The Hay Wain, 1821. John Constable. National Gallery, London, UK.

The Hay Wain, 1821. John Constable. National Gallery, London, UK.
692
National Gallery Collection; By kind permission of the Trustees of the National Gallery, London/CORBIS
UNIT FOUR
The Triumh of
R O M A1750-1837
NTICISM
Looking Ahead
Toward the end of the 1700s, industrial and political revolution overturned
traditional ways of life in Europe. Bold, new ideas were beginning to
challenge the belief in reason associated with the Enlightenment. In time,
many of these ideas would form part of Romanticism, a broad movement
in art and thought that valued feeling and imagination over reason. British
Romantic writers found inspiration in nature, folk culture, the medieval
past, and their own passions.
Keep the following questions in mind as you read:
What were the essential features of Romanticism?
How did Romantic writers respond to nature?
What conception of the imagination did Romanticism express?
OB J ECTIVES
In learning about the age of English Romanticism, you will focus on the following:
•
•
•
analyzing the characteristics of the literary period and the issues that influenced the writers of that period
evaluating the influences of the historical period that shaped literary characters, plots, settings, and themes
connecting literature to historical contexts, current events, and your own experiences
693
T I M E L I N E 1750-1837
B R I T I S H L I T E R AT U R E
1750
1790
1751
Thomas Gray’s “Elegy
Written in a Country
Churchyard” is published
anonymously
1765
Bishop Percy publishes
Reliques of Ancient English
Poetry
1765
First gothic novel, Horace
Walpole’s The Castle of
Otranto, is published
1792
Mary Wollstonecraft
publishes A Vindication
of the Rights of Woman
1798
William Wordsworth and
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
publish Lyrical Ballads
1786
Robert Burns publishes
Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish
Dialect
1794
Ann Radcliffe publishes
The Mysteries of Udolpho
1799
William Wordsworth begins
The Prelude
1786
William Beckford
publishes Vathek
1794
William Blake publishes
Songs of Innocence and
Experience
B R ITI S H EVE NTS
1750
1790
1753
Britain and its colonies
celebrate January 1 as New
Year’s Day for the first time
1769
James Watt invents modern
high-pressure steam engine
1771
Sir Richard Arkwright builds
first water-powered cotton mill
1776 ▲
American colonists declare
their independence from
Britain; Adam Smith publishes
The Wealth of Nations
1795
Mungo Park explores Niger
River in Africa
1802
British purchase Elgin
Marbles
1781
British surrender at Yorktown
ends American Revolution
1805
British defeat Napoleon’s
naval forces at Trafalgar
1788
British establish first colony
in Australia
1807
Britain outlaws slave trade
WO R LD EVE NTS
1750
1790
1752
First U.S. hospital opens in
Philadelphia
1752
Benjamin Franklin proves
that lightning is electricity
1789
French Revolution begins
with storming of the Bastille
prison
1754
French and Indian War
begins in North America
1755
Moscow University
established in Russia
694
UNIT 4
1798
Thomas Malthus publishes
An Essay on the Principle
of Population
1793
Eli Whitney invents the
cotton gin in the U.S.
1793
French King Louis XVI
executed by revolutionaries
1794
Toussaint L’Ouverture
leads Haitian revolts against
France and Spain
1804
Napoleon Bonaparte
proclaimed emperor
of France
Timeline Visit www.glencoe.com
for an interactive timeline.
THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM
(t)The Art Archive/British Museum, (c)Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY, (br)Bettmann/CORBIS, (bl)The Art Archive/Musée du Nouveau Monde La Rochelle/Dagli Orti
(bcr)The Art Archive/Museo Bolivar Caracas/Dagli Orti, The Art Archive/Musée du Château de Versailles/Dagli Orti
Frigate Macedonian captured
by frigate United States, 1812.
