Romatics - Intro.pdf

Introduction: Romantic Lives  Romantic Period This period focuses on literature written in Europe from 1789 to 1820s The historical events: French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars = encouraged a revolutionary across all arts in the late C. 19th , Romanticism The focus is t...

Introduction: Romantic Lives  Romantic Period This period focuses on literature written in Europe from 1789 to 1820s The historical events: French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars = encouraged a revolutionary across all arts in the late C. 19th , Romanticism The focus is the romantic emphasis on the powers and terrors of the inner imaginative life (the self). This does not mean that all writers of that period focused on writing about the self and their inner lives.  Romantic Period The Industrial Revolution influenced Romanticism, which was in part about escaping from modern realities. The industrial revolution reflected materialism and consumerism Romantics resented such a life that disconnects them from the beauty of nature Therefore, Romanticism was a revolt against the scientific rationalization of nature which distanced Man from nature  Romantic Period ‘Exploration of the self’ is manifested in: lyric poetry, autobiography, biography and the confessional essay Fictionaland non-fictional writings reveal the anxieties of the Romantic self. This is often expressed in Gothic and non-realist modes of exploring the darkest and innermost (deep feelings) human passions, drives and fears Romantic Poets Wordsworth - Shelly  Romantic Poetry British Romantic poets were divided into two generations: 1. First generation: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Blake. Wordsworth and Coleridge are often referred to as the ‘Lake Poets’ which links their work to the Lake District. 2. Second generation: Lord Byron, Percy Shelly and John Keats William Wordsworth (1770-1850) First Generation of Romantic Poets 1. Discuss his work & consider how he represented his inner life and poetic career in relation to the landscape of the lake district, north-west of England. 2. Place is important in relation to Wordsworth’s poetry. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) Second Generation of Romantic Poets 1. Explore Shelly’s life and & how the Victorians (mid-late 19th century) saw Shelly as a Romantic writer 2. Contrasting Shelly’s Romanticism with his own depiction of the work of other Romantic poets from the first generation ‘The Author’ The meaning of the term & its relation to this chapter Criticism of the term The term to the Romantics  The Author & the Romantic Self - Understanding the Romantic Lives means we should understand the concept of the author - What meaning can the authors’ textual criticism & biographical context give to the reading - Modern Western culture is interested in authors and their lives, the places they lived in, & their graves (not of all writers)  The Author – Criticism The power of author was challenged in the C. 20th - Literary Critics: suspicious of explaining literary texts in reference to the author (Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’, 1967) insisting that readers should engage only with the words - Psychoanalytic theory: (Freudian) introduced the notion of the ‘unconscious’ which saw that human beings have repressed desires that are unknown to themselves, emphasizing that authors were not in control of their own intentions - In the 60s, 70s & 80s, left-wing theorists argued that texts often escape the meanings that the authors intended  The Author – Criticism The meaning of literary texts are seen as fluid because: 1. The readers (not the author) are the ones who give meaning to the text (Ronald Barthes) 2. Language is ambiguous (Jacques Derrida in his de- construction theory) These arguments were part of an anti-authoritarian philosophical and political stance  What about the Author? Michel Foucault, a French philosopher, also wrote an essay in (1969), ‘What is an author?’ asking question of how and why it became important to identify the author of literary texts? How is the author represented? Why the author acquired cultural status? When and why ‘authenticity’ and originality became a test of value of texts? When did author’s lives become interesting? When had writing started being read in terms of an author’s life? So, who is considered an author in the romantic period? The writer is an original genius, an exceptional man ahead of his time, possessed by inexplicable, spontaneous, visionary inspiration  Around the end of the 19th century, a modern sense of the ‘author emerged’: a professional producer of original written material, for which he/she expected to be paid This was due to several factors: 1. The patronage system declined & was replaced by a market- based publishing industry 2. A new class of industrialists, bureaucrats and scientists was emerging, which increased their power to shape culture in effective ways 3. There was a fixed period of authorial copyright from which authors could benefit financially 4. At the end of the C. 19th, publishing became cheaper + an increase in readership 5. The marketplace filled with new genres such as the novel - Poets and writers in the C. 19th began to construct themselves in opposition to popular culture - Marlon Ross describes how poetry came to be seen as ‘above’ mere popularity: - The romantic poets come to believe … that the greatness of a poet has no direct relation to the reading public who either buys or does not buy his work; that poets’ influence in politics and history may not be palpable but is nonetheless more real than the influence of utilitarians who engineer, oversee and operate the machinery of society; and that great poetry can be written only by powerful men capable of reaching grand visionary heights (Ross, 1989)