Romanticismo en Gran Bretaña: Novela y Poesía, Apuntes de Literatura

Introducción al Romanticismo en Gran Bretaña

In order to understand the topic discussed in Unit 48, we must start with the analysis of the literary scene, which implies the study of the so-called "Romantic Period". Next, we will also go through the most important genres, which are the novel and poetry and the corresponding writers concerning them.

El Romanticismo en Gran Bretaña

"Romantic period" (1798-1832):

• A turbulent period in political and economic history in England:

  Ordeal of the chance from agricultural society to modern industrial nation (working class).

  . This change occurred in a context of: . The American and French revolutions and wars. . Economic cycles of inflation and depression. . Constant threat to the social structure from imported revolutionary ideologies.

• Writers felt that there was something distinctive about their time:

  o A persuasive intellectual climate "the spirit of the age".

• Imagination of Romantic writers was preoccupied with the fact and idea of revolution.

  o French revolution English writers were in sympathy with it. · Feeling that this was a great age of new beginnings . Everything was possible in political & social arrangements, and in intellectual & literary enterprises.

La Novela Romántica

• 2 new types of fiction in the late 18th century:

  Inaugurated by Walpole's Castle of Otranto (1764). Derives from the frequent setting of these tales @ Gloomy castle of Middle Ages. Gothic Novel Extended to a larger group of novels set somewhere in the past. Exploit possibilities of mystery and terror in sullen, craggy landscapes; decaying mansions, secret passages, ghosts; persecution of a beautiful maiden by a villain ... Novel of purpose Propagate the new social & political theories current in the period of the French Revolution. Combine didactic intention with elements of Gothic terror. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

The Romantic period produced two major novelists: Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott, who are going to be presented in the following sections.

Jane Austen (1775-1817)

One of the greatest of English novelists who elected to work within:

• o The circumference of her own experience.

  The life of provincial gentlefolk.

  ▪ To maintain the decorum of aloof & ironic novel of manners, based on 18th cent. antecedents: comedy of manners, novels of earlier women authors, ...

• Particularised setting to examine the values men & women leave by in their everyday social lives.
• The order in which she wrote her novels does not correspond with the dates of her publications.

1. Sense and Sensibility (1811)

   1st novel to be published

2. Pride and Prejudice (1813) .

   All published betw. 1811-1818

3. Mansfield Park (1812-4) .
4. Emma (1815) .
5. Northanger Abbey (w.1798/p.1818)

   posthumous

6. Persuasion (w.1815-6/p.1818)

   posthumous

• All deal with the subject of getting married:

  o Central preoccupation & problem for the young leisure-class lady of that age.

  o Austen provided her with the best available opportunities for testing: o Her heroines' practical sense & moral integrity. o Their degree of knowledge of the world and of themselves. o Their capacity to demonstrate grace under pressure.

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)

• Contemporary with Jane Austen, admired her but his fiction was at the opposite extreme.

1. Waverly (1814)

   anonymous

• Turned from narrative verse to narrative prose & managed to write almost 30 long works of fiction.
• It can be said that Scott's great originality lay in opening up to fiction the realm of history.
• He sometimes alters the order of events for novelistic purposes.
• He maintains fidelity to the spirit of the past & a meticulous accuracy in antiquarian detail.
• His great series of Scottish novels are rooted in historical events:

1. Guy Mannering (1815) .
2. The Antiquary (1816) .
3. Old Morality (1816) .
4. Rob Roy (1818) .
5. The Heart of Midlothian (1818) .
6. Ivanhoe (1819)

   set in the 13th cent. England

7. Kenilworth (1821)

   in the age of Elisabeth

8. Quentin Durward (1823)

   French Court of the 15th cent.

• Scott wrote with dash and grandiosity in a kind of sustained improvisation:

  o His plotting is often loose. o His romantic lovers are pallid. o His kings & chieftains are large-scale puppets.

  Characteristics o Combination of casualness in design & prodigality in detail.

• Although Scott's political sympathies

  aristocratic & feudal, characters middle & lower classes.

• Finally, we can state that Scott had an immense international vogue and became the acknowledged master of some of the greatest 19th cent. novelists.

La Poesía Romántica

With respect to poetry, some features must be discussed in the current section. Next, we will make an analysis of the different authors concerning this genre during the Romantic period.

• Poetry can be defined as

  "expression" or "utterance" or "exhibition" of emotion, as it expresses the poet's own mind, imagination and emotion.

• Romantic poems take as their subject matter

  the experiences, thoughts & feelings of the poets who wrote them.

• The lyric poem written in 1st pers.

  becomes a major Romantic form, usually described as the most essentially poetic of all the genres.

