Module 5: The Romantic Age, Industrial Revolution and William Blake's Works

The Romantic Age: Historical Background

The Industrial Revolution in England

MODULO 5: THE ROMANTIC AGE Prof.ssa Facchini 2 -THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Industrial Revolution: indicates England's economic development from 1760 to 1840. This period, changed the habits, customs and outlook on life in English society.

• THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Industrial Revolution: indicates England's economic development from 1760 to 1840. This period, changed the habits, customs and outlook on life in English society.

TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS: steam engine by Thomas Newcomen, Spinning Jenny (machine for spinning wool and cotton) + exploitation of new power sources (iron and steel) ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: high agriculture productivity, expansions of international trade, mass production of manufactured goods. STRONG IMPACT ON ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH: mushroom towns, no rights for workers, deep gap between rich and poor, child labour, pollutionThe historical background The period that went from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th was one of revolution and war. The 18th century ended with the American War of Independence (1775-83) and the French Revolution (1789). England lost the American colonies and went to war with France, and with the enemies of Napoleon next. Victory over Napoleon in the early 19th century gave Britain enormous power over land and sea. The Industrial Revolution gave Britain an immense advantage on the markets of the world, but the social costs were equally great. The ideas behind the revolutions in America and France increasingly affected the way people looked at the world.Britain & America George III: he became king after his father's death in 1760, he was the first Hanoverian king to be born in England and spoke English as first language. The king and the PM imposed heavy taxation on the American colonies which eventually led to their loss.

The Boston Tea Party (1773)

THE BOSTON TEA PARTY (1773): The British government put duties on some goods like corn, paper and tea to reduce the public debt. The extra taxation was met with fury in the American colonies, and although the English Parliament removed some of them, there remained an import tax on a few products including tea. The BOSTON TEA PARTY, was a political protest for imposing "taxation without representation". The colonists destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company in protest against the TEA ACT in 1773.The American declaration of Independence (1776) The crisis escalated, and the American Revolutionary war began near Boston in 1775. On 4 July 1776, America declared its independence from Great Britain. The rebels organised a Congress in Philadelphia to discuss the form of independence they were fighting for, and on July 1776, the Congress ratified the 'Declaration of Independence' . The document, largely written by Thomas Jefferson, a lawyer from Virginia, was much more than a statement that the colonies were independent from the British crown. It claimed that all men had a natural right to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'. With the assistance of France and then Spain, George Washington led the Continental army against a strong British Army. The war ended in 1781, when the British forces were overpowered. At the Treaty of Versailles in 1783, Britain accepted the independence of America but maintained the control of Canada. The new republic of the United States of America drew up a federal constitution in 1787, and the successful general George Washington became its first President in 1789. AThe French Revolution The French Revolution (1789) was against the old social order. Like the American Revolution, it was influenced by the Enlightenment, which had started in France and associated with philosophers like Voltaire and Rousseau, who promoted the ideals of equality, fraternity and liberty and attacked the absolute monarchy. Britain had long praised the virtues of its own constitutional monarchy and criticised the evils of the absolute monarchy of France. When news came in 1789 of the revolution in France, the first reaction in Britain was to welcome this change.LITERARY BACKGROUND The British literary production between 1760 and 1837 can be divided into two main phases:

1. 1760-1801: it is characterised by growing anti-classical tendencies and by emerging pre-Romantics trends.
2. 1801- 1837: The Romantic Age.