1810
1813
Jane Austen publishes Pride
and Prejudice
1814
First historical novel,
Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley,
is published
1817
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s
Biographia Literaria is
published
1818
George Gordon, Lord Byron
publishes Childe Harold’s
Pilgrimage
1818
John Keats publishes
Endymion ▼
1818
First science fiction novel,
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,
is published
1815
Jane Austen publishes Emma
1824
George Gordon, Lord Byron
publishes Don Juan ▼
1820
Percy Bysshe Shelley
publishes Prometheus
Unbound
1810
1811
Prince of Wales becomes
regent
1814
George Stephenson designs
first steam locomotive ▼
1819
Peterloo Massacre takes
place
1830
First public railway line
opens in Britain
1824
England purchases Singapore
and Malaya
1811
Luddites destroy machinery
1812
War between United States
and Great Britain begins
1810
1810
Father Hidalgo leads
Mexican revolt against
Spain
1812
Grimm brothers publish
Children’s and Household
Tales
1815
Napoleon defeated
at Waterloo, ending
Napoleonic Wars
1814–1815
Congress of Vienna meets
1817
In Africa, Shaka becomes
chief of Zulus
Napoleon
1819
Simón Bolívar leads
Venezuelan revolt
against Spain
1821
Greece revolts against
Turkey and declares its
independence
1830
France occupies Algeria
Reading Check
Analyzing Graphic Information What new types of
fiction first appeared during the Romantic Period?
INTRODUCTION
(t)Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC/ Art Resource, NY, (tcl)Private Collection/Bridgeman Art Library, (tcr)The Pierpont Morgan Library/Art Resource, NY, (bcl)Private Collection/Bridgeman Art Library
695
BY THE NUMBERS
Cotton Consumption (in tons)
BRITISH COTTON CONSUMPTION, 1800–1900
800
790
700
775
600
610
500
400
490
300
210
200
110
100
0
480
275
10
50
60
1800
1810
1820
1830
1840
1850
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
Source Historical Statistics of the United States
The Cost of Gentility
In the late 1700s, the word genteel
referred to a well-bred person.
Gentility, which made a family
socially acceptable, was closely
related to economic status and lifestyle, and was reflected in the number and quality of one’s servants,
horses, carriages, and houses. The
following list presents what a family
could afford at various income
levels.
100 pounds per year
TRAVEL EXPENSES
A genteel young Englishman’s
education was not complete
until he had experienced the
Grand Tour, a European trip that
could last three to four years.
Money went much further on the
Continent than in England. One
British traveler of the late 1700s
estimated that a tourist could
live better on 100 pounds a year
in Italy than on 500 pounds a
year in England.
• One ill-paid servant
300 pounds per year
• Two servants
400 pounds per year
• Three servants (including
a cook)
500 pounds per year
• Gentility on a tight budget
700–1,000 pounds
per year
• A carriage
More than 4,000 pounds
per year
• A second house in London
for the social season
696
UNIT 4
MILITARY EXPANSION
Between 1793 and 1815,
England spent 1,650,000,000
pounds on warfare. By the time
of the Battle of Waterloo (1815),
the British army had grown to
about 250,000 men, more than
six times its size at the time of
the French Revolution (1789).
The British navy had grown even
faster, from 16,000 men to more
than 140,000.
POPULATION BOOM
Between 1760 and 1815,
England’s population grew five
THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM
times as fast as during the
preceding fifty years. One reason
was falling mortality rates
from epidemic diseases such
as plague.
POLICING LONDON
In 1829 Parliament passed
the Metropolitan Police Act, and
Sir Robert Peel set up a constabulary for London. London’s first
police (called “Bobbies” or
“Peelers” after Sir Robert) were
required to be younger than 35,
at least 5 feet 5 inches tall, in
good health, and able to read
and write. They were required to
walk a beat of twenty miles a
day, seven days a week.
GROWTH OF RAILROADS
The first public railway line
opened in 1830 and extended
32 miles between the British cities of Liverpool and Manchester.
Pulling a 40-ton train, the locomotive sped along at 16 miles
per hour. Within 20 years, locomotives were able to reach
50 miles per hour, an incredible
speed at the time.
BEING THERE
In the late 1700s, manufacturing began to assume a
larger role in the British economy. As a result, industrial
towns began to spread over England’s landscape. To
escape what they saw as a growing blight of factories
and slums, many Romantic writers fled to remote areas
such as the Lake District.