• The immediate act of composition must be:

  o Spontaneous arising from impulse. o Free from all rules and manipulation of means to foreseen ends.

• The emphasis on the free activity of the imagination is related to:

  o An insistence on the essential role of instinct, intuition and the feelings of "the heart". To supplement the judgements of the purely logical faculty: "the head".

• Romantic poetry

  synonymous with "nature poetry" (prominence of landscape in this period).

• Romantic "nature poems" are:

  o Meditative poems the presented scene serves to raise an emotional problem or personal crisis whose development & resolution constitute the organising pple of the poem.

• Poets' aim

  to achieve the realm of mystery & magic, in which: o Ancient folklore, superstition and demonology are used to impress upon the reader the sense of occult powers & unknown modes of being.

Such poems are set in a distant past or in faraway places, or both. Once the main features of Romantic poetry have been developed, we will go on to the examination of the different poets at that time, who have been divided into two groups. These are: the Lake Poets and the Later Romantics. On the other hand, a separate remark is made for the figure of William Blake in the third part of this section, as his work is not placed among these two groups.

Los Poetas del Lago: Wordsworth y Coleridge

• The term "Lake Poets"

  include W. Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge & Robert Southey, who: o All lived in close association in the mountainous Lake District in the NW of England.

• Main stream of poetry in 18th century

  Orderly & polished without much feeling for nature. Heroic couplets used for this verse.

• But various writers had broken away from the form & the thought.
• Publication of 1st edition of Lyrical Ballads (1798)

  came as a shock: o A collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. o Typically considered to have marked the beginning of the Romantic movement in literature. o Critics considered the language too simple & the change too violent. o It was the beginning of the romantic age and the joint work of Wordsworth and Coleridge. o Most of the poems in 1798 edition written by Wordsworth, with Coleridge contributing only 4 poems, including one of his most famous works, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Wordsworth - Poet of nature - Special ability to throw charm over ordinary things - Filled with the love of nature (his imagination led him far beyond the life & thoughts of a countryman Main poems: - His part in Lyrical Ballads was more difficult to perform successfully than Coleridge's, for he had to make ordinary things seem wonderful. - He wrote more than half the book. - Love for nature is clear.

Coleridge - Could make mysterious events acceptable to a reader's mind Neither of them used the old language of poetry much

1. Lines Written above Tintern Abbey (1798)
2. Westminster Bridge (1802)

   sonnets

3. London (1802)
4. Ode on Intimations of Immortality (1807):

   - Longer & more important. - Expresses his belief in the idea that we come from another life.

5. The Prelude (1799-1805):

   - Record in 14 books of verse. - Remembers his schooldays & life at Cambridge, London & France.

6. The Excursion (1814):

1. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1797-9)
2. Christabel (1816)

   (not in Lyrical Ballads)

3. Kubla Khan (1816)

   - Buildings set among gardens, rivers, forests, ... - All this described in words which produce a strange & magic picture.

- A great philosophical work.

Los Románticos Posteriores: Keats, P.B. Shelley y Lord Byron

The Later Romantic poets George Gordon: Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats were at the same time influenced by Wordsworth and Coleridge and critical of them.

Concerning John Keats (1795-1821), we can say that:

• He loved beauty & rest and studied the poets & nature too.
• He could write lines in Wordsworth's manner, but with more music.
• Among his poems, we find:

1. Endymion (1818) :

   - Based on old ideas (old gods, love of moon-goddess for a shepherd, Venus & Adonis, ... ). Violently criticised, but he did not lose faith in himself.

2. Lamia (1820) .
3. Isabella (1820) .
4. The Eye of Saint Agnes (1884) .
5. Hyperion (1818-9)

   the old sun-god

6. Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819) .
7. To a Nightingale (1819) .
8. To Autumn (1884) .

He wrote more than 20 sonnets.

1. On first Looking into Chapman's Homer (1884) .
2. La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1884)

   a good ballad.

As far as Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) is concerned, it can be mentioned that:

• A greater poet of good family, struggled against the causes of human misery & accepted religions.
• He saw goodness in the whole of nature and he wanted all men to be free.
• Among his work, we highlight:

1. Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude (1816) :

   - Blank verse it shows Wordsworth's influence.

   - It expresses joy in the universe & sorrow for the violent feelings of men.

2. The Revolt of Islam (1818) :

   - A cry of impatience at the cruelty of the world. - The reader's love of freedom is dulled by too much language.

   - It is written in the Spenserian stanza (not suitable).

3. The Cenci (1819) :

   - A shocking but honest tragedy with some dramatic power.

4. Prometheus Unbound (1820) :

   - Another play dealing with human struggle against the power of false gods. - Argument is dull, but lyrics are beautiful.