自考英美文学选读_The Romantic Period

The Romantic PeriodEnglish Romanticism English Romanticism ,as a historical phase of literature ,is generally said to have begun in 1798 with the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads and to have ended in 1832 with Sir Walter Scott’s death and the passage of the first Reform Bill in the Parliament

Historical and Cultural backgroundDuring this period, England had experienced profound economic and social changes. The biggest social change in English history was the transfer of large masses of the population from the countryside to the towns. As a result of the Enclosures and the agricultural mechanization, the peasants were driven of their land; some emigrated to the colonies; some sank to the level of farm laborers and many others drifted to the industrial towns where there was a growing demand for labor. But the new industrial towns were no better than jungles, where the law was "the survival of the fittest." The cruel economic exploitation caused large-scale workers'' disturbances in England.

The Romantic views about literaturea. The Romantic period is an age of poetry. Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats are the major Romantic poets. They started a rebellion against the neoclassical literature, which was later regarded as the poetic revolution. b. The Romantic period is also a great age of prose. The two major novelists of the Romantic period are Jane Austen and Walter Scott. c. Besides poetry and prose, there are quite a number of writers who have fried their hand at poetic dramas in this period.

The Romantic MovementIt expressed a more or less negative attitude towards the existing social and political conditions that came with industrialization and the growing importance of the bourgeoisie. The Romantics felt that the existing society denied people their essential human needs, so they demonstrated a strong reaction against the dominant modes of thinking of the 18th-century writers and philosophers. Where their predecessors saw man as a social animal, the Romantics saw him essentially as an individual in the solitary state and emphasized the special qualities of each individual's mind. Romanticism actually constitutes a change of direction from attention to the outer world of social civilization to the inner world of the human spirit.

Characteristics of Romantic literature in English history.The Romantic period is an age of poetry Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats are the major Romantic poets. They started a rebellion against the neoclassical literature, which was later regarded as the poetic revolution. Wordsworth and Coleridge were the major representatives of this movement. They explored new theories and innovated new techniques in poetry writing. They saw poetry as a healing energy; they believed that poetry could purify both individual souls and the society.

The Romantics not only extol the faculty of imagination, but also elevate the concept of spontaneit

y and inspiration, regarding them as something crucial for true poetry. The natural world comes to the forefront of the poetic imagination. Nature is not only the major source of poetic imagery, but also provides the dominant subject matter. Wordsworth is the closest to nature.

To escape from a world that had became excessively rational, as well as excessively materialistic and ugly, the Romantics would turn to other times and places, where the qualities they valued could be convincingly depicted. Romantics also tend to be nationalistic, defending the great poets and dramatists of their own national heritage against the advocates of classical rules who tended to glorify Rome and rational Italian and French neoclassical art as superior to the native traditions.

To the Romantics, poetry should be free from all rules. They would turn to the humble people and their everyday life for subjects, Romantic writers are always seeking for the Absolute, the Ideal through the transcendence of the actual. They have also made bold experiments in poetic language, versification and design, and constructed a variety of forms on original principles of structure and style.

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