Romanticism, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron and Austen

that a seconde emotion,one “kindred”,is generated.It is in this mood that successful

composition takes place and us communicated to the reader

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SENSES

- Nature also means the world of sensory perceptions.He had a great sensibility of the

eye and ear to perceive the beauty of nature.These simple thoughts,which later

combine into complex and organised ideas

WHO IS THE POET ?

-For Wordsworth,is a man speaking to other man,but he has more lively sensibility and

the ability to see into the heart of things.With the imagination the poet communicate

his knowledge and becomes a teacher who shows how to understand their feelings

and improve their moral being

-His task is to pay attention in ordinary things and to the humblest people (where

deepest emotions and truth are to be found)

ALL ABOUT SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE AND “THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER”

HIS LIFE

-He was born in Devonshire .At the age of 10 he was sent to Christ’s Hospital School in

London and then to Cambridge,where he never gratuated

-He was influenced by French Revolutionary ideals,which made him an entusiastic

republican

-After becoming dissillusion with the French Revolution he moved to America to

establish a “utopian community”:Pantisocracy” where the private ownership would not

exist and all was in common,but this project failed

-Coleridge met Wordsworth and they published the collection Lyrical Ballads (it

includes his masterpiece:”The Rime of Ancient Mariner”)

-After he joined his sister in Lake District and he began a career lecturing on literary

concerns and journalism

-Fianlly he settled in London and produced “Biographia Literaria” (autobiography and

text of literary concerns)

-His own task was to write about extraordinary in a credible way

-He died in 1834

IMAGINATION AND FANCY

-He divided the mind into 2 distinct faculties:imagination and fancy

-He distinguished between primary imagination and secondary imagination

-1’ imagination:it was an unconscious process and the sensory perception of reality

and everyone can do it

-2’ imagination:it was an echo of primary imagination and only the poet can do it

-The result of this process was the “new world” of the poem,created by the poem

himself

-Fancy was - to imagination because it was not creative.The aim of the poet was to

transform perceptions and words into poetry,to apply color in the reality

-An example is the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”;he used a lot of details that had

impressed him during his readings and then he shaped them into something else

-The poet can blend different elements into beautiful images

PLOT

-“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798) is a ballad made up of 7 parts set a sea

-It is introduced by an “Argument” containing a short summary of the poem

-At the beginning of the poem the mariner stops a wedding guest: he ‘cannot choose

but hear’ a sad, mysterious story about the burden of the mariner’s guilt;

-The mariner expiates his sin by travelling around and telling the people he meets his

story: to teach them the importance for everyone to love all living creatures

CHARACTERS

-The mariner and the crew:are hardly characters in any dramatic sense

-They are more types than human beings

-The mariner is passive in guilt and remorse,he acts under compulsion

-Coleridge can tell the wedding guest about even his worst terrors with the calm of

lucid retrospection

SUBLIME NATURE

-The atmosphere is mysterious because of the combination of the supernatural and

nigtmarish elements and the visual realism.Nature seems to be a character

-When the mariner kills the albatros,he offends the spirit of the “rime”.The albatros is

linked to the spiritual world and mariner’s punishment through nature itself

THE RIME VS TRADITIONAL BALLADS

-The poem contains many features of traditional medieval ballads:4-line

stanzas,archaic language,alliterations ecc..

-Moreover,there is the presence of a moral at the end and makes The Rime of a

Romantic ballad

INTERPRETATIONS

-The poem has been interpreted as: a description of a dream and as an allegory of the

spiritual journey of the soul

-The most relevant is the description of the poetic journey of romanticism

-The mariner is the poet possessed by a song that comes from guilt that is the origin of

the poetry

ALL ABOUT GEORGE GORDON BYRON:HIS LIFE

- Byron, descended from a wealthy aristocratic family and he was born with a

deformed foot,he began to write at Trinity College in Cambridge

-In 1807 published Hours of Idleness, a small volume of lyric poems.His poems were

attacked in the pages of the Edinburgh Review. His reply in English Bards and Scotch

Reviewers showed his taste for satire

-In 1809 he set out on his Grand Tour of Spain, Portugal, Malta, Albania, Greece and

the Middle East

-He return to England in 1812, he published the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s

Pilgrimage.He became a literary and social celebrity

-In 1815 he married Annabella Milbanke.His marriage collapsed a year later because of

his incestuous relationship with his half-sister Augusta Leigh.He left England in 1816,

never to return

-He lived in Geneva, where he became a friend of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley

-He moved to Venice, where he began his masterpiece, the mock-epic Don Juan and in

