom and equality. However, after the Napoleonic wars, they experienced deep disillusionment in all the reason has raised.
Then the reason has created limits because the known world is only the world that the reason can explained, further knowledge wasn’t be able to go. Existential questions, about God and metaphysical world, remain unsolved. So Romanticism is born as contrast with Enlightenment and it means to solve these questions.
1) There is a society that believes in a mysterious universe, in supernatural and in hidden forces. It believes in natural world
2) There’s a rebellion against form, because the faith for the men, was in power, is destroyed.
3) Together with rebellion against form, there’s rebellion against hierarchy and democracy is revaluated.
4) Individualism and egocentrism.
5) In contrast with reason, feelings, passions, imagination are revaluated. In all arts a desire of intensity and excess could be observed.
6) The poets reaches the infinite, the ideal world in the nature, not only the real world.
WORDSWORTH
COLERIDGE
BYRON
KEATS
EXILE
In consequence of the deep disillusionment about the storical events, he rejects his society. In fact he dies far from his Country. This alienation from society founds expression in the Byronic hero. A Byronic hero is solitary, serious, mysterious- he hides horrible sin in his past- and he rejects the conventional moral rules of society, in fact he’s an outsider, but he he’s isolated and attractive at the same time, women cannot resist him, men admire and anvy him. Manfred is a good example: in fact he has a mysterious past, he’s disillusioned and dissatisfied (he travelled a lot to leave his land)
Like Byron
DEATH

IMAGINATION
It’s the power of recreating images. It’s used to express emotional experiences
He divided imagination into two parts. The primary one is a fusion of perception and human individual power of recreate images. Secondary imagination was something more: it takes reality and transforms it in a supernatural thing due to try the lost natural harmony (“it dissolves, diffuses, dissipated, in order to recreate…”). This is the poetic imagination, because only the poet can uses it. Thanks to it, the poet feels himself higher than common people and his duty is higher: in fact he wants to show the truth trough his poetry.
NATURE
It’s a living force and it can be seen as an expression of God in the universe; Nature is the most important source of inspiration and stimulus thought for Wordsworth; Nature comforts men in sorrow, but it gives them also pleasure and joy and teaches them how to love and to act. As Wordsworth said in his poetry “Tinner Abbey”, Nature is “The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,/ the guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul/ of all my moral being”.
Unlike Ww, it’s a mixture of supernatural and realistic elements. Ww starts from reality and arrives to divine or exotic places (as in “the solitary reaper”: Scottish country becomes made of “Arabic sands”). He starts directly from supernatural elements and mixes them in real ones so as to create a new symbolic world, the world of truth. He mixes supernatural and natural elements because the images he uses shock the reader and, the reader does a willing suspension of disbelief, which is the poetic faith.
Nature reflects the poet’s mood and feelings, so it isn’t ever in harmony and peace, Byron describes some landscapes which are cruel and desert.
The poet looks only for the beauty of nature. Beauty of art is so important because it carries to eternity and in the eternity there is the truth. Moreover, the price to eternity is the melancholy.
MYTH AND HELLENISM

The romantic features of Keats is his fondness for the strange and the remote. In fact he love Middle Age and Greek culture.
INDIVIDUALISM
He gives great importance to the special qualities of each man’s mind

PERSONAL FREEDOM

MEMORY
Memory is recollected with imagination. When something beautiful “strikes” his senses, the poet can remember it for a long time thanks to his extraordinary memory. So the poem we read is a sort of “reproduced and purified emotion” (recollection in tranquillity)

MYSTERY

FORM OF POETRY
Free form
he’s innovative both in the form and in the content. In fact “The rime of the Ancient Mariner” can be considered a traditional ballad: it contains alliterations, repetitions, internal rhymes, four-line stanzas, the combination of dialogue and narration and it also starts in media-res. The only innovative feature consists of the two narratives: one narrator introduces the mariner and his listener (it’s made up of the captions to the right of the stanzas); the other one is the mariner himself . Even the content is the typical one of the ballad: it deals with the theme of travels, wandering and there are many supernatural elements, too. But what makes this ballad really different from the others the presence of a moral aim at the end of the poem.
POET AND SOCIAL FREEDOM
The poet has a direct contact with Nature’s phenomena and he can appreciate them more than any common person because he has a greater comprehension, sensibility (he’s the only one who can understand the harmony of Nature and Universe in general), tenderness and enthusiasm, and he has a greater knowledge of human nature, too; that’s why the poet can also be a teacher (that’s his definition of poet: “man speaking to man”). But, for his special qualities, which he doesn’t want to corrupt, he keeps himself away from society, which is thought such as an evil force, and so he’s seen as an outsider. Poet’s duty is to teach the truth due to improve society. This is why the language is simple: he wants to spread a message and he wants it to be understood by the greatest number of people.

The poet has to destroy himself and his abilities must become negative in order to be as a “camelion”, to be a receptacle that captures all beauty there is in the world. His why he uses all senses, not only sight and hearing.
CRITICISM