The Romantic Period 1785-1830. The House of Hanover.

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The Romantic Period 1785-1830

Transcript of The Romantic Period 1785-1830. The House of Hanover.

Page 1: The Romantic Period 1785-1830. The House of Hanover.

The Romantic Period

1785-1830

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The House of Hanover

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George III r. 1760-1820

1st Hanoverian king born in England

American colonies lost during his reign

Good family man: 15 children Highly cultured

1768: founded Royal Academy of Arts

65,000 of his books went to British Museum

“Farmer George” – interested in botany and agriculture

Mental derangement, perhaps caused by porphyria, led to Regency under his son (later George IV) in 1811.

George III, portrait by Johann Zoffany (1733/4-1810)© Royal Collection

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George IVr.1820-30

Prince Regent 1811-1820: final victory in Napoleonic Wars at Battle of Waterloo – June 1815

Known for extravagant lifestyle Illegally married a Catholic

widow, Maria Fitzherbert, 1785 Married Caroline of Brunswick,

1795 – disastrous Catholic Emancipation 1829 over

the king’s protestsPortrait of George IV of the

United Kingdom in the robes of the Order of the Garter as Prince

Regent, 1816, by Sir Thomas Laurence.

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William IVr. 1830-37

Joined navy as young man, served as Lord Admiral: “the Sailor King”

His reign saw major reforms: the poor law updated municipal government

democratised child labour restricted slavery abolished

throughout the British Empire

Reform Act of 1832 refashioned the British electoral system

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Queen Victoriar. 1837--1901

Portrait of Queen Victoria in her

Coronation robes and wearing the

State Diadem, by Franz Xavier Winterhalter

The Royal Collection © 2006, Her Majesty Queen

Elizabeth II

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ROMANTIC REVOLUTIONS

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Industrial Revolution

Power-driven machinery replaced hand labor 1765: James Watt – the steam engine

Industry moved from homes and workshops to factories

Population moved from agricultural countryside to industrial cities

Enclosure of “commons” into large farms and privately owned estates

Laissez faire economic policy – free operation of economic laws –governmental non-interference 1776: Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

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Political Revolutions

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American Revolution1775-1783

Colonies’ alliance with France 1776: Declaration of Independence Broad intellectual and social shifts

republican ideals: liberty and rights as central values, rejects aristocracy and inherited political power, expects citizens to be independent and calls on them to perform civic duties.

liberal democracy: representative democracy (with free and fair elections) along with the protection of minorities, the rule of law, a separation of powers, and protection of liberties (thus the name liberal) of speech, assembly, religion, and property.

1787: Constitution and Bill of Rights

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Tom Paine1737-1809

Quaker Met Ben Franklin in London –

who advised him to move to America

1776: Common Sense: attacked British monarchy and argued for American independence

1787: Returned to Britain 1791: The Rights of Man: proposed

universal male suffrage, progressive taxes, family allowances, old age pensions, maternity grants and abolition of House of Lords

1792: Became a French citizen and elected to National Convention – opposed execution of Louis XVI

1794: Age of Reason: questioned truth of Old Testament and Christianity

1802: returned to America Auguste Milliere, Thomas PaineNational Portrait Gallery, London

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French Revolution and Napoleon1789-1815

1789: Fall of Bastille and Declaration of the Rights of Man 1792: September Massacres of imprisoned nobility 1793: The Reign of Terror

Execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette France declared war against Britain

1794: Fall of Robespierre 1804: Napoleon crowned Emperor of France 1815: Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo

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Edmund Burke1729-97

Anglo-Irish statesman and philosopher

1765-94: Whig member of House of Commons

Opposed absolute monarchy and supported American colonies against the king

1790: Reflections on the Revolution in France: saw French Revolution as a violent rebellion against tradition which would end in disaster. Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke

Scottish National Portrait Gallery

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Mary Wollstonecraft

1759-97 1790: Vindication of the Rights of Men: response to Burke in defense of the ideals of the French Revolution

1792: A Vindication of the Rights of Women

1794: An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution

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Official British Reaction to the French Revolution and Napoleon

Curtailment of civil liberties and harsh repression suspension of the writ of habeus corpus advocates of political change charged

with treason 1791: Rejection of a bill to abolish the

slave trade 1793: Declaration of war against France 1805-15: Napoleonic Wars

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Intellectual Revolutions

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Mary Wollstonecraf

t1759-97

Professional writer, philosopher and feminist

1797: married William Godwin

Died of childbirth fever – after giving birth to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Shelley)

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Writings by Mary Wollstonecraft Thoughts on the Education of

Daughters (1787) Mary: A Fiction (1788) Original Stories from Real Life

(1788) Of the Importance of Religious

Opinions (1788) (translation) The Female Reader (1789)

(anthology) Young Grandison (1790)

(translation) Elements of Morality (1790)

(translation) A Vindication of the Rights of Men

(1790) A Vindication of the Rights of

Woman (1792) An Historical and Moral View of the

French Revolution (1794)

Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark (1796)

Contributions to the Analytical Review (1788-1797) (published anonymously)

The Cave of Fancy (1798, published posthumously; fragment)

Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman (1798, published posthumously; unfinished)

Letters to Imlay (1798, published posthumously)

Letters on the Management of Infants (1798, published posthumously; unfinished)

Lessons (1798, published posthumously; unfinished)

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Original Stories from Real Life

1788 Children’s book by Mary Wollstonecraft

Engraved illustrations by William Blake

Original Stories is primarily about leaving the imperfections of childhood behind and becoming a rational and sympathetic adult. Throughout the text, Wollstonecraft emphasizes the balance of reason and sympathy.

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Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792

Advocated equal education, egalitarian marriage, and full citizenship for women

Primary Importance of Education:“As a proof that education gives this appearance of weakness to females, we may instance the example of military men, who are, like them, sent into the world before their minds have been stored with knowledge or fortified by principles. The consequences are similar; soldiers acquire a little superficial knowledge, snatched from the muddy current of conversation, and, from continually mixing with society, they gain, what is termed a knowledge of the world; and this acquaintance with manners and customs has frequently been confounded with a knowledge of the human heart. But can the crude fruit of casual observation . . . deserve such a distinction? Soldiers, as well as women, practice the minor virtues with punctilious politeness. Where is then the sexual difference, when the education has been the same? . . . . ”

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William Godwin1756-1836

Journalist, political philosopher and novelist

Founder of philosophical anarchism

1793: An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice

1794: Things as They Are or the Adventures of Caleb Williams – first mystery novel

1799: Fleetwood. or The New Man of Feeling

1817: Mandeville 1797: married Mary

Wollstonecraft 1801: married Mary Jane

Clairmont Championed individual

against coercive government

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The “Wollstonecraft Scandal” 1789: William Godwin published Memoirs of the

Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Wollstonecraft’s Letters to Imlay after Wollstonecraft’s death

The works revealed Mary Wollstonecraft’s affair with Gilbert Imlay, her suicide attempts, and her rejection of Christianity

Ruined her reputation for decades: “Wollstonecraft was now branded as a whore and an atheist, and other women who dared to show sympathy with her ideas could not expect to escape calumny.” – Margaret Kirkham, Jane Austen, Feminism and Fiction

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Godwin-Wollstonecraft Family

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CLASSICISM vs. ROMANTICISM

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Neo-Classicism vs Romanticism

Greek/Roman influence Emphasis on Society Age of Reason

Rationality Philosophy Deism

Euro-centric Cities Enlightenment

Science

Medieval/Oriental influence Emphasis on Individual Age of Passion

Emotion Imagination Spirituality

Interest in the Exotic Nature: pastoral and wild Revolution

Social Justice

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NATURENeo-Classical Romantic

Universal Subject to human

control Gardens Source of peace and

tranquillity Untamed nature:

dangerous/evil

Particular Beyond human

control Mountains, oceans,

forests Source of inspiration

and spirituality Untamed nature:

exhilarating/sublime

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LOVENeo-Classical Romantic

Universal Subject to human

control Marriage

Social Contract Economic Contract Attraction between social

and intellectual equals Source of peace and

tranquillity

Particular Beyond human

control Passion

Individual choice Search for soul-mate Forbidden attractions:

social, exotic, incestual

Source of inspiration, exhilaration and despair

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Neo-Classical

Artist Social Arbiter of Taste Elitist Moral Intellectual Critic

Louis Michel van Loo Portrait of Diderot

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Romantic Artist

Loner Unconventional Amoral Genius Prophet

George Gordon Lord Byron

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Romantic Genres

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Romantic Prose Genres

Literary criticism The familiar essay The Novel

Historical novels Novels of manners Novels of sensibility Gothic novels

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Literary Criticism Literary critics became

the arbiters of taste Debate over the artistic

value as well as the utilitarian value of critical literature

1802: Edinburgh Review

1809: Quarterly Review

William Hazlitt

Charles Lamb

Thomas DeQuincy

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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The Familiar Essay Intimate

commentaries in which the essayist reveals his/her own feelings on a wide range of subjects

Idiosyncratic and eccentric

The typical familiar essay, whatever its theme, seemed to carry the reader into a personal conversation with an intelligent and learned writer

William Hazlitt

Charles Lamb

Thomas DeQuincy

Leigh Hunt

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Jane Austen and the Novel of Manners

Novels dominated by the customs, manners, conventional behavior and habits of a particular social class

Often concerned with courtship and marriage

Realistic and sometimes satiric Focus on domestic society rather

than the larger world Other novelists of manners:

Anthony Trollope, Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Margaret Drabble

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Historical Novels

Novels that reconstruct a past age, often when two cultures are in conflict

Fictional characters interact with with historical figures in actual events

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) is considered the father of the historical novel: The Waverly Novels (1814-1819) and Ivanhoe (1819)

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Gothic Novels

Novels characterized by magic, mystery and horror

Exotic settings – medieval, Oriental, etc.

