英美文学选读笔记整理版英国Romantic
Chapter 3 ------------The Romantic Period(英国）
Romanticism refers to an artistic and intellectual movement originating in Europe in the late 18th century and characterized by a heightened interest in nature, emphasis on the individual's expression of emotion and imagination, departure from the attitudes and forms of classicism, and rebellion against established social rules and conventions.
Historical background:
Rousseau’s ideas provided guiding principles for the French Revolution (1789-1794)
The primarily agricultural society had been replaced by a modern industrialized one.
Political reforms and mass demonstrations shook the foundation of aristocratic rule in Britain.
Cultural background
1.Inspiration for the romantic approach initially came from two great shapers of thought, French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau and German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Rousseau established the cult of the individual and championed the freedom of the human spirit. Goethe and his compatriots extolled the romantic spirit as manifested in German folk songs, Gothic architecture, and the plays of English playwright William Wordsworth.
2. The Romantics saw man essentially as an individual in the solitary state and emphasized the special qualities of each individual’s mind. Romanticism actually constitutes a change of direction from attention to the outer world of social civilization to the inner world of the human spirit.
3. In the works of the sentimental writers, we note a new interest in literatures and legends other than those of Greece and Rome. It was in effect a revolt of the English imagination against the neoclassical reason.
Features of the romantic literature
1.Expressiveness: Instead of regarding poetry as “a mirror to nature”, the romantics hold that the object of the artist should be the expression of the artist’s emotions, impressions, or beliefs
2. Imagination: Romantic literature puts great emphasis on the creative function of the imagination, seeing art as a formulation of intuitive, imaginative perceptions that tend to speak a nobler truth than that of fact, logic, or the here and now.
3.Singularity: Romantic poets have a strong love for the remote, the unusual, the strange, the supernatural, the mysterious, the splendid, the picturesque, and the illogical.
4. Worship of nature: Romantic poets see in nature a revelation of Truth, the “living garment of God”.
5.Simplicity: Romantic poets tend to turn to the humble people and the everyday life for subjects, employing the commonplace, the natural and the simple as their materials
6.The Romantic period is an age of poetry.
The Romantic period is also a great age of prose.
The major novelists of the Romantic period are Jane Austen and Walter Scott.
Gothic novel was one phase of the Romantic Movement. Its principal elements are violence, horror, and the supernatural
Willam Blake
Points of view:
1. Politically Blake was a rebel, mixing a good deal with the radicals like Thomas Paine. He strongly criticized the capitalists’cruel exploitation. He cherished great expectations and enthusiasm for the French Revolution and regarded it as a necessary stage leading to the millennium predicted by the biblical prophets.
2. Literarily Blake was the first important Romantic poet, showing a contempt for the rule of reason, opposing the classical tradition of the 18th century, and treasuring the individual’s imagination.
His works: Poetical Sketches (1783)
Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790)
Songs of Innocence (1809)
Songs of Experience (1794)
1. Songs of Innocence (1809)
It is a lovely volume of poems, presenting a happy and innocent world, though not without its evils and sufferings. In this volume, Blake, with his eager quest for new poetic forms and techniques, broke with the traditions of the 18th century. He experimented in meter and rhyme and introduced bold metrical innovations which could not be found in the poetry of his contemporaries
2. Songs of Experience (1794)
This volume of poetry paints a different world, a world of misery, poverty, disease, war and repression with a melancholy tone. A number of poems from the Songs of Innocence also find a counterpart in the Songs of Experience. The two books hold the similar subject matter, but the tone, emphasis and conclusion differ.
Comparison
The two “Chimney Sweeper”poems are good examples to reveal the relation between an economic circumstance, i.e. the exploitation of child labor, and an ideological circumstance, i.e. the role played by religion in making people compliant to exploitation. The previous one indicates the conditions which make religion a consolation, a prospect of “illusory happiness”; the poem from the latter reveals the true nature of religion which helps bring misery to the poor children.
Special features:
Fight for freedom, especially for the inner spiritual freedom of the individual, is a major topic in his poetry.
Blake writes his poems in plain, simple and direct language. His poems often carry the lyric beauty
He distrusts the abstractness and tends to embody his views with visual images.
Symbolism in wide range is also a distinctive feature of his poetry.
The Tiger Give brief answers：
In what sense can we say The Tiger is a poem about art/
This poem is about the artistic creation. The tiger is a real and natural beast, but the image of the tiger is man made. It is the fruit of an artist s imagination .
William Blake
1. His works
he is a poet and an engraver. He is the first romantic poet.
Childhood is central to his concern
A. Songs of innocence
a. a happy and innocent world, though not without evils and sufferings.
b. vision
B. Songs of experience
a. A world of misery
b. the nature of religion
2. Distinctive features
A. Visual images
B. music beauty
C. Symbolism in wide range
What does the word "weep " mean
Here weep means sweep, it is the child s lisping attempt at the chimney sweeper s street cry.
The Tiger is a poem about art, about the adequacy of words and painting. Though the tiger is a real natural beast, the images and myths with which we surround it are the fruits of imagination.
William wordsworth(1770-1850)
Literary point of view
He was strongly against the neoclassical poetry. He thought the source of poetic truth was the direct experience of the senses. Poetry originated from “emotion recollected in tranquility”. The most important contribution he has made is that he has not only started the modern poetry, the poetry of the growing inner self, but also change the course of English poetry by using ordinary speech of the language and by advocating a return to nature.