A
Hungerford Stairs, c.1810. George
Shepherd. Guildhall Library,
Corporation of London.
3#/4,!.$
B
London’s Royal Exchange, 1809. Thomas
Rowlandson.
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Hull
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Maps in Motion Visit
www.glencoe.com for an interactive map.
Reading Check
Analyzing Graphic Information:
1. About how many times larger was the British navy
in 1815 than it had been in 1789?
2. At top speed, how long would it have taken the first
train to travel from Liverpool to Manchester in 1830?
3. In what part of England is the Lake District located?
INTRODUCTION
(t)George Shepherd/Guildhall Library, Corporation of London, UK/Bridgeman Art Library, (c)Historical Picture Archive/CORBIS, (b)The Art Archive/Tate Gallery London/John Webb
697
The Triumh of
R O M A1750-1837
NTICISM
Historical, Social, and Cultural Forces
The Industrial Revolution
Beginning in Britain in the late 1700s, the Industrial
Revolution brought a shift from economies based on
farming and handmade goods to economies based on
manufacturing by machines in industrial factories.
Coal and steam replaced wind and water as new
sources of energy and power. Cities and towns grew as
people moved from the country to work in factories.
This process produced wealth for a few factory owners
but widespread misery for their workers, who struggled with long hours, bad working conditions, poverty, slums, and disease.
The American and French
Revolutions
The late 1700s was a period of growing political
unrest that culminated in a series of revolutions. In
1776 Britain’s American colonists declared their
independence, resulting in a long war before the
United States of America won its freedom in 1781.
The French Revolution began in 1789 as a democratic protest against royal despotism and an idealistic
assertion of human equality. Yet, once in power, the
revolutionary government in France resorted to brutality, leading to the execution of thousands during
the Reign of Terror.
Latin American Revolutions
In the early 1790s, the ideals of the American and
French Revolutions began to spread throughout Latin
America. In France’s colony of Saint Domingue (present-day Haiti), enslaved Africans took up arms under
the leadership of Toussaint L’Ouverture, winning
independence in 1804. Beginning in 1810, a widespread series of revolts took place against Spanish rule
in Latin America. By 1824, Argentina, Chile,
Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, Paraguay, Colombia,
Venezuela, and Bolivia had become independent.
The Napoleonic Wars
The Hero of Trafalgar, 1898. Orford Smith. Color lithograph.
698
UNIT 4
THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM
Fine Art Photographic Library/CORBIS
In 1793 revolutionary France declared war on Britain.
From that point until 1815, with no more than a brief
respite, Britain and France were engaged in the
Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon Bonaparte—a brilliant
young Corsican and one of the most successful military commanders in history—first championed the
French Revolution and then seized power himself,
becoming emperor of France in 1804. The British
naval commander Horatio Nelson became a national
hero when he shattered Napoleon’s fleet at the battle
of Trafalgar in 1805. Britain continued to fight
Napoleon on land and sea until his defeat at the climactic Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
Romanticism
Romanticism sprang from a reaction against Enlightenment values. While the Enlightenment praised
reason and its limits, the Romantics were fascinated
by extreme physical sensations and mental states—
even terror and madness. Romantic works are filled
not with moderation and social cohesion but with
exotic extremes, whimsy and caprice, nightmares and
visions, innocent children, lone wanderers, and quests
after the unattainable. The skeptical intellectual is
the representative figure of the Enlightenment; for
the Romantics, it is the sublimely inspired poet.
Unlike Enlightenment thinkers, the Romantics did
not view feelings as untrustworthy or distracting. On
the contrary, they valued expressions of feelings as
authentic. Someone who was capable of feeling
deeply demonstrated a natural human sympathy both
to nature and to the feelings of others.
PREVIEW
1
Big Ideas
The Stirrings of
Romanticism
During the later 1700s, dissident voices began to challenge the rule of rationalism
and the values of civilization
that underpinned the
Enlightenment. New movements in literature, which
would soon develop into
Romanticism, emphasized
the importance of feelings
and imagination over reason.
“It is the addition of strangeness to
beauty that constitutes the romantic
character in art.”