Originated with Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1764)

William Beckford: Vathek, An Arabian Tale (1786)

Anne Radcliffe: 5 novels (1789-97) including The Mysteries of Udolpho

Widely popular genre throughout Europe and America: Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland (1798)

Contemporary Gothic novelists include Anne Rice and Stephen King

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Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

1797-1851 Inspired by a dream in reaction to a

challenge to write a ghost story

Published in 1817 (rev. ed. 1831)

A Gothic novel influenced by Promethean myth

The first science fiction novel

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The BrontësCharlotte (1816-55), Emily (1818-48), Anne

(1820-49) Wuthering Heights and Jane

Eyre transcend sentiment into myth-making

Wuthering Heights plumbs the psychic unconscious in a search for wholeness, while Jane Eyre narrates the female quest for individuation

Brontë.info: website of Brontë Society and Haworth Parsonage

The Victorian Webportrait by Branwell Brontë of his sisters,

Anne, Emily, and Charlotte (c. 1834)

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English Romantic Theatre

Closet drama: drama meant more to be read than performed Prominent in the early 19th c. when melodrama and burlesque

dominated the theater, and poets attempted to raise dramatic standards: Joanna Baillie: Plays on the Passions, 1798-1812 Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Remorse, 1813 George Gordon Lord Byron: Manfred, 1817 Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Cenci and Prometheus Unbound,

1819 Robert Browning’s Strafford (1837) and Pippa Passes (1841)

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Lyric Poetry Search for an authentic language of feeling rather than

artifice Wordsworth: “the spontaneous overflow of powerful

feelings recollected in tranquility” 1st person voice of the poem – during this period usually

associated with the poet – sometimes biographical and confessional

Revived older poetic forms: blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter the sonnet: 14 lines of iambic pentameter the ballad: mixed narrative story with lyrical description the ode: poem of praise – new kinds of subjects occasional poem: usually political, often satirical sentimental poem: commentary on personal events, such as the

birth of a child

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Female Pioneers

Anna Letitia Barbauld

Mary Robinson

Charlotte Smith

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Anna Letitia Barbauld

1743-1825

Poet, Educator, Activist, Editor 1773: Poems and Pieces in Prose 1774: Married Rochemont

Barbauld – school at Palgrave Poetry:

Devotional Pieces (1775) Political and domestic poems

Children’s literature: Lessons for Children (1778-79, 4 vols) Hymns in Prose for Children (1781) Evenings at Home (1792-96, 6 vols)

Editor: The British Novelists (1810, 50 vols.) The Female Speaker (1811)

1775 Wedgewood Cameo

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Charlotte Turner Smith1749-1806

Poet, Novelist, Activist Poetry:

Revived sonnet form Elegiac Sonnets (1785-1801, 9 eds.) The Emigrants (1793) Beachy Head (1807)

Novels: Emmeline (1788) Ethelinde, (1789) Celestina (1791) Desmond (1792) The Old Manor House (1793) The Emigrants (1793) The Wanderings of Warwick (1794) The Banished Man (1794) Montalbert (1795) Marchmont (1796) The Young Philosopher (1798) The Letters of a Solitary Wanderer (1800)

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Mary Darby Robinson

ca. 1757-1800 Actress, poet, novelist Poetry

Poems (2 vols. 1775) Poems (1791) Sappho and Phaon (1796)

Petrarchan sonnet sequence Lyrical Tales (1800)

7 Novels, including: Vacenza (1792) The Widow (1794) Angelina (1796) Walsingham (1797)

Memoirs (1801)

Gainsborough, 1781

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William Blake1757-1827

The first of the great English Romantic poets, as well as a painter and printer, and engraver.

Illuminated books: c.1788: All Religions Are One

and There Is No Natural Religion 1789: Songs of Innocence and Thel 1790–1793: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 1793: Visions of the Daughters of Albion

and America: a Prophecy 1794: Europe: a Prophecy, The First Book of

Urizen and Songs of Experience 1795: The Book of Los The Song of Los and The Book of Ahania c.1804–c.1811: Milton: a Poem 1804–1820: Jerusalem

Non-Illuminated 1783: Poetical Sketches 1789: Tiriel 1791: The French Revolution 1797: The Four Zoas

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Lyrical Ballads, 1798, 1800, 1802

Poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Heralds the beginning of the Romantic Period in England

Poetry that uses normal, everyday language

Emphasis on the voice of the living poet

“The majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purpose of poetic pleasure.” Title Page of the 1st Edition

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The Poet as Rock Star

Keats Coleridge

WordsworthByron

Shelley