Romantic Age literary context
Political background:
Sturm Und Drang
A German movement which influenced the second half of the 18th centuri, against Classicism and Enlightment
-American Revolution
-French Revolution
-Industrial Revolution
Characterized by
• Sensibility
• Immagination
• Inner self
• Individual feelings
• nature
Poetry best for expressing emotion and feelings
Two Generations
Themes
• Beauty
• Emotions
• Nature
• childhood
Firts generation: faith in the future, they defined the style and the themes of Romanticism with "Lyrical Ballads"
• William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge: “Lyrical Ballads”
Second Generation: more pessimistic about French ideals, in contrast with Coleridge and Wordsworth:
• Lord Byron, adventurer: “Don Juan”
• Percy Shelley: critical of any form of tyranny
• John Keats: moods and sensation in his poetry
they all died young
Other Literary Forms
Gothic Novel: supernatural and mistery. Mary Shelley with "Frankenstein"
Novel of Manners with Jane Austen
Essay: subjective and introspective, with Charles Lamb and Thomas De Quincey
Pre-Romantic Poets
William Blake:
visionary elements and symbolism
Thomas Gray: “ Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”