The Age of Transition(1760 – 1798)

A new sensibility:ROMANTICISM

• Reaction against the faith in reason of the Augustan Age

Classical features Early romantic features

- Imitation - originality, creativity- ‘social’ writer - focus on the individual- Reason - feelings, emotions- Established rules - free imagination- Classical Greece and Rome - interest in the Middle Ages- Routine-life, domestic environment - exotic places- Nature as an abstract, - nature as a real, living being philosophycal concept

INFLUENCES

• Sturm und Drang (70s): strongly nationalistic literary movement

• Mme De Staël : De l’Allemagne

• J. J. Rousseau: the theory of the noble savage importance of childhood and nature

Features

• Nature• Feelings and emotions• Strong individualism• Melancholy• The sublime• Discovery of the popular traditions of the Middle Ages• Taste for the desolate; love of ruines…• Imagination • Cult of the exotic• Nationalism/patriotism

C.D.Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea Fog (1818)

C. D. Friedrich, The Monk by the Sea (1808-10)

Historical background

• Under the reign of George III the main events were:

1. The loss of the American colonies

2. The French Revolution

3. The Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions

The loss of the American colonies

• The Americans: not represented in English Parliament• 1773: Boston Tea Party: ‘no taxation without

representation’• 1775: war broke out• 1776: Declaration of Independence (Thomas Jefferson)• G. Washington: 1st President• 1783: Treaty of Versailles• American society: a melting pot• Birth of the ‘American Dream’

The Boston Tea Party

• A political protest whose demontrators, disguised as American Indians, destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company. The American colonies refused to pay taxes to the mother country (Tea Act, 1773) unless they had representatives in the British Parliament.

The thirteen American colonies declared their independence from the British Empire. They formed a new nation: the United States of

America.

The French Revolution and Napoleon

• Concepts of freedom, brotherhood, equality• Initial enthusiasm• Patriotic sentiments, nationalism• ‘Terror’ period• Napoleon: at first England remained neutral but then,

worried about a possible French egemony in Europe, it took part in the war against France.

• English navy very strong: Napoleon defeated in 1805 by admiral Nelson (Battle of Trafalgar)

Admiral Horatio Nelson

Trafalgar Square in London

The Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions

• England became a manifacturing country• Increase in population• Demand for goods/clothes• Improvement of technology / inventions• Raw materials in the North• Transport: roads, railway, canals• New industrial towns (mushroom towns)• Urbanisations lack of hygiene, overcrowded slums• Working conditions: alienation, heavy drinking, diseases.• Use of fertilisers, crop rotation, machines• Inhuman working conditions, machinery broken by workers then punished

by the Government • 1799: COMBINATION ACTS (Trade Unions of workers = illegal)• 1819: Peterloo Massacre

The spinning frame invented in 1764 by James Hargreaves

http://www.history.com/topics/industrial-revolution

Pre-Romantic Poetry

• GRAVEYARD POERTY: melancholy, a sombre mood, interest in graves, death, ruins, desert places.

- Thomas Gray: Elegy written in a country churchyard

• OSSIANIC POETRY: new sources of inspitation found in Nordic and Celtic culture.

- James Macpherson: Fragments of Ancient Poetry Fragments of Celtic poetry attributed to OSSIAN, a legendary warrior and bard of the 3rd century.