TOPIC 48 ROMANTICISM IN GREAT BRITAIN.

POETRY AND NOVEL

INTRODUCTION: I will start telling you about the justification of this topic. According to our current legislation S. T Colleridge, wrote a poem when his 1st son was born. This can be seen as something
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based on LOMLOE from 2020, the teaching of a foreign language must be based on the teaching through normal nowadays, but for the time, these were radical sentiments. He moved to the
plurilingualism, interculturality and communication, for that reason, it is not only important to teach grammar countryside because he wanted his son to be ruled by nature. He became addicted to
but to make students understand why is the language spoken in the way it is and showing them the historical opium & he had to move with his doctor. He wrote Kubla-Khan, his most famous poem.
aspect of the learned language, they can acquire the language easily. So, the historical, literary and cultural It was composed a night after experiencing an opium influenced dream describing a
aspects of the learned language is essential for our students. Once the justification is done, we are ready to palace called Xanadú. He wrote 2 or 300 lines until he was interrupting by somebody at
start… the door & his inspiration left, we can see in the poem the part where he was under the
1. ROMANTICISM 18TH CENTURY effect of opium. He left the poem unpublished & Lord Byron published it. He also wrote
Romanticism is based on love for nature, medieval times, emotions and literature. together with his friend Wordsworth Lyrical Ballads, while Wordsworth was
Romanticism was spread through Europe: in Switzerland, Rousseau published On Education, about the considered thepoet of nature Coleridge was the poet of imagination.
natural goodness and spontaneity ofchildren. It emphasizes childhood against adults. In London 1770, a
17 year-old-poet, Thomas Chatterton killed himself because no one wanted to publish his poems. He became W Wordsworth, England’s laureate poet. He grew up at Lake District, a place which
an emblement for Romantics. In Germany 1774, Goethe published The Sorrows of Young Werther, about a influenced him a lot. It was the place where he felt most at home. His beloved sister was
passionate love affair with impulses of heart. Napoleon claimed this was the Greatest book. In Spain, 1798, taken away from him when he was young, at the age of 13 he was with his father in nature
Goya produces The Sleep of Reason Brings out Monsters, a picture to show the limits of rationality. In & his father died. He as educated by natural forces. At 20 he travelled to the Alps where
England 1799, W. Wordsworth wrote about nature and seduced Europe. he looked for emotions and he found himself. He came back to England and reunited to
To be a romantic is to take the side of nature against industry, is to put emphasis on emotions his sister and never separated again. He visited Tintern Abbey and wrote a poem with
and individualism. this name. Romantics loved ruins and this place was totally consumed by nature. He
Romantics claim about glorification of the past and nature referring to medieval times. wrote Lyrical Ballads with Coleridge and this publication marked the beginning of this
It’s a reaction against the industrialized world and Enlightment. Emotions over Reason. movement. He also wrote The Prelude, an autobiographical poem showing the vision of
Romantics emphasises on the individual, the irrational, the subjective, the spontaneous, the visionary, the pure relation btw man and nature.
emotional and transcendental.
Libertarianism was common, rights and dignity of the individual as romantics were abolitionists. - SECOND GENERATION OF ROMANTIC POETS: it was a time of industrialization and
Style is free, experimentation over fixed rules, and the use of everyday language. commerce, but it was also a time of scientific advances changing the life and writers were
1.1. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND inspired by all these dramatic changes.
During this period several important facts happened:
In 1800: The Acts of Union: GB + Ireland. John Keats, his father dies when he was 8, his mother and brother dies when he was 23.
George IV (1820-1830) George III’s son He suffered from depression. He studied medicine, and in one occasion while operating a
William IV (1830-1837) George IV’s brother. During his reign Britain abolished slavery in the man without anesthesia the man screamed and the patient’s pain became his own pain.
colonies. He married Adelaide of Saxe-Coburg and had no children.
