The Romantic Movement1798 - 1832

The Romantic focus on the imagination was a direct reaction to eighteenth-

century rationalism, and specifically against the

French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution.

The Major Romantic Poets:

1. William Blake

2. William Wordsworth

3. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

4. Percy Bysshe Shelley

5. Lord Byron

6. John Keats

The Romantic Movement, #1

Concern for human society marks the early English Romantics, who describe a

time when England will be free from oppression and injustice, and all men will

enter into a new age and a new heaven on earth. Some poets despise the ugliness of the expanding urban poverty and urges a return to a spiritual home in nature. They question conventions and authority in order to imagine a better, fairer and

healthier way to live. Focus upon personal and spiritual

emancipation/freedom.

The Romantic Movement, #2

Romantic poetry frequently focuses on images of nature, which is

viewed as a force that expresses sympathy with

human beings. Nature was believed to be our “spiritual

home.” Romanticism also features

melancholy settings, such as deserted castles or monasteries on

lonely hillsides.

The Romantic Movement, #3a

Despite the variety of opinion and style within English Romantic

poetry, one idea remains central to the movement: Individual

experience is the primary source of truth and knowledge.

All feelings are valid; all emotions are true.

The Romantic Movement, #3b

Romanticism stressed strong emotion and the individual imagination as the ultimate critical and moral authority. The Romantic poets, therefore, felt free to challenge traditional notions of form. They likewise found themselves abandoning social conventions, particularly the privileges of the aristocracy, which they believed to be detrimental to individual fulfillment.

Thomas Gainsborough, Cottage Girl

With Dog and Pitcher, 1785

Thomas Gainsborogh’s An Extensive Landscape With Cattle And A Drover

The Honorable Mrs. Graham, Thomas Gainsborough, 1788

While the literature of the Enlightenment focused on the hero and the high-ranking socialite, the Romantics celebrated the commoner, the laborer, and the “underprivileged.”

Eighteenth-century aesthetics had favored the highly ornate and artificial (as epitomized by Baroque music and architecture), but the Romantics strove to emphasize beauty in simplicity and in genuine nature.

Peter Ackroyd’s documentary film “The Romantics”• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdEPEqqviZk&playnext=1&list=PLsA-

1gKzSp95OKMLfwM5CCJ0dvIvL4a9i&feature=results_main (part one)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqhKYlEUvEU&list=PLsA-1gKzSp95OKMLfwM5CCJ0dvIvL4a9i (part two)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rja9-CLj0hg&list=PLsA-1gKzSp95OKMLfwM5CCJ0dvIvL4a9i (part three)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beQdcwTqcyU&list=PLsA-1gKzSp95OKMLfwM5CCJ0dvIvL4a9i (part four)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beQdcwTqcyU&list=PLsA-1gKzSp95OKMLfwM5CCJ0dvIvL4a9i (part five)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6onRFORs9E&list=PLsA-1gKzSp95OKMLfwM5CCJ0dvIvL4a9i (part six)

Each video is about eight minutes long.

Poet Lesson Presentation Schedule

R/F: Planning workday in classroom (textbooks/laptops

available)M: Workday/conference/rehearse

with Mrs. Peters T: BlakeW: WordsworthR: KeatsF: ColeridgeM: ByronT: Shelley

Stages of a successful lesson:• Anticipatory activity: Opening discussion

question/art/survey/game/etc.• Biography of poet/photos/poet’s Romantic philosophy• Provide preface and page # to poem before oral reading• Read poem aloud clearly---stanza by stanza• Pause after each stanza to ask questions for

understanding---WAIT TIME/SURVEY CLASSROOM for responses

• Closure activity: Quiz/writing activity/game to gauge understanding

• REMEMBER: YOU and YOUR CLASSMATES WILL BE TESTED ON THE MATERIALS presented within your presentation!

Frankenstein characters

• Victor

• The Creature• Robert Walton (ship pilot who writes letters)

• Henry Clerval (Victor’s BFF)

• M. Krempe (Victor’s professor at Ingolstadt)

• M. Waldman (Victor’s professor at Ingolstadt)

• Elizabeth (Victor’s adopted sister and ?)

• Alphonse Frankenstein (Victor’s father)