Introduction to ENGL 2523:Major British Writers II

MODERNITY & ROMANTICISM

Modernity (ca. 1700-Present)• Condition of Western culture since Empire and Capitalism• Industrial Revolution of 19th Century•Mass production of commodified goods

Uniformity and loss of uniqueness• Rise in prominence of reason and science

Crisis of faith• Rise in literacy & industrialized print technology Larger reading public• Rise in commerce increased personal wealth Democratization that challenged aristocratic order•WWI a culminating point for all of above

Romantic Period in Context (ca. 1795-1837)• American Revolution – 1775-1783• French Revolution – 1789-1799• British Wars w/France – 1793-1815• Upending of hereditary hierarchies (Aristocracy)• Newly democratic social order in which individuals have more autonomy

• Industrial Revolution – 1790 – 1835 National & Urban Populations Double, 1791-1831 Economy & Labor base shifts from

Rural/Agricultural to Urban/Industrial

Romantic Responses to the Times• Drastic and Rapid Social Change

Revolutions end monarchy, devalue privilege/entitlement (7)

Undergirded by sense of “Natural Rights” Leads also to abolition of slavery

• Literature: vivid sense of participating in modern world But sometimes in a hidden way

• Romantic literature defamiliarizes world; sees with fresh eyes (8)• Inward turn toward Imagination, memory, self (8)

Opp. Enlightenment (C18) – objective truth, concrete/measured realities (8-9)• Also an escapism / exoticism: imagining better possibilities

through fantastic Visions of Otherness that reflect own world (11)

Romantic ImaginationMind is not a passive mirror but an active light, visionary power (9)• Levels of Imagination (9)• Analogous to but lesser than divine creation• Poetry a secondary, synthesizing power from Imagination that

resolves and vitalizes opposing forces in Nature• Precedes Reason• A semi-autonomous entity of the mind or soul, like the

subconscious (10)

Romantic Poetry• Style changes to more organic, erratic forms (14)

Mirror the eccentricities of Nature and the Self Think of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5

• The “I” becomes a more complex, full being with mysterious inner regions (cf. painting “Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog”)

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fogby Caspar David Friedrich (1818)