Romanticism (6)

The word “Romantic” was adopted in the 18th century. When speaking of a “Romantic age”, we identify a period in which certain ideas and attitudes arose in reaction to the 18th- century Enlightenment and became dominant in most intellectual areas.
English Romanticism: between the French Revolution and the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1837. Romanticism valued the subjective and irrational parts of human nature: emotion, imagination, introspection and relationship with nature.

That expressed in various ways. There was a growing interest in humble and everyday life and great attention for the countryside as a place where there could still be a relationship whit nature. The Romantics thought that the universe was expanding, that it was organic and alive. They saw the individual essentially in a solitary state; they exalted the atypical, the outcast, and the rebel. In English literature, there were two great generations of poets: Wordsworth and Coleridge in the first; Byron, Shelley and Keats in the second.WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Was born in Cumberland in 1770. He was educated in Cambridge. His experience in Revolutionary France filled him with enthusiasm for democratic ideals. The despair and disillusionment of these years were healed by contact with nature. In 1795, he went to leave with his sister in Dorset and he moved to Somerset to be near Coleridge. They produced a collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads, which appeared anonymously in 1798. In 1802 William married masterpiece “The Prelude”, a long autobiographical poem in 14 books, subtitled “Growth of a Poet’s Mind”, published only after his death. Wordsworth was interested in the relationship between the natural world and human consciousness. His poetry offers complex interaction between man and nature. One of the most consistent concepts in Wordsworth’s work is the idea that man and nature are inseparable. He becomes a teacher who shows men how to understand their feelings and improve their moral being. Drawing attention to the ordinary things of live where the deepest emotions and truths are to be found. Died in 1850.