Romantic Era

Romantic Era (1785-1830)

Political Overview

1789-1815: Revolution and Napoleonic Period in France

1789: Revolution begins w/ the assembly of the states General in May

1793: King Louis XVI executed; England joins the alliance against France

1793-1794: The Reign of Terror under the Robespierre

1804: Napolian crowned emperor

1815: Napolian defeated at Waterloo

1811-20: The Regency-George, Prince of Wales acts as regent for George III, who has been declared incurably insane

Literary Overview

1798: "Lyrical Ballads" published anonymously by Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge

1818: Frankenstein By Mary Shelly is anonymously published (Had forward by husband)

1831: Frankenstein published for second time w/ intro by Mary Shelley

Perspective (What you need to understand about the times)

• conservative monarchy replaced by liberal democracy
• hierchy and tradition replaced by citizenship and inalienable rights
• government took on proactive role thwarting major reform
• England time presented w/ harsh and repressive measures
• advocates for even moderate political change were charged w/ high treason in time of war

Background Motivator

• turbulent time- England switched over from an agricultural society to a modern industrial nation
• balance of economic power shifted to large scale employers pitted again increasingly restive working class
• change occurred in context of the us revolution by more the more radical side=>French revolution

Background Influences

• the shift in the manufacturing the result from the invention of powerdriven machineary to replace hand labor
• James Watt: steam engine power
• steam replaced wind and water
• Major writers of time: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Mary Wollstonecroft (mother of Mary Shelley) and younger authors=> Byron Shelley
  
  Literary gernres
• poetry: major genre of the time
• essay: gave information on ^^^^
• Drama: Prometheus UNbound; Percy Shelley did not mean to make it a play; talks about whether you should bring fire to man; ties in with Frankenstein
• Writers on Wordsworth's time did not consider themselves Romantic, the word was not applied until 50 years later by English historians
  
  Wordsworth
• Extended PREFACE (essay) to the 2nd Lyrical Ballads in 1800 to justify "new" poetry
• his statement of poetic principle opposed literary acient regime which, according to Wordsworth had imposed on poetry artificial conventions that distorted its free and natural expression
  Wordsworth's Preface
• carries with it the rep. for serving as a turning point in British Literature
• the concepts in this influential essay serves as a point of departure for a survey of distinctive elements in the theory and poetr of the Romantic Pd. real poetry shouldn't be free and spontaneous
• redefined = gave poetry a new rule= the rule was that there shouldnt be rules
  
  Poetry and Poetic Principles
  
• Wordsworth's good poetry = at the moments of composition the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling
• stressed the inner feeling of the poet
• refers to the mind emotion and image of the poet
• focus on the lyric poem written in 1st person became a major Romantic form
  
  Poetic Principles
• Percy Shelly believed that it was an "error to assert the finest passages of poetry are produced by labor and study" rather they were the products of unconscious creativity
  
  Romantic "Nature Poetry"
  
• Romantic poetry became synonymous with Nature Poetry
• Romantic poems habitually ended the landscape w/ human life, passion, and experiments
  
  Individualism and Non-conformity
• the mind creates its own experience
• the desie beyond human limits that to the people of the preceding age had been as an essential error, now becomes a glory and a triumph
  
  Novels
• 2 forms: Gothic and novel of purpose
• Gothic derives from the frequent setting of stories in a gloomy castle in the middle ages but it has been extended to a larger group of novels set somewhat in the past.. => Dark and unhappy
  Gothic Novels
• dark side of human nature
• explored savage of egoism
• opened up later fiction in the dark irrational perverse impulses and nightmarish terrors that lie beneath the controlled to ordered surface of concious minds
• some of the most powerful and influential writing in this mode => women attributed to how rigidly restricted and taken advantage of they were
  The Novel of Purpose
• to promote new social and political theories during the pd of the french revolution
• combines instructive intention w/ Gothic terror
  
  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
• Percy Bysshe Shelley's wife
• daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft who is the author of "A Vindication of the Rights of Women"
• wrote a thematic novel of terror
• Frankenstein transforms a story about a lab monster into a powerful representation of the moral distortion imposed on an individual who, because he diverges from the norm is rejected by society
  Frankenstein
• protagonist, Frankenstein indulges his creative ambition that he dehumanizes him and leads to his destruction and the death of all that he loves => becomes consumed in his work=> neglects everything else
• Frankenstein's monster represents Romantic (and post-romantic) concern w/ human isolation and alienation
• not only major romantic achievement its a count of the loud potential of himan creative power where severed from moral and social concerns has made to a modern myth that recurs persistently in fiction
  
  Galvanism
• 1790's- Italian scientist Luigi Galvani, conducted experiment on frogs inspired by a mom when he touched a nerve (by accident) in a dissected frog... it moved
  
  On to Experiment
• Galvani wed a hand cranked generator to produce sparks while at the same time he twitched a nerve in the frog w/ a knife producing a contracting and convulsive movement
• found that when two metals touched each other while one was in contact with nerves=> a muscle movement occurs
  
  False Conclusions
• Concluded that the electricity was inherent to the animal and referred to the "phenomenon" as "animal electricity" (form of electricity)
• Galvani published his work
  
  Alessandro Volta
• comes to a different conclusion based on Galvani's experiment
• Volta's theory suggests that the electricity originated in the bi-metal arc itself and that the resulting flows of electricity produced the muscle contractions
• Volta credited Galvani w/ his discoveries and labeled his findings as Galvani's
• Volta's exp. eventually led to the U cell similar to a modern car battery and to the field of electromagnetism
• Much of our knowledge today about chemical reactions can be traced back to Galvani and Volta