2024年4月7日发(作者：)

Romanticism

The romantic period (1785-1830)

The Romantic Period in English literature is dated as beginning in 1875 (which was

one year after the death of Samuel Johnson and one year before Robert Burns’ Poem,

Chiefly in Scottish Dialect.)—or alternatively in 1789 (the outbreak of the French

Revolution), or in 1798 (the publication of William Wordsworth’s and Samuel Taylor

Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads)—and as ending either in 1830 or else in 1832, the year in

which Sir Walter Scott died and the passage of the Reform Bill signed the political

preoccupations of the Victorian era.

1789-1815: Revolutionary and Napoleonic period in France

1789: the Revolution begins with the assembly of the States-General in May and the

storming of the Bastille on July 14.

1793: King Luis ⅩⅤⅠ executed: England joins the alliance against France.

1793-94: The Reign of Terror under Robespierre.

1804: Napoleon crowned emperor.

1815: Napoleon defeated at Waterloo.

1798： Lyrical Ballads published anonymously by William Wordsworth’s and

Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

1811-20: the Regency—George, Prince of Wales, acted as regent for George Ⅲ ,

who has been declared incurably insane.

1820-32: Accession of George Ⅳ.

Literary groups

1. 湖滨派(the Lake School)：华兹华斯、柯勒律治、骚赛

2. 伦敦土著派(the Cockney School)：李亨特、哈兹立、济慈

3. 恶魔派(the Satanic School)：拜伦，雪莱及其他

“Romanticism” is not a term that was used by the writers whom we now designate as

Romantic; it is a label that has been applied posthumously and with hindsight.

时代精神 the spirit of the age

Many of the major writers did not feel that there was something distinctive about their

time—not a shared doctrine or literary quality, but a pervasive intellectual and

imaginative climate, which some of them called “the spirit of the age”.

In his Defence of Poetry Shelley claimed that the literature of the age “has arisen as it

were from a new birth,” and that “an electric life burns” within the words of its best

writers which is “less their spirit than the spirit of the age”.

Shelley explained this literary spirit as an accompaniment of political and social

revolution, and other writers agreed.

Distinctive elements in the theory and poetry of the Romantic Period

1. The concept of poetry and the poet

Poetry as limitation of human life, “a mirror held up to nature” VS “the

spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”—poetry expresses the poet’s own

feelings and temperament.

The source of poem was not in the outer world but in the individual poet, the

essential materials of a poem were not the external people and events, but the

inner feelings of the author.

Blake and Shelley describe poem as an embodiment of the poet’s imaginative

vision, which they opposed to the ordinary world of common experience.

The lyric poem written was in the first person, earlier regarded as a minor kind,

become a major Romantic form.

2. Poetic spontaneity and freedom

Art VS arising from impulse, and free from all rules and the artful manipulation

of means to foresee ands.

3. Romantic “natural poetry”

The natural scene had become a primary subject. However, the aim of this poetry

was not description for its own. Romantic poems habitually endow the landscape

with human life, passion and expressiveness.

4. Glorification of the commonplace

In two lectures on Wordsworth, Hazlitt declared that the school of poetry founded

by Wordsworth was literary equivalent of the French Revolution, translating

political changes into poetical experiments.

The aim of Lyrical Ballads was “to choose incidents and situations from

common life” and to use a “selection of language really spoken by men” for

which the source and model is “humble and rustic life.”

5. The supernatural and “Strangeness in Beauty”

Coleridge in Lyrical Ballads attempted to achieve wonder by a frank violation of

natural laws and the ordinary course of events in poems which “the incidents and

agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural”.

1. What is the relation between the poet and nature described in the poem?

The poet, Wordsworth, felt as lonely as a wondering cloud. Suddenly, he saw a crowd

of golden daffodils which were dancing in the breeze and were like the shining and

twinkling stars on the Milky Way. Daffodils’ happy and sprightly dance seemed

infectious and they not only moved the waves beside them but also made the poet

forget his loneliness and become happy. Sometime later, when he is in melancholy, he

recalls the scene of daffodils. This recollection in tranquility brings him “bliss”, fills

his heart with pleasure.

2. Do you think nature can have healing effect on mind?

Nature does have healing effect on mind. In romantics’ eyes, nature is always

personified and has life, passion and expressiveness. Take this poem as example,

Wordsworth found sensual pleasure when he saw the beautiful daffodils. More

important, he recalled the scene of happy daffodils.

华兹华斯“The Great Year”(创作旺盛之年)

Several major events have been noted as factors in this increased productivity: namely,

the death of his brother Tom, the critical reviews of Endymion and his meeting

Fanny Brawne.