Concetti Chiave
- The 19th century saw three main revolutions, leading to industrialization, pollution, and the exploitation of women and children due to lower wages and easier control.
- A new poetic sensibility arose, focused on subjective, autobiographical material with a reflective, lyrical style, emphasizing everyday life and nature as a living entity.
- The distinction between the beautiful and the sublime involves emotions of pain and terror, with poets using imagination to uncover truths beyond reason.
- The poet acts as a mediator between humanity and nature, highlighting societal evils and valuing the purity of childhood free from civilization's corruption.
- Romanticism exalted the atypical and rebellious, embracing the "noble savage" idea and valuing natural, impulsive behavior over societal customs.
Indice
19th Century Revolutions
In the 19th century there are manly three revolutions:
1.
● Starts at the end of 18th century
● Increasing of the population caused by better conditions of life
● Main inventions:
● Steam engine → pumping water out of coal mines
● Loom → cheaper products and growing demand for good
● Starts of industrialisation → pollution
● Switch of Britain from an agricultural country to an industrialised one.
● Start of exploitation of children and women because they could be paid less and were easier to control.
New Sensibility and Poetry
New sensibility emerged in the second half of the 18th century.
Subject: impersonal material;
Style: loud and noble eloquence;
Tone: intellectual;
Aim: immediate impact;
View of nature: abstract concept
Subject: subjective and autobiographical material. Interested in everyday life;
Style: reflective and lyrical eloquence;
Tone: intimately emotional;
Aim: generalised reflection;
View of nature: real and living being
Distinction between Beautiful and Sublime
Distinction between beautiful and sublime:
Sublime is a feeling related to the excitement of pain and danger, and it operates like terror. It is something that scares us but at the same time it attracts us to it.
Strongest emotions → pain and terror
Primary role in the process of poetic composition
The poets with imagination could see beyond the rìsurface of reality and with it discover a truth beyond the power of reason.
Recreate and modify the external world of experience
Role of the Poet
The role of the poet is to:
Mediate between man and nature
Point out the evils of society → giving voice to freedom, beauty and truth
In Augustan poetry, a child was seen only as someone who will grow up and become an adult. Childhood was only a necessary state which led to adulthood.
In romantic poetry a child is seen as purer than an adult because his soul is not corrupted by society and also by the civilisation. His uncorrupted sensitivity makes him closer to God.
In the augustan poetry the individual was seen only in the society, with his relationships with people.
Romantic see individuals in a solitary state.
Exaltation of the Atypical and the Rebel
Exaltation:
The atypical
The outcast
The rebel
Rosseau stated that the convention of civilisation imposed on the individual intolerable restriction, which led his soul to become corrupted and evil. Behaviour controlled by the customs, reasons and rules of the society.
Natural behaviour → uncontrolled and impulsive
Noble savage → romantic concept
→ it may appear primitive but he has got an instinctive knowledge of himself which can be superior than the one acquired by a civilised man.
Veneration of what is far by space and time.
Use of picturesque sceneries and unfamiliar customs and social life.
Expression of God in the Universe
Expression of God in the universe and it is the main source of inspiration, as a source of joy, thought and comfort.
Breaking free form models and rules
Individual style, search of words and subject.
Familiar words were used the most and replaced difficult words. Symbols and images which at first had a decorative function now become a way to communicate feelings.
In romanticism there are two generations of poets:
I.
- Wordsworth → beauty of nature and ordinary things
- Coleridge → visionary topics, supernatural and mystery
II. Shelley, Byron and Keats → revolutionary spirit
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