—Walter Pater
Romantic poets were particularly suspicious of the
Enlightenment view of nature: that it obeyed
mechanical laws and that it could be mastered. In
Romanticism, nature is always active, vital, and
spontaneous. For many Romantics, true enlightenment came not from isolating oneself in bookish
studies, but rather from nature. “Nature” for the
Romantics included scenery, especially wilderness,
and an interest in the natural state of people. For
instance, the simplicity of common people—the
songs they sang and the stories they told—inspired
poets, as did children. Imagining what primitive people might have been like in a state of nature gave rise
to the Romantic ideal of the “noble savage,” a
human being of instinctive goodness. Above all,
Romantic writers placed their trust in instinct and
the power of the imagination.
of The Triumph of Romanticism
2
Nature and the
Imagination
3
The Quest
for Truth
and Beauty
As the Industrial Revolution
began to transform Britain
into a nation of cities and
factories, Romantics sought
inspiration in the beauty of
the natural world, the simple
lives of ordinary workers,
the innocence of childhood,
and the mysterious and
supernatural.
A second generation of
English Romantics succeeded
the first, inheriting many of
the enthusiasms and values
of their predecessors. During
their tragically brief lives, Lord
Byron, Percy Shelley, and
John Keats each actively pursued the elusive Romantic
ideals of truth and beauty.
See pages 702–703.
See pages 704–705.
See pages 700–701.
INTRODUCTION
699
Big Idea 1
The Stirrings of Romanticism
T
he bold attempts of Enlightenment
thinkers to find reason and order
in the world—indeed, in the
whole universe—inspired an
equally bold reaction against those qualities. The
reaction became Romanticism.
“Man was born free, and everywhere he
is in chains.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract
Sensibility and the Emotions
Young writers increasingly wanted to reduce the
Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason. One solution
was to replace it with a kind of sympathetic feeling
called “sensibility.” While seventeenth-century physician William Harvey might have discovered that
the source for the circulation of the blood was the
heart, the Romantics were far more interested in the
way the heart represents the origin of emotion than
in its mechanics. This cult of sensibility first emphasized the physical reactions we have when our hearts
are moved—blushing, turning pale, and fainting.
They read these visible movements of the blood as
signs of inner moral sympathy and virtue.
The “State of Nature”
The Imagination
Interested in getting at the root causes of things,
including human nature, several Enlightenment
thinkers speculated about what humans in a “state
of nature” might be like. One of the most influential
of these thinkers was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a
Swiss who spent much of his adult life in France. He
believed that humans were born naturally good,
curious, and content with satisfying just their basic
needs. According to Rousseau, society corrupts us so
that we instead desire status, idleness, and luxuries.
Can we ever regain the primitive innocence and
happiness of the “noble savage”? Rousseau thought
not, but he did believe in educating children in a
more natural way. His ideal education would be more
“natural” in two ways, both by allowing the child to
be outside in nature and by attending to the unfolding of each child’s inner nature as he or she develops.
He believed such education would produce upstanding citizens who would be confident in their own
abilities and opinions. Rousseau became an important catalyst for the new generation of Romantic
writers.
Another warm, Romantic antidote to the cool reason of the Enlightenment was the imagination,
which blends sensory impressions with fantasy.
Enlightenment thinkers had tended to dismiss the
imagination, either because they wanted to analyze
pure experience in their scientific experiments or
because they were interested in purely logical arguments in their philosophical searches for fundamental truths. Romantic writers valued precisely that
quality of the imagination that Enlightenment writers had despised: its ability to fuse sights and sounds
from wildly different kinds of experience in ways that
defy sense. In fact the Romantics embraced the irrational ecstasies and horrors of the imagination. The
poet William Blake (see page 754), for example,
believed that imagination, rather than science, held
the secrets of the universe. As he asserted, “Vision or
Imagination is a Representation of what Eternally
Exists, Really and Unchangeably.”