1819 he moved to Milan where he became involved in the patriotic plots against

Austrian rule

-He committed himself to the Greek struggle of independence from Turkey

-He died in the town of Missolonghi in 1824, struck by a severe fever

-His heart is buried in Greece, his body is interred in England

THE BYRONIC HERO

-A moodily, restless and mysterious romantic rebel.He hides some sin or secret in his

past.It is characterised by proud individualism.He rejects the conventional moral rules

of society.He is an outsider, isolated and attractive at the same time.He is of noble

birth, but wild and rough in his manners

-His looks are hard, but handsome.He has a great sensibility to nature and

beauty,bored with the excesses of the world and women cannot resist him, but he

refuses their love

FREEDOM AND NATURE

-Byron firmly believed in individual liberty.He hated any sort of constraint,whished to

be himself without compromises

-He denounced the evils of society by using satire

-His mood and choice of themes were Romantic

-Nature is not a source of consolation and joy

-It does not embody any theory and it has no message to convey

-The wildest and most exotic natural landscapes reflect the poet’s mood and feelings

CHILD HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE

-Childe = a young noble awaiting knighthood

-Made up of four cantos deals with young Harold’s travels.Introduced exotic settings

and contains description of nature

-The first two cantos are set in Spain, Portugal, Albania and Greece,the third canto is

set in Central Europe and the fourth canto is set in Italy

-There is the description of nature, especially the sea: image of the sublime and

eternity

-Nature reflects the poet’s feelings

-There is the exploration of the sense of alienation of European society after the French

Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars and had a lot of influence on literature with its

new kind of hero

ALL ABOUT JANE AUSTEN:HER LIFE

-She born in Steventon, Hampshire in 1775. Her father was the rector of the local

church and she spent her life within the circle of her affectionate family.Her sister

Cassandra was her lifelong companion.She was educated at home by her father.She

showed an interest in literature at an early age

-Her earliest writings date from 1787.After her father’s death the family settled in

Chawton, a small country village,there she produced her most mature works.

-Her main works are: Northanger Abbey, written in 1798 but published

posthumously;Sense and Sensibility (1811),Pride and Prejudice (1813),Emma (1816)

etc.

HER STYLE

-From the 18th-century novelists she learnt:the insight into the psychology of the

characters;the subtitles of the ordinary events of life: balls, walks, tea-parties and

visits;the omniscient narrator;the technique of dialogue and the use of verbal and

situational irony

THE NOVEL OF MANNERS

-Jane Austen is the undisputed master of the novel of manners,whole rise reflected the

th

changes in the social hierarchy of 19 century English society. There is a vital

relationship between manners, social behaviour and character

- The main themes are:marriage, the complications of love and friendship.The main

features are:third-person narrator;dialogue: the main narrative mode;passions and

emotions not expressed directly and

use of irony

SOCIAL MOBILITY AND MARRIAGE

-Austen’s values: property, decorum, money and marriage.The novels take place in

England: based on the possession of land, parks and country houses;The marriage

market:it’s the result of the growing social mobility

-The marriage market takes place in London, Bath and some seaside resorts. Gossip,

flirtations, seductions, adulteries happen in these places and this market produces a

range of villains: unscrupulous relatives, seducers and social climbers

THE THEME OF LOVE

-In Austen’s novels:passions are rarely expressed openly;concern with analysis of

character and conduct;romantic element of happy ending: the marriage between the

hero and heroine and the focus on the steps through which the hero / heroine reaches

personal judgement and moral autonomy

THE EROINE’S SELF-REALISATION

-Jane Austen thought that strong impulses and intensely emotional states should be

regulated, controlled and brought to order through private reflection.Men should fulfil

a social obligation first of all

-The heroine's reflection after a crisis or climax is a common feature of her

novels.When she understands and comes to terms with her private feelings, she

achieves personal judgement and moral autonomy

-The happy ending, that is, the marriage between the hero and the heroine, is the

result of this process of personal growht

ALL ABOUT PRIDE AND PREJUDICE:PLOT

-It is Set in Longbourn, Hertfordshire;There Mr and Mrs Bennet live with their five

daughters (Jane,

Elizabeth, Mary, Lydia and Kitty).Mr Bingley is a rich bachelor, rents the large estate of

Netherfield Park nearby. He falls in love with Jane Bennet and his friend Mr Darcy, a

proud aristocrat, feels attracted

to Elizabeth

-Elizabeth cultivates a dislike of Mr Darcy. Mr Darcy proposes to Elizabeth but she

rejects him,she accuses him of separating Jane and Mr Bingley,she accuses him of ill-

treating Mr Wickham, a young officer and Darcy writes her a letter to reveal that

Wickham is an adventurer without scruples

-Wickham elopes with Lydia,Darcy finds them and organises their marriage,Elizabeth

accepts Darcy’s renewed proposal and Bingley and Jane also get married.The novel

ends with the happy marriages of the 2 couples