The Romantic Movement

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 5

V5cpe Literature Project

The Romantic Movement 

1798 - 1837

The Romantic Period

• Introduction
• Characteristics of the Romantic Period
• literary forms: blank verse / ode / sonnets / ballads / frame story
• William Blake - London
• William Wordsworth - My Heart Leaps Up and Strange fits of passion have I known
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge - The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• Mary Shelly - Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus

The Romantic Period - intro.

• 1798 - 1837
• World-changing events in the late 18th century including The American War of Independence (1775-1783) and the French Revolution (1789-1799)
• Reaction against The Enlightenment (Age of Reason)
• Reaction against The Industrial Revolution

Key Characteristics of the Romantic Movement

• Return to Nature
• Importance of emotion and imagination
• Renewed interest in the past
• Interest in the countryside, common people and folk literature
• Interest in distant civilizations (medieval, Greek, Oriental etc.)
• Interest in gloomy places (ruins, graveyards) and the supernatural
• Escapism from reality

Literature 

• Lyrical Ballads (1798), a volume of poetry, is the starting point of the English Romantic Period. Poetry of simplicity, guided no longer by Reason, but by Imagination.
  

• The five major English Romantic Poets: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelly and Byron.
  

• Their shared beliefs: a deep trust in non-rational forces of emotion, intuition and imagination and the profound conviction that reason and intellect are not enough to comprehend the world.

• Romantic Poets: an individualistic voice addressing the individual reader. Subjective poetry.

What is a ballad? 

• one of the oldest poetic forms in English.
• a type of poem that tells a story and was traditionally set to music. 
•  typically composed of four-line stanzas that follow an ABCB rhyme scheme.

The simplest way to think of a ballad is as a song or poem that tells a story and has a bouncy rhythm and rhyme scheme.

.

Other key features of a ballad 

• Traditional ballads are written in a meter called common meter, which consists of alternating lines of iambic tetrameter (eight syllables) with lines of iambic trimeter (six syllables).
• Many ballads have a refrain (a line or stanza that repeats throughout the poem), much like the chorus of modern day songs.

What is ....? 

Blank verse: 

• poetry with a strict meter but no rhyme scheme. Usually unrhymed iambic pentameter

e.g. 'Shall I | compare | thee to | a sum | mer's day?' 

An ode: 

• a type of lyric poetry that sings the praises of the poem's subject. 
• John Keats was the master. He wrote odes to all kinds of things—nightingales, Grecian urns, even melancholy.

I wander thro' each charter'd street,

Near where the charter'd Thames doth flow.

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

• Wrote ‘the Lyrical Ballads’ (1798) together with Samuel Taylor Coleridge which officially started the Romantic period in England.
• Wrote dark poetry at first, about social injustice
  
• Was inspired by his immediate surroundings (Lake district) and his childhood.
  
• Spent some years in France, during the French Revolution, and fathered a daughter there.
  
• Married Mary Hutchinson
  
• Had a neurotic sister, Dorothy, for whom he took care until she died
  

Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772 - 1834

• Youngest son of a clergyman in Devon
  
• Not wealthy, especially after his father died.
  
• Bright pupil, studied at Cambridge
  
• Addicted to opium (and alcohol and women)
  
• Wrote The Lyrical Balads, together with Wordsworth, and thus started the Romantic Period
  
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
  
• Turbulent life: discharged from army, opium-addiction, bad health, bad relationship with his wife, financial problems, unable to hold a job.
  

Conclusion

The Romantic period in English literature was a time of great emotional expressiveness, individualism, and a celebration of the beauty of nature. Its impact can still be felt in modern culture today.

Summarize the key points of the lesson and encourage students to explore the Romantic period further.

Assignment 3: Wordsworth’s My Heart Leaps Up

• a) the narrator’s relationship with nature, the importance of feeling, the individual interpretation of the I-figure’s feelings when in contact with nature, He describes the beauty of nature and expresses his beliefs in the effect of nature on man's soul.
  
• b) If you cannot appreciate the beauty of nature anymore, i.e., you lose your inner child’s spontaneity.

Summarize the key points of the lesson and encourage students to explore the Romantic period further.