The Pre-Romantics
The early years of this era saw several writers who
straddled both Enlightenment values and the emerging ideals of Romanticism. Thomas Gray used
Neoclassical techniques in his poetry, such as elevated language and classical forms, while embracing
700
UNIT 4
THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM
A proverb is a short statement that expresses a
truth. Blake wrote the following proverbs as a
counterpart to the book of Proverbs in the Bible.
from Proverbs of Hell from
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
by William Blake
The Ancient of Days. Frontispiece, plate 1, from Europe,
a Prophecy, 1794. William Blake. The Pierpont Morgan
Library, New York.
a love of nature and a belief in the common man—
important ideals of later Romantic poets. Despite
his acceptance in high society, Robert Burns wrote
of the lives of common people in Scottish dialect
characteristic of peasants and farmers. Perhaps the
most famous pre-Romantic writer of all, William
Blake was not content with the prevailing Neoclassical values of his day and focused on supernatural
elements and imaginative experimentation thereby
forging a style all his own.
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own
wings.
A dead body revenges not injuries.
The most sublime act is to set another before
you.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would
become wise.
Folly is the cloke of knavery.
Shame is Pride’s cloke.
Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels
with bricks of Religion.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.
The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the
raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive
sword, are portions of eternity too great for
the eye of man.
Reading Check
Comparing and Contrasting How do Blake’s ideas
oppose Enlightment values?
INTRODUCTION
The Pierpont Morgan Library/Art Resource, NY
701
Big Idea 2
Nature and the Imagination
P
erhaps the most profound
disagreement between
Enlightenment and Romantic
writers was their differing reactions to nature. What is it for? Is it good or bad?
What should we do with it?
What Is Nature?
To Enlightenment thinkers, disorderly nature seemed
meant for humans to tame. Nature could be made
more productive in farms run on rational principles.
Nature could be made more rational by being analyzed and studied in laboratories. Nature could be
made more beautiful in orderly gardens with straight
paths and clear views.
The answers to these questions seemed more complicated to writers a few generations later when the face
of nature was literally changing. Cities and towns
were sprawling into the countryside, railroads began
to crisscross the landscape, smoke-belching factories
were springing up. Had human intervention really
made nature more rational or more beautiful? And
what did these changes say about the humans who
had caused them?
The Child and the Common Man
Who led the most natural life? One answer for the
Romantics was children, because they had not yet
been educated by school or society. Long before the
Enlightenment, thinkers had viewed children as deficient adults precisely because they had not yet been
transformed by education. The Romantics, however,
saw in children innocence and imagination rather
than ignorance. Another group whose lives and culture had not been distorted by civilized values was
the common people. Writers of the period became
interested in imagining the experiences and impressions of ordinary folk.
In 1798, two young poets, William Wordsworth and
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (see page 799), decided to
publish a book of poetry, called Lyrical Ballads, that
experimented with these new ideas. Their poems for
the most part are written in the simple verse form of
folk ballads or hymns. They use informal vocabulary,
not ornate language. Their subjects, too, are drawn
from the lives of uneducated people: a little girl whose
brothers and sisters have died, an old Indian woman,
a mentally deficient boy, an old sailor, a father going
for a walk with his young son.
Dreams and Nightmares
“Heaven lies about us in our infancy!”
—William Wordsworth
Romantics preferred their nature wild and untamed.
Their landscape gardens, for example, kept a space
for wilderness, with winding paths through tangled
woods leading to sudden, startling views. Instead of
the arranged prettiness of an ornamental garden, they
preferred the sublime experience of the Swiss Alps,
where the overwhelming scale of nature inspires awe
rather than mere appreciation. In his poem “The
Tables Turned,” William Wordsworth (see page 780)
recommended that we shut our books and lift our
eyes to the natural world around us: “Enough of
science and of art; / Close up those barren leaves; /
Come forth, and bring with you a heart / That
watches and receives.”
702
UNIT 4
THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM
Many Romantic writers shared a critical attitude
toward the methods and promised benefits of science.
Wordsworth, for instance, was concerned about our
motivations in studying nature: “Our meddling intellect / Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things; /—
We murder to dissect.” This Romantic indictment of
how science deforms nature took life in the gothic
novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (see page 833).
As a result of views like these, many Romantics were
fascinated by subjects that science could not explain.
