The Early and Romantic Age

Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus (1818)

Plot: Frankenstein, a scientist, created a human being that soon becomes a monster and a murderer, who in the end kills his creator.

• Tension between an interest in revolutionary ideas and fear of them characteristic of English intellectuals of the time.
• Interest in science, chemistry, evolutionism and electricity.
• The monster can be seen as Rousseau's noble savage.
• Influence of the philosopher Locke can be seen in the monster's self-awareness and education by experience.
• Influence of the Romantic poets they tell about crimes against nature.
• Myth of Prometheus who challenged the Gods.
• Form of the novel: epistolary.
• Main theme: the double. Other themes: forbidden knowledge, penetration of nature's secrets, the usurpation of the female role (the monster was created without the participation of a woman), social prejudices (the monster is an outcast), education and experience.

THE ROMANTIC AGE (1789)

– 1830)
French revolution and Industrial Revolution.
Political, social and economical change support for change and opposition to change.
The British government repressed any expression of discontent.
In the second phase of the Industrial Revolution, coal, iron and steam power were applied to many more trades. Steam resulted in many great changes: steam engines increased production, steam locomotion on the railways distributed the coal and the iron.
Specialised towns (industrial towns and ports) grew, but they were disorganised.
Rise of the middle class business interest, because of the Industrial Revolution. They wanted more political power in order to promote free trade against the protection of old industries.
The poor struggled to live (trade crisis creation of the first trade unions). The ‘Luddites’ were skilled artisans in competition with the factories and reacted by breaking machines.
The Evangelical Movement of the Church of England

Worked on abolishing the slavetrade, prohibiting cruelty to children, educating children and reforming morals.

Increase in literacy. Circulation of intellectual magazines and daily newspapers. The homes of the great publishers became literary salons.

LITERATURE

Use of the imagination to give expression to emotional experience. Several means were explored to reach 'subconscious' levels: dream, drugs, madness, hypnosis.

VISION OF CHILDHOOD:

Temporary and necessary stage leading to adulthood. Romantics believed that children were purer than adults, because they had not been corrupted by civilisation. (Influence of Rousseau, who believed that the conventions of civilisation were intolerable and produced any kind of corruption and evil.) This made the child even closer to God, therefore childhood was a state to be admired and cultivated.

VISION OF MAN:

The Romantics exalted the atypical, the outcast, the rebel. This lead both to the cult of the hero (the 'rebel' in Coleridge,

the ‘Prometheus’ in Shelley, the ‘Byronic hero’)and to the view of society as an evil force.

TWO GENERATION OF POETS

English Romanticism saw the prevalence of poetry, where imagination gained a primary role. The poet, using his imagination, can see beyond surface reality and see the truth beyond the power of reason. His faculty is almost divine the poet is a prophet, a teacherwhose task is to mediate between man and nature.

At the same time, Romantic poets appreciated the natural world and their works were rich in descriptions of nature and landscapes. For the Romantic poet, nature is a ‘living force’ and an expression of God in the universe. It is a form on inspiration, a source of comfort and joy.

The romantic poets searched for a new individual style, through the choice of a new language and subject more familiar words. There was a return to old forms, such as the ballad, the Italian terza rima and ottava rima, the sonnet and the blank verse.

English

Romantic poets are generally grouped into two generations: the first generation (Wordsworth and Coleridge) and the second generation (Byron, Shelley and Keats). The first generation is characterised by the attempt to theorise about poetry. While planning the Lyrical Ballads, they agreed that Wordsworth would write on the beauty of nature and ordinary things, while Coleridge would write on the supernatural and mysterious. The poets of the second generation all died very young and away from home and all experienced political disillusionment. Individualism and the alienation of the artist from society were stronger in this generation. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770 – 1850)

• Educated in Cambridge.
• Went on a walking tour of France and the Alps developed enthusiasm for the democratic ideals of revolutionary France, but then the destructive developments of the revolution brought him to despair. Only the contact with nature (Dorset) managed to heal his despair.
• Moved to Somerset, to be near

Coleridge they produced a collection of poems called LYRICAL BALLADS, whose second edition contained Wordsworth's famous PREFACE (the manifesto of English Romanticism).

He wrote THE PRELUDE, a long autobiographical poem.

In 1843, he was made Poet Laureate.

POETRY

In his poetry, man and nature interact and the poet describes the insights and emotions that arise from this contact. Man and nature are inseparable nature comforts man in sorrow, it's a source of pleasure and joy that teaches man to act in a moral way.

Wordsworth was interested in the growth of man's relationship with nature, the ways it influenced him. This is why MEMORY is a major force that gives power to his poetry.

Wordsworth gave a new meaning to IMAGINATION: to him, it is faithful observation of nature. Past experience of the observation of nature and the power of memory reproduce ('Emotion recollected in the emotion felt by the poet and purify it into a poetic

Wordworth wrote that the subject matter of poetry should deal with everyday situations and with ordinary people (rural life man is nearer to his own purer passions). The language used should be simple.

The preface can be divided into 2 sections:
1. Analysis of the contents and the language used;
2. The definition of the new poet;
3. The description of the act of writing poetry.

• Educated in London and Cambridge.
• Like Wordsworth, he was influenced by the ideals of the French Revolution.
• He suffered from chronic rheumatism became addicted to opium.
• Set in Somerset with Wordsworth, where he wrote THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER, his masterpiece (first poem of the LYRICAL BALLADS), CHRISTABEL, an unfinished poem set in the Middle Ages, and KUBLA KHAN, also unfinished.
• When in London, he wrote the BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA, a text of literary criticism and autobiography.

He focused on two kinds of imagination:
1.PRIMARY IMAGINATION, connected with human perceptions. Everybody had it but used it unconsciously; SECONDARY IMAGINATION, which was volunteer and used consciously. It is the faculty to use experience to build new worlds. Nature is not re-produced anymore; instead, it is re-created by art. According to Coleridge, FANCY was the poetic skill of the poet that consisted in using devices such as metaphors and alliterations in order to express ideas. It was the way in which he could communicate his visions to everybody. Unlike Wordsworth, Coleridge didn't see nature as a source of happiness or consolation. Instead, he saw nature and the material world as a projection of the 'real' world of Ideas he believed that natural images carried abstract meanings. Coleridge's work is characterised by an interest in the exotic and in the medieval period. His language is archaic, connected to the old ballads. THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER - Made up of seven parts summarised in the'Argument'.
The atmosphere is mysterious and supernatural.
The Mariner is passive in guilt and remorse. He acts blindly and pays for his actions, becoming an outcast.
The poem contains many of the features of old ballads (frequent repetition, alliteration, the theme of travel and supernatural elements...), but the presence of a moral at the end and the didactic aim makes it different.
An old, lonely Mariner appears and forces a stranger on his way to a wedding, to listen to his story. The tale is about sea voyage, which soon turns out to be a voyage with no return because of the uncontrollable powers of nature.
The poem has been interpreted in many ways:
1. The description of a dream, which allows the poet to relate the supernatural and less conscious parts of the psyche to a familiar experience;
2. An allegory of the life of the soul, in its passage from crime, through punishment, to redemption;
3. A description of the poetic journey of Romanticism. The Mariner is thepoetfeeling a sense of guilt (the regret for a state of lost innocence caused by the Industrial Revolution). Poetry tried to fill this sense of lost. GEORGE GORDON BYRON (1788 – 1824)  Unconventional aristocrat.  Studied in Cambridge, where gambled and drank.  He went on a Grand Tour, visiting Spain, Portugal, Malta, Albania, Greece, etc., where he started to write CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE.  Was forced to leave England because of his scandals and debts in Geneva he becameclose friend of Shelley. In Venice, he began his masterpiece, DON JUAN.  After Shelley's death, he decided to commit himself to the Greek struggle of independence from Turkey. He died of a severe fever in Greece, where he is still regarded as a national hero. THE BYRONIC HERO With his life and his works, Byron created the 'Byronic hero', a passionate, moody, restless and mysterious man, who hides some horrible sin or secret in his past. He is characterised by proud individualism and

rejects the moral rules of society. He has a great sensibility to nature and beauty. He is an outsider, isolated and attractive at the same time. Women cannot resist him, but he refuses their love.

Byron continued to refer to 18-century poetic diction, even when his themes were Romantic. He used a great variety of metres, such as 'ottava rima' in Don Juan. Here in particular, he showed a strong interest in the expressive potentiality of colloquial language.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792 – 1822)

• Expelled from Oxford University because of his radical pamphlet THE NECESSITY OF ATHEISM, where he challenged the existence of God.
• Made revolutionary propaganda against Catholicism and English rule.
• Became a republican, a vegetarian and an advocate of free love.
• Interested