Assignment 3: Wordsworth’s My Heart Leaps Up

• c) As an adult you have to cherish qualities associated with children, like spontaneity and naivety. Innocence and your inner soul should guide you instead of experience, your mind and the laws of society.

• d) Natural piety means that nature instructs you correctly. He sees man as an instrument through which nature transmits its messages, thus combining an awareness of human nature and inanimate nature
  

Summarize the key points of the lesson and encourage students to explore the Romantic period further.

Assignment 4: Wordsworth’s Strange Fits of Passion

• a) When the moon suddenly disappears behind the roof of Lucy’s cottage (ll. 23-24) the I-figure panicks at the thought that Lucy may be dead. This sudden fear is ‘a strange fit of passion’ as there is no logical link between the moon’s disappearance and Lucy’s well-being.

• b) The story is ‘romantic’: a lover on horseback on his way to his beloved during a moon-lit night. The language is ‘romantic’:Lucy is compared to a ‘rose in June’ (l. 6).
  

Summarize the key points of the lesson and encourage students to explore the Romantic period further.

Assignment 4: Wordsworth’s My Heart Leaps Up

c) Model answer, including any three of the following: 

• importance of feeling (the subject of the poem is love);
• importance of imagination (the irrational fear that Lucy may be dead);
• interest in nature and the countryside (the I-figure travels through the countryside, which is described in stanzas 3-4); 
• interest in common people (Lucy is a simple girl, she lives in a cottage);
• interest in folk literature (the vocabulary and the rhyme scheme are simple, the poem is ballad-like).

Summarize the key points of the lesson and encourage students to explore the Romantic period further.

The Romantic Period

• 1. the beauty and value of nature
• 2. idealization of the countryside and country people
• 3. the (idealized) past
• 4. distant and exotic cultures
• 5. children (innocent, not yet corrupted by the world)
• 6. the supernatural
• 7. the Sublime: the use of language and description in a certain manner to evoke thoughts and emotions

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

*Read about Samuel Taylor Coleridge on p 5-6

*Read Part 1 of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

https://artpassions.net/dore/mariner.html

*Do assignment 5a & 5c  on p 7

*Read Part 2 on p 8-9

*Do assignment 6

Finish before Thursday.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Assignment 5:

• A: to stress the feverish, obsessive quality of the poem; these glittering eyes force the Wedding-Guest to stop and listen
  
• B: `Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken, The ice was all between.`(ll 27-28), (you see polar bears and people) `Through the fog it came(l.34), ‘the fog-smoke white,` (l.47).
• C. No, no reason is given.
  

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Assignment 6 (Part II)

• A: First they blame him for killing the bird that `made the breeze to blow`(l. 64). Then all claimed he had done the right thing having killed the bird that brought the fog and mist (ll. 69-72). Then again they hang the Albatross around his neck as a sign of guilt (ll. 11-112).
• B: One of horror.
  
• C: One of exorcism, to fight off evil spirits.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Assignment 7 (Part IV)

• A: Because the Mariner caused the death of all those around him (and he might be a ghost).
• B: both lead to death - rot and drought.
  
• C: Life-in-Death, since you will never find any rest.
  
• D: l.184, `shining white; l.188, `their rich attire`; l.191, `a flash of golden fire`; l.192, `O happy, living things! no tongue their beauty might declare; l.194, `A spring of love gushed from my heart, and I blessed them unaware`.
  
• E: The Mariner is able to see the beauty of the snakes, so of Nature and therefore is able to pray again.
  
• F: freed from the Albatross (forgiveness) - trapped by the Albatross (accusation).
  

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Assignment 8 (Part VII)

• A: The Mariner chooses certain people whom he knows are open to his tale. (He enchants them with his `glittering eye).
  
• B: Because the Mariner by now knows very well that God (and his forgiveness) was there.
  
• C: After his long period of loneliness.
  
• D: ll. 236 - 241
  
• E: he has become `a sadder and a wiser man.`
  

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Assignment 9B:

• Coleridge expresses the importance of restoring the relationship between mankind and Nature. Since then, this whole concept or theme has only become more and more topical.  

• Listen to Iron Maiden (Steve Harris): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gewer650wqc

• (Waar het Coleridge om gaat, is het herstel van de relatie tussen de mens en de natuur. En dat is een thema dat sindsdien alleen maar actueler is geworden.)