Coleridge contributed a long poem to Lyrical Ballads
that includes nightmarish scenes set among the
icebergs of the Antarctic. He later claimed that his
famous poem “Kubla Khan” appeared to him in a
drug-induced dream vision. By focusing on the irrational and unnatural, Romantic writers hoped to
embrace the full scope of human experience, including the pains and pleasures of the heart and the dark
recesses of the mind.
Cloud Study, Horizon of Trees. John Constable. Royal Academy of Arts, London.
from the Preface to Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth
The principal object, then, which I proposed to myself in
these poems was to choose incidents and situations
from common life, and to relate or describe them,
throughout, as far as was possible, in a selection of language really used by men; . . . Low and rustic life was
generally chosen, because in that condition, the essential
passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can
attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a
plainer and more emphatic language; because in that
condition of life our elementary feelings co-exist in a
state of greater simplicity, and, consequently, may be
more accurately contemplated, and more forcibly communicated; because the manners of rural life germinate
from those elementary feelings; and, from the necessary
character of rural occupations, are more easily comprehended; and are more durable; and lastly, because in
that condition the passions of men are incorporated with
the beautiful and permanent forms of nature.
Reading Check
Analyzing Cause and Effect How did Wordsworth
and Coleridge’s interest in common life influence
their poetry?
INTRODUCTION
John Constable/Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK/Bridgeman Art Library
703
Big Idea 3
The Quest for Truth and Beauty
F
or the Romantics, the deepest
human experiences were often
moments of intense communication between their inner
selves and the world around them. They sought these
experiences by falling in love, writing poetry, and
fighting for causes they believed in.
The Revolutionary Spirit
In 1789 the French Revolution seemed to offer young
people a chance to realize these dreams. Wordsworth
and Coleridge, among many others, responded to the
ideals of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” and were
infused with enthusiasm for the revolutionary cause.
As Wordsworth exulted (in lines later included in his
long autobiographical narrative poem The Prelude),
“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be
young was very heaven!” When these ideals seemed
betrayed by the bloody excesses of the Reign of
Terror, both men slipped into conservative views.
The next generation of Romantics, such as Percy
Bysshe Shelley (see page 850), who had been
inspired by Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s youthful
political radicalism, felt betrayed and continued to
support revolt both at home and abroad.
away places. Literature with exotic settings—whether
experienced or imagined—proved very popular with
Romantic writers and audiences. Other remote and
beautiful spots appealed to them as well. The highlands of Scotland and the Swiss and Italian Alps, for
example, with their rough peaks and raging torrents,
provided the settings for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
The past, too, offered exotic surprises. Many Romantic
writers bypassed the familiar, sunlit eras of Greece
and Rome for darker, more mysterious periods. In particular, the medieval “Dark Ages” appealed to them.
The Romantics were inspired by the same qualities
of the Middle Ages that the Enlightenment thinkers
despised—Gothic wildness, age-old ritual, and strange
beliefs. Beginning in 1765 with Horace Walpole’s The
Castle of Otranto, literature with medieval settings,
such as weird landscapes and haunted castles, created
a literary form, the gothic novel.
“Much have I traveled in the realms
of gold . . .”
—John Keats
“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”
The Spirit of Nationalism
The Romantic interest in folk culture had important
political as well as literary consequences. Many
English Romantics, whose education had been
steeped in the classics, were particularly stirred by the
struggles of the Greek people to win independence
from Turkish rule. The Romantic poet George
Gordon, Lord Byron (see page 842) donated money
to the Greek cause, founded an artillery unit, and
died en route to fight beside the Greeks.
Exotic Places and Times
For the Romantics, a great part of the attraction of
foreign lands was the glamour of their cultures. Such
places held the allure of the unknown and the exotic.
