ROMANTIC AGE

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Industrial and technological innovation

The manifacturing industry and the productivity were increased
(assembly line)

people started buying more goods

mass consumption

Agricultural innovation

The agricolture was intensified and improved

population increase

landscape modification and social changes

migrations from the rural south to the industrialized north

the conditions of the workers change

increase hygiene of the city

women and childen started working and were preferible to men because they could be paid less and exploited

More work hours

deterioration of living conditions

After the middle age, at the end of the 18th century

AMERICAN INDIPENDENCE

George III came to the throne in 1760

He introduced new duties on corn, paper and tea

This caused opposition in American colonies.
To stopped the opposition the english parliament cancelled some duties except the tea one

Boston Tea Party: some americans throw the tea overboard causing economic losses to England.
They argued that the tax was unfair as they had no representation in the English parliament

The America was divided in two section: patriots and loyalist

The struggle for indipendence from Englan began and the two section of America opposed each other

The declaration of indipendence was singed on 4th July 1776.
The 13 colonies become an indipendent nation.
The United States of America was born in 1878 and George Washington become the firts president

THE ROMANTIC POETRY

It started in the second half of the 17th century

  • Description of the feelings that the landscape created in the poet
  • Thanks to the imagination the poest could see beyond the reality and discover the truth beyond the reason
  • The poet is a mediator between humanity and nature
  • Children are purer than adults because they are not corrupted by the civilization and are closer to God
  • Nature is a source of inspiration

William Wordsworth

Coleridge

  • poetry has to tell about everyday people and situation
  • the linguage has to be simple
  • the poet has an acute sensitivity
  • man and nature are inseparable because man doesn't exist outside the nature
  • nature teaches men how to live and love
  • the poetry takes is origine from emotion recollected in tranquility. For this reason the memry is necessary to create the poetry
  • A certain colour of imagination, an extract of Lirical Ballds, wrote in 1800, that is considered the manifesto fo english romanticism
  • Composed upon Westminster Bridge, poem composed in 1802 that has the form of the petrarchan sonet. The city is compared to a lady who is wearing the beauty of the morning like an elegant dress. The city and the river are personified (the city is life an asleep body and the river is like a patient person)
  • Daffodils. The poest is alking alone when saw the daffodils and compared them to the stars. When he is alone at home he remembered that imagine and he feels better. Poetry was born from the memory of a beautiful emotion
  • nature stimulated the poet to find natural simbols that reflected his emotional and feelings
  • his poem are full of mistery because the natural things are combinated with the supernatural one

There are 3 interpretations of Colderidge's poem:

  • it is seen as a description of a dream
  • it is seen as an allegoy of the life of the soul
  • it is the description of the poetic journey of the romanticism
  • The killing of the albatross
  • A sadder and wiser man

These are two part of the poem "The rime of the ancient mariner". The moral of this poem is that human being have to love nature and all his creature and that the tragical experiences increased men wisdom and appreciation of nature