This experience inspired him through all his life. He chose art over science and became a
Victoria (1837-1901) George III’s granddaughter. VICTORIAN ERA
poet. Keats studied the human soul as intense as the atomist studied the human body. He
She married her cousin Albert of Saxe Coburg who exerted tremendous influence on Victoria. From her legacy we
wrote Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, To Autumn. He died very young.
have important matters like The Christmas Tree and The Great Exhibition of 1851. It was a period of
industrial, cultural, political, scientific and military change. It was the time of the Great expansion of the British Percy Bysshe Shelley, in Oxford in 1811, an anonymous pamphlet was sent to the
Empire. A new sense of nationality was spread around the country. New social structure and a new conceptof bishops and published anonymously titled called The Necessity of Atheism where he
family emerged. attacked the foundation of the European civilization. He was a brilliant Oxford student
The 19th century was one of rapid development and change, far swifter than in previous centuries. During this
but he was expelled for his ideas. He was married but he left his wife when he felt in love
period England changed from a rural, agricultural country to an urban, industrialised one. This involved massive
with Mary Godwin. His wife suicide & he married Mary. He wrote several poems like To
dislocation and radically altered the nature of society. It took many years for both government and people to
Mary Godwin or Prometheus Unbound. Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude, Ode to the
adjust to the new conditions.
West Wind"
2. ROMANTICISM IN BRITISH LITERATURE (1798-1837)
The publication of W. Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads marked the beginning of the period. The crowning of
George Gordon or best known as Lord Byron, one of the greatest poets of England. He
queen Victoria as it ends.
travelled extensively across Europe. He joined the Greek war of Independence & died
a. 2.1. ROMANTIC POETRY
there, he is a national hero in Greece. Byron was both celebrated & castigated in his life
The beauty of the supernatural. Something existed beyond the physical world, the spiritual.
for his aristocratic excesses, huge debts & numerous love affairs. He was very famous &
The poet is only at peace in nature, union between nature and man.
popular at his time after publishing Childe Harolde’s Pilgrimage, about his own
- FIRST GENERATION OF ROMANTIC POETS:
personal life. He received a lot of letters from admirers. He received a petition from his
W. Blake, when he was a child, he experimented a vision, he saw angels. He never forgot his childhood vision.
wife to ask for an official separation because he was very unfaithful. He also wrote Don
Romantics thought childhood visions were the source of adults’ inspiration. Blake tried to declare this innocence
Juan ranked as the most imp poem written in England together with Milton’s Paradise
of childhood in his poems Songs of Innocence, decorated by himself, where we can find poems such as The
Lost. The poem is a satire criticized as immoral.
Shepherd; The Lamb, The Little Boy Lost. One day, his brother died & he had to move to London where those
visions were destroyed by industrialization where children had to lose their innocence by working in horrible
conditions, they were abandoned & had to live in hard conditions. Full of anger he wrote Songs of Experience,
the contrary state of the human soul, we find poems such as The Tyger, The Little Girl Lost. These two collections
of poems explained the innocent and pastoral world of childhood against an adult world of corruption.
2.2. ROMANTIC NOVEL Some of the things we can find in her novels are things she wanted to teach:
Although the romantic period is well-known for the poetry, the period also saw a rapid growth of the novel. - Let your lover educate you: in Pride & Prejudice we see a couple who dislike at first and then
The growth of the period in that time prepared the way for the larger growth of the novel in the Victorian fall in love. According to Austin each can improve and educate the other. Mr. Darcy believed
period. The novel incorporated the same style and themes of romantic poetry. A reaction against classicism, superior because of his money; Elizabeth condemns his arrogance and he learned a lesson.
and emerged an element which was common at this period: The Gothic novel. Features of gothic fiction They balance, they improve each other and the story rewards them in the end.
includes: terror both psychological and physical, mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses, gothic - we shouldn’t stop judging people, but we have to judge more carefully. Mansfield Park,
architecture, castles, darkness, death, madness, secrets & hereditary curses. The characters of gothic fiction Fanny has no elegant dresses or money but at the end she is revealed as a noble one.
include: tyrants, villains, vampires, werewolves, monsters, demons We distinguished 3 lines of Gothic - Take money seriously, Austin is quite frank about money. In Pride & Prejudice shows this
novels: necessity. Two lessons about money. To get over impressed by it: as in Mansfield Park, a
- Gothic historical novel, represented by Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, considered the 1st woman married the richest man of Austen’s novels, but they are miserable together. But at
Gothic novel. The novel merged medievalism and terror in a style that has endured ever since. Gothic the same time Austen thinks is necessary to get married sb who has money. In Sense &
elements appeared in this novel are the disappearance & reappearance of people, presence of supernatural Sensibility, she shows marriage without a reasonable economic basis is just foolish. Money is
element = moving painting. in some ways extremely imp for her, and in other ways unimportant.
- Do not be snobbish, in Emma, takes Harriet Smith under her wing, she wants her to refuse
- The school of terror, represented by Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho. Tells of Emily St.
the marriage proposal of a farmer (who is in love with) Emma cruelty snobbish, the farmer is
Aubert, who suffers misadventures that include the death of her mother and father, supernatural terrors in
better to the vicar.
a gloomy castle, and machinations of an Italian brigand.
Austen instead of writing sermons she wrote novels to educate & this is the reason why she
- The school of Horrors with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
is such a loved writer.
Sir Walter Scott, the inventor of the historical novel. He wrote about revolution, history and social changes.
He wrote about characters from all levels of society. All of his novels are set in the past but he wanted to CONCLUSION: The Romantic movement was spread around the world. In England, many are
make them relevant to his present time. He was a legal administrator & sheriff. He suffered from polio & the works that those authors left during their lives. Their way of writing marked the beginning
became lame for the rest of his life. He wrote Ivanhoe, about the Norman and Saxon war, set in Middle Ages. of a literary movement and the beginning of a new generation of writers with an own identity.
It was one of the greatest historical novels of the time. Rob Roy, The lady of the Lake. They wanted to denounce the importance of nature over industrialization in a time when
industry started to be spread.
For our next author we are going to imagine the year 1816 the Year Without a Summer because of the
eruption of a volcano which condemns Europe into darkness. A group of young poets went to spend a week
in a house in Switzerland. These poets were, Lord Byron & his doctor, Percy Shelly, Mary Godwin and her BIBIOGRAPHY:
sister. They had no phones, they had no Tv, they only had time, so they spend the week creating stories.
• Alexander, M. A History of English Literature. Macmillan Press. London, 2000.
Here is where the most famous novel of the history of England was born.
• Brocklehurst, R. The Usborne History of Britain. Usborne Publishing Limited. 2008.
Mary Shelley, daughter of two philosophers, her mother dies when she gave her birth, she received a very
• [Link]
advanced education and grew up reading her parents’ writings. She met P B Shelley and they fell in love. In
Lord Byron’s mansion the group of poets were speaking about science and gothic things and they decided to • [Link]
do a contest about writing a horror story. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, the story of a doctor playing • The Oxford English Literature
to be god (modern Prometheus) creating a horror creature with the parts of dead people’s bodies. It became
one of the most famous books of the English literature full of references to the science and advances of the
time. Artificial intelligence. Mary had 2 children but they died in 6 months one of malaria and the other of
dysentery. Mary plugged into a deep depression finding only comfort in writing and created 2 novels:
Valperga, Maltilda published in the 20thc. P Shelley died sunk and Mary moved to London in a very bad
economic situation and with her only surviving son. She wrote The Last Man an apocalyptic novel set in
2073 where humanity is annihilated by a plague. She died at the age of 51.

Jane Austen, wanted with her novels to make the people less selfish and more reasonable, more sensitive
with the suffering of others. She grew up in a small village and wrote most of his novels in a small octagonal
table. She never got married & lived with her sister in the countryside. She completed six novels: Sense &
Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. Her six full-
length novels have rarely been out of print, although they were published anonymously and brought her
moderate success and little fame during her lifetime
Austen's plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favourable social
standing and economic security. Her works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th
century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism.