Riassunto esame Letteratura inglese, Prof. Castagna Valentina, libro consigliato Storia della letteratura inglese, Bertinetti

Historical context (1760-1801)

George III (1760-1820)

He came to the throne in 1760. He introduced new duties on corn, paper, and tea, which caused fierce opposition in the American colonies. The English Parliament responded to the protest by repealing some of them, but the tax on imported tea remained. At the Boston Tea Party in 1773 some rebels threw the British tea coming from India into the harbour. The rebels maintained the taxes were unjust, as the colonies had no political power: they said "No taxation without representation." In England, the philosopher Burke recognised the justice of their cause and Thomas Paine's Common Sense stimulated the desire for a republic. The Americans divided into Patriots, who wanted independence, and Loyalists, who wanted to remain part of Britain, and the War of Independence began in 1775. The Americans set up an army under the command of George Washington. On 4 July 1776, the Congress, made by the representatives from 13 of the colonies, signed the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson. In 1781 the British army was defeated, and Britain recognised the independence of its former colonies with the Treaty of Versailles in 1783. The new republic of the USA adopted a federal constitution in 1787 and George Washington became the first President in 1789. In 1783, William Pitt the Younger became Prime Minister. He supported Adam Smith's theory of laissez-faire, illustrated in The Wealth of Nations. Smith's philosophy of economic liberalism encouraged free trade and economic self-interest, and stressed the division of labour.

Economic change

At the end of the 18th century, economic changes took place in England that would transform the country from an agricultural to an industrialised nation. The population increased in the 1500s and 1600s, and agriculture was intensified. Cereal production was greatly increased. Finally, animals were bred selectively, therefore producing more meat. Economic activity was gradually diversified, especially through the manufacture of woollen cloth. People began acquiring more goods for the house, such as wardrobes, clocks, and china. The clothing of ordinary people changed with the introduction of white linen underwear, of stockings, ribbons, and hats. Clothing marked the beginning of the Industrial Revolution because mass consumption of machine-made goods started. Cotton was the leading sector of industrialisation. More and more people also began to consume things for pleasure, like tobacco, tea, coffee, and alcohol.

Technological innovation

During the 18th century, there was a succession of technological innovations that transformed and improved the productivity of workers. Thomas Newcomen invented an effective and practical steam engine in 1712; in 1765 James Watt patented a steam engine that was more powerful and wasted less fuel than its predecessors. Edmund Cartwright's loom (1787) linked cloth manufacture to water and steam power. As a result, cheaper products met the growing demand for goods. Heavy investment in technological development increased, and innovation became linked to energy generated from coal. This changed the geography of the country, concentrating the new industrial activity near the coalfields of the Midlands and the North. People shifted from the rural South to the North and the Midlands, and small towns, the so-called "mushroom towns", were constructed to house the workers near the factories.

The worker's life

Industrial cities lacked elementary public services: water supply, sanitation, street cleaning, open spaces; the air and the water were polluted by smoke and filth; the houses were overcrowded. Women and children were highly prized by employers because they could be paid less and were easier to control. Besides, the fact that the children were so small meant they could move more easily in mines, or crawl between the machines in the cotton industry to carry out repairs. Industrial labour imposed new work patterns, which no longer depended on the weather or change of season, but were determined by the mechanised regularity of the machine and a rational division of labour. Long working hours, about 65-70 a week, discipline, routine, and monotony marked the work of industrial labourers. Food prices rose, diet and health deteriorated with an increase in the mortality rate.

George IV (1820-30)

He was extravagant and had exotic tastes. In political affairs, he behaved irresponsibly and did very little to encourage any social reforms.

William IV (1830-37)

The Great Reform Act was passed in 1832. It extended the vote to almost all members of the middle classes. Parliament abolished slavery in the West Indies in 1833 and in the same year the Factory Act limited factory employment of children under 9.

A new sensibility

In the second half of the 18th century, a new sensibility emerged. A new generation of poets established new trends, but they did not lay down a precise program of rules. While the early 18th-century poets had dealt with impersonal material with loud and noble eloquence, the later poets tended to use subjective, autobiographical material moving towards the expression of a lyrical and personal experience of life. They were less intellectual than Augustan poets and more intimately emotional. The poetry at this time was essentially reflective. It dealt with experiences presented not for their immediate impact, but for generalised reflection. Many factors produced this change. The noisy activity of the industrial town was compared negatively with the simple serenity of the countryside. There was a growing interest in humble and everyday life in opposition to the elevated subjects of Augustan poetry. Related to this was an interest in melancholy, often associated with meditation on the suffering of the poor and on death. A new taste for the desolate, the love of ruins, graveyards, ancient castles, and abbeys were part of a revival of interest in the past felt as a contrasting period to the present reality.

A new concept of nature

There was also a revolution in the concept of nature. The classical view of nature as an abstract concept, as a set of divine laws and principles established by God, which man could order and control thanks to the faculty of reason, was slowly replaced by the view of nature as a real and living being. The higher value placed on sensibility led to the need to elaborate a new aesthetic theory built on individual consciousness rather than on the imitation of the precepts of nature or the classics. The most remarkable work on the subject was Burke's "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful" (1757), in which he gave supremacy to the sublime over the beautiful among the qualities then thought to please the imagination.

The sublime

The distinction between the beautiful and the sublime became a main theme of 18th-century aesthetics. For Burke, the sublime is "whatever is fitted in I in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger [...] or operates in a manner analogous to terror". He argued that terror and pain are the strongest emotions and that there is an inherent pleasure in such feelings. Whatever provoked these emotions could be defined as sublime.

Early romantic poetry

The new sensibility had its roots in different poetic trends. Pastoral poetry expressed the idyllic pleasure and happiness of rural life in the works of William Cowper (1731-1800), who, in his main work "The Task" (1785), celebrated and praised country life for its simplicity and domesticity. He also described landscape details and reflected upon them: nature was to him a source of innocence and delight.

Nature poetry

The most important representative of nature poetry was James Thomson (1700-48), who saw nature in its physical, rather than abstract, details. His observation of nature included wild scenery and led to reflections on the character of the primitive man, who was in contrast with civilised man.

Ossianic poetry

The cult of a simple and primitive life and a growing interest in folk traditions were responsible for the success of Ossianic poetry, a cycle of poems by a legendary Gaelic warrior, called Ossian, who lived in the 3rd century in Scotland. James Macpherson (1736-96) collected and published some of Ossian's works in "Fragments of Ancient Poetry" (1760). The authenticity of the work was controversial; however, the poems were very successful not only in England but also all over Europe. Their appeal lay in the melancholy and suffering produced by war or by contrasted love, and especially in the description of a wild, gloomy nature.

Graveyard poetry

Another influential group of poets is known as the "Graveyard School" because of their melancholy tone and the choice of cemeteries, ruins, and stormy landscapes as the setting of their poems. Though the most important work of this school was Thomas Gray's (1716-71) "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (1751), the vogue began with Edward Young (1683-1765) and his "Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality" (1742-45), where the tomb became a symbol eliciting contemplation of death and immortality.

William Blake

He can be regarded as a forerunner of Romantic poetry because of his interest in social problems and his unique use of symbols.

Romantic poetry

At the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, English Romanticism saw the prevalence of poetry, which best suited the need to give expression to emotional experience and individual feelings. Imagination gained a primary role in the process of poetic composition. Thanks to the eye of the imagination, Romantic poets could see beyond surface reality and discover a truth beyond the powers of reason. An almost divine faculty, imagination, allowed the poets to re-create and modify the external world of experience. The poet was seen as a visionary prophet or as a teacher whose task was to mediate between man and nature, to point out the evils of society, to give voice to the ideals of freedom, beauty, and truth. There was serious interest about the experience and insights of childhood. To the Augustan Age, a child was important only so far as he would become an adult and civilised being. To a Romantic, a child was purer than an adult because he was unspoilt by civilisation. His uncorrupted sensitiveness meant he was even closer to God and the sources of creation, therefore childhood was a state to be admired and cultivated.

The importance of the individual

There was new emphasis on the significance of the individual. The Augustans had seen man as a social animal, in his relationship with his fellows. The Romantics, instead, saw him essentially in a solitary state, and stressed the special qualities of each individual's mind. They exalted the atypical, the outcast, the rebel. The current of thought represented by Jean Jacques Rousseau stated that the conventions of civilisation represented intolerable restrictions on the individual personality and produced every kind of corruption and evil. Therefore "natural" behaviour, that is to say, unrestrained and impulsive, is good, in contrast to behaviour which is governed by reason and by the rules and customs of society. The 'noble savage' concept is specifically a Romantic one. The savage may appear primitive, but actually, he has an instinctive knowledge of himself and of the world often superior to the knowledge which has been acquired by civilised man.

The cult of exotic

Rousseau's theories also influenced the cult of exotic, that is, the veneration of what is far away both in time and in space. Not only did the Romantic poets welcome the picturesque in scenery, but also the remote and the unfamiliar in custom and social outlook.

The view of nature

The Romantic poets also regarded nature as a living force and, in a pantheistic vein, as the expression of God in the universe. Nature became a main source of inspiration, a stimulus to thought, a source of comfort and joy, and a means to convey moral truths.