Actual travel was not always necessary. The
Romantics could feed their imaginations with the
writings of travelers to the Near East and other far704
UNIT 4
THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM
The Poetic Quest
It is not surprising that in an age so conscious of its
own rebellion, Romantic poets above all reflected on
their role in culture. Many poets in this period, most
notably Wordsworth and Shelley, wrote manifestos
declaring the supremacy of poetry. Others wrote
poems that seem to be allegories of the grand poetic
quest for beauty and truth that guided many
Romantic poets. One such poet who sought to capture exuberance and beauty was John Keats (see page
865). In his brief life, he traveled far in his imagination. Some of his most famous sonnets are about the
ability of books to transport him to the magical
realms of the imagination. Sublime thoughts demand
sublime forms of expression, Romantic poets thought.
They were thrilled to take on this challenge.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1845. Joseph Severn. Oil on canvas. Keats-Shelley Memorial House, Rome.
from A Defense of Poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The most unfailing herald, companion, and follower of
the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial
change in opinion or institution, is Poetry. At such periods
there is an accumulation of the power of communicating
and receiving intense and impassioned conceptions
respecting man and nature. The persons in whom this
power resides, may often, as far as regards many portions of their nature, have little apparent correspondence
with that spirit of good of which they are the ministers.
But even whilst they deny and abjure, they are yet compelled to serve, the Power which is seated on the throne
of their own soul. It is impossible to read the compositions of the most celebrated writers of the present day
without being startled with the electric life which burns
within their words. They measure the circumference and
sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves
perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations, for it is less their spirit than the spirit of the age.
Poets are the hierophants [interpreters] of an unapprehended inspiration, the mirrors of the gigantic shadows
which futurity casts upon the present, the words which
express what they understand not; the trumpets which
sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire: the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the
unacknowledged legislators of the World.
Reading Check
Analyzing Cause and Effect In Shelley’s view, what
links poetry with revolution?
INTRODUCTION
Joseph Severn/Keats-Shelley Memorial House, Rome, Italy/Bridgeman Art Library
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WRAP–UP
Why It Matters
Many of Romanticism’s core values, such as the spiritual power of nature, the importance of the imagination, and the dignity of the artist, have become a
permanent part of our civilization. Today’s environmental movements and creative arts programs are
part of the cultural legacy of Romanticism.
The Romantics helped change the way our civilization regards children. Before the Romantic period,
children were seen simply as immature adults.
Romantics such as Rousseau, Blake, and Wordsworth,
however, attached a central importance to what they
saw as the unique experiences of childhood.
Romanticism also shaped our vision of the medieval
period. Since the Renaissance, most people had
viewed the Middle Ages as a time of “Gothic” barbarism, but the Romantics saw the medieval past as a
glamorous era of knights and ladies, fairies and wizards, dragons and quests.
When it spread to the United States, European
Romanticism helped influence American literature,
inspiring writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, and Herman Melville.
Cultural Links
Largely ignored in his own time, William Blake
has had a great influence on modern writers, particularly poets, including William Butler Yeats,
Theodore Roethke, and Allen Ginsberg.
The gothic novel and the historical novel, types
of fiction that remain very popular today, made
their first appearance during the Romantic period.
Often cited as the first science fiction novel, Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein helped establish the image
of the brilliant, but mad, scientist that is still a
feature of popular culture. As an artificial human
made from flesh (not machinery, like a robot),
Frankenstein’s monster is perhaps the first android
in literature.
You might try using this study organizer to keep track of the
literary elements you learn in this unit.
BOUND BOOK
Read
e
R esp r onse
Jour
nal
Big Ideas Link to Web resources to
further explore the Big Ideas at www.glencoe.com.
Connect to Today
Use what you have learned about the
period to do one of these activities.
1. Speaking/Listening Neoclassicism valued tradition, society, and reason; Romanticism valued
experiment, the individual, and emotion. Working with several other students, hold a panel discussion on which of these value systems is a better guide to life.
2. Visual Literacy Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein has become one of the most familiar Romantic
literary works. Create a visual collage showing the different ways in which Victor Frankenstein and
his monster have been portrayed visually in such popular media as illustrated books, stage plays,
movies, television programs, comic books, graphic novels, and video games.
OB J ECTIVES
Hold a panel discussion.
Create a visual collage.
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UNIT 4
THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM
Study Central Visit www.glencoe.com
and click on Study Central to review English Romanticism.