The year that represented a watershed between these two phases is 1801, the year of publication of the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth, which is considered the Manifesto of English Romanticism. Romanticism was a complex cultural and literary movement in Europe; it was a reaction against the triumph of reason of the Enlightenment and Neoclassicism. In each European nation, it acquired its own specific qualities: in Italy acquired a political meaning, in Germany it became a philosophical movement. In Europe, it re-evaluated the role of imagination and nature in the process of the artistic creation and gave voice to a growing interest in emotions, irrational and the supernatural.The meanings of the word ROMANTIC Originally, the word ROMANTIC comes from the French ROMANCE; it referred to the artificial language and actions of Medieval romances (adventures and chivalry). In the 18th century, the term started to acquire a slightly different meaning, including "marked by feeling". In time, it also came to be associated with the ideals of melancholy and loneliness. Today, the word ROMANTIC means both "related to love" and "capable of having a strong effect on someone's feelings". 4 GODFATHER Into the woods 11Which of the two would you call romantic? Why? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiRWBI0JTYQThe SUBLIME - BURKE Critics have often suggested that the birth of the English Romanticism was marked by a process of contemplation of Nature. The work that sparked this new poetic vision is Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), a treatise in which the author declares THE SUBLIME the foundation of a new form of aesthetics. He distinguished the SUBLIME from Classical beauty and defines it as the mix of intense feelings caused by the view of immense natural phenomena, such as a storm. According to Burke, Nature is revalued as a source of powerful feelings and pure knowledge, in contrast with the negative effects of the Industrial Revolution.WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827) Blake was born in 1757 in Soho, London. He was the son of a small tradesman. He soon began to show his artistic inclinations, and at the age of 14 he was apprenticied to an engraver. He developed his own technique, ILLUMINATED PRINTING; thanks to this technique, both words and decorations could be printed in any tint the artist wanted to use. He followed this trade to produce his artistic and poetic works but he was better known as an engraver. He was a visionary artist and he wasn't indifferent to the political and social issues of his time. Blake was disappointed by the lack of recognition that his works received and from 1810 to 1817 he lived in retirement and poverty. In 1825, he made illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost. He died in 1827. Dante's Divine Comedy William Blake TASCHENSONGS OF INNOCENCE (1789) AND EXPERIENCE (1794) Songs of Innocence appeared in 1789, just before the start of the French Revolution. It's a collection of simple poems engraved on copper (a metallic element easily formed into sheets) with hand-coloured decorations. The poems are centred around the figure of the child and focus on the theme of innocence. In 1794, Blake published a new edition, adding to his previous work Songs of experience, a series of poems showing that innocence is corrupted by experience, which is part of life. 1 SONGS Of INNOCENCE and Of EXPERIENCE Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human SontThemes In Songs of Innocence, the poet saw innocence as a state of freedom and happiness, which is associated with childhood. The children represent the free power of imagination with their freshness and spontaneity not yet corrupted by rationality, which they shared with the poet. The lyrics of this collection look as if they came straight from the poet's heart with natural simplicity, but they are actually highly imaginative and convey deep meanings. The tone is naive, childlike, and the style clear and bitter.Themes Songs of Experience, on the contrary, represents the world of adults and the corruption of innocence. The poems of the second collection appear to be the result of disillusionment, the tones are dark, and sound like a cry against the tyranny and social injustice that Blake saw around him. He disliked social norms, institutions and conventions, which he saw as limits to freedom. Blake observed the change in society that the Industrial Revolution was rapidly creating, from the miserable living conditions of workers, especially children, to the ruthlessness of so-called progress, that abandoned people who needed help.Style The two collections, and particularly Songs of Experience, combine lyrical and mystical elements. Flowers, angels, animals like lambs and birds, children and valleys are among his symbols of innocence, while cities, priests, houses, night and silence represent experience. Blake's poems are rich in images which exploit all the senses: the cries of babies, the cold of the snow, the playfulness of a child. Also his system of symbols is very complex and personal. The tiger, for example, represents brutality, obscurity, the darkness of the unconscious and appears as a satanic figure. The lamb, its opposite, represents light, goodness, the garden of Eden and is associated with the figure of God. They are two opposite faces of the world where evil and good, destructive and positive forces, fight against each other. Yet, despite the complex system of symbols Blake created, his style is simple, fresh and at the same time emotional, both as regards the vocabulary and the syntax. All these characteristics anticipated the achievements of the Romantic poets. Introduction Piping down the valleys wild P'iping songs of pleasant glee! Ona cloud I saw a child. And ke laughing said to me Pipe a song about a Lamb Sol piped with merry chear, Piper pipe that song again Sal pined, he went to hearof Drop thy pipe the happy pipe Sing thy songs of happy chear Sol sung the same again While he went with joy to hear Piper sit thee down and write Jit a book that all may read Sche vani sho from my sigl And I pluckd & hollow reed And I made a rural pen And I staind the water clear And I wrote my happy songs Every child may joy to hear