Poetic technique

As regards poetic technique, breaking free from models and rules, the Romantic poets searched for a new, individual style through the choice of a language and subject suitable to poetry. The problem of poetic diction was a central issue in Romantic aesthetics. More vivid and familiar words began to replace the artificial circumlocutions of 18th-century diction; symbols and images lost their decorative function to assume a vital role as the vehicles of the inner visionary perceptions.

Two generations of poets

The great English Romantic poets are usually grouped into two generations. The poets of the first generation, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, were characterized by the attempt to theorize about poetry. While planning the "Lyrical Ballads", they agreed that Wordsworth would write on the beauty of nature and ordinary things with the aim of making them interesting for the reader; Coleridge, instead, should deal with visionary topics, the supernatural and mystery. The poets of the second generation, George Gordon Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats, experienced political disillusionment which is reflected, in their poetry, in the clash between the ideal and the real. Individualism and escapism, as well as the alienation of the artist from society, were stronger in this generation and found expression in the different attitudes of the three poets: the anti-conformist, rebellious and cynical attitude of the "Byronic hero"; the revolutionary spirit and stubborn hope of "A Shelley's Prometheus", and finally, Keats' escape into the world of classical beauty. The poets of the second generation all died very young and away from home, in Mediterranean countries.

Romanticism

Pre-romanticism

The Pre-romanticism was characterized and influenced by the three great revolutions of the second half of the 18th century: the Industrial Revolution, the American Revolution, and the French Revolution. It conventionally covers the last three decades of the century. The focus on the feelings of the poet and on nature and a certain taste for elegiac poetry are already present in the "Seasons" (1730) by Thomson and in the members of the "Graveyard school", such as Edward Young, William Collins, and Thomas Gray.

Edward Young (1683-1765)

He is best known for his masterpiece, "Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality" (1742-46), a religious poem composed of 9 books that takes place in a nocturne setting, focused on the poet's rejection of material goods and his aspiration for eternal consolation. "Death" is invoked by Young as the "Great counsellor", capable of inspiring to men the noblest thoughts. Death can reward men for the good actions accomplished in life; death gives meaning to the tumults of the soul, hopes, virtues, and sorrows. Young introduces an important concept that will be taken up by the great Romantics: the awareness of the existence of Death allows the human being to endure the torments of earthly life. Young introduces also new poetic scenarios: cemeteries, tombs, ruins, bare landscapes, dark and cloudy skies. Thanks to Young, that process that directly involves the ego of the Poet, that will be central in the romantic era, could start. For this reason, auto-biography became the main source of poetic inspiration.

The new taste in poetry was not only nourished by gothic scenarios and medieval spirit or melancholic feelings: on the contrary, the spread of Methodist movement, started by John Wesley, contributed to reinforce the reaction against moderation. The key word was "enthusiasm". So we can say that in Great Britain was developed a great current of irrationalism, to oppose the fundamental principles of the Enlightenment.

William Collins (1721-1759)

He was an admirer of the Classics and his masterpiece is "Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegorical Subjects" (1746). The most important ode is "Ode to Fear", but he also wrote other odes dedicated to piety, to the night, to music, to poetry and to the Scottish popular traditions. They all exalt the landscape and their aim is to stimulate the imagination of the reader.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771)

He is the most representative of the Graveyard Poets. He was a great classicist, traveller, and thinker. Among his poems, the one that influenced the most the romantic taste both in England and in Italy is "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard" (1750). It is composed of 128 verses, divided in alternating rhyming quatrains; Gray describes the desolate existence of a rural community. What made the work successful was the particular poetic intonation, both melancholic and mysterious. The ego of the poet is predominant since the beginning, in a romantic and innovative way. Other important elements are the need for solitude, the need for the man to meditate in silence to find himself again. One of the main themes is, in fact, solitude and isolation. It could be interpreted as a critique against the phenomenon of urbanisation and the frivolity of the aristocracy and the middle class. People who live in the countryside are destined to live an anonymous life, because they do not have the same possibilities as the rich people. Gray's elegy, however, lends itself to a multiplicity of readings, from the post-revolutionary political one to the intimistic and autobiographical one.

James Macpherson (1736-1796), Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770), Robert Burns (1759-1796)

The German movement of the Sturm und Drang was born at the end of the 18th century. It influenced the development of Romanticism in England, and in particular of the taste for the gothic, the Middle Ages, the literary mystification.

In 1760, the Scottish writer James Macpherson published the little volume "Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands of Scotland and Translated from the Gaelic or Erse language". He collected his poems in a single volume: "The works of Ossian" (1765), where the texts were supposed to be written by the warrior Oisin, who lived in the III century. His work was very successful and it was translated in many languages. European people were in fact fascinated by "The works of Ossian": the main themes were love and sufferance, and the main characters were brave and heroic knights. It was a critique against the corruption of modern society.

Also Thomas Percy published another collection of popular poems and ballads, "The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry".