The 19th Century

Prepared by

MS. CRISTINE JESSA L. VALITE

MAT-English Student

The 19th century in Western literature—one of the most vital and interesting periods of all—has special interest as the formative era from which many modern literary conditions and tendencies derived. Influences that had their origins or were in development in this period—Romanticism, Symbolism, Realism—are reflected in the current of modern literature, and many social and economic characteristics of the 20th century were determined in the 19th.

Romanticism• It was the predominant literary movement

of the early part of the 19th century.

• The movement emphasized intense emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as apprehension, horror and terror, and awe—especially that which is experienced in confronting the new aesthetic categories of the sublimity and beauty of nature.

• It promoted the individual imagination as a critical authority allowed of freedom from classical notions of form in art.

• It assigned a high value to the achievements of 'heroic' individualists and artists, whose examples, it maintained, would raise the quality of society.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

1770-1850

-Born on April 7, 1770 in Cockermouth

-Died on April 23, 1850-A major English poet-His magnum opus was The PreludeWordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.

•Wordsworth was a defining member of the English Romantic Movement. Like other Romantics, Wordsworth’s personality and poetry were deeply influenced by his love of nature, especially by the sights and scenes of the Lake Country, in which he spent most of his mature life. A profoundly earnest and sincere thinker, he displayed a high seriousness tempered with tenderness and a love of simplicity.

View of Poetry

Poetry is a spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions that recollected in tranquillity.

• spontaneous means natural, not restricted with education or past experiences.

• overflow means the emotion has to be very strong.

• powerful emotions meaning that my subject has to deal with feelings over everything.

• recollected in tranquillity meaning that if your emotions remain powerful after a while then you will write about it. Because only then the poem will be as powerful as you felt at the beginning.

The Principal Object of His Poetry

• 1. to choose incidents and situations from common life.

• 2. to relate or describe them.

• 3.throughout, as far as was possible in a selection of language really used by men.

• 4.and, at the same time, (A) to throw over them a certain coloring of imagination, (B) whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect.

• 5.the primary laws of our nature: chiefly, as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement. (spontaneous overflow of emotion)

His Subject of Poetry

•He chooses humble life because it’s simple, easy to remember in tranquillity, easier to express, they’re essential through the passions, they’re easily understood, they’re durable, and it’s not only about man or Nature it’s between both.

Language Used in Poetry

• Speaks out against figurative language, but still uses it occasionally.

•He chose everyday language that’s suitable because such men hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derive.

•He saw a relationship between nature and human life.

•He believes that nature can have an impact on emotional and spiritual life.

Samuel taylor coleridge1772-1834

• Born on October 21, 1772 in Ottery, St. Mary, Unted Kingdom

•Died on July 25, 1834

•He was an English poet, literary critic and philosopher.

• He was the leader of Romantic poetry.

• He used opium for inspiration.

• During the 18th century the catchphrase of literature and art was reason.

• But, the 19th century was heralded by major shift in the conception and emphasis of literary art and specifically poetry.

Subject Matter

• The most important characteristic of his literary text, he used supernatural elements, visionary elements in his poems.

• Supernatural elements, extraordinary and mysterious that can be found in human nature.

• Nature is not the only subject matter, he also talk about psychology of character.

Language

• Sophisticated, elaborated and ornamented.

• The best part of human language is derived from reflection on the acts of the mind itself. It is formed by a voluntary appropriate on of fixed symbols to internal acts, to processes and results of imagination, the greater part of which no place in the consciousness of un-aducated man.

• The language of poetry undoubtly comes from imagination. The way, Poet perceives the world and translates it for everyone.

Purpose of Poetry

• The purpose of poetry is to give pleasure and this pleasure is from whole part and from each companent part.

• If you read a novel, you take pleasure from the whole part.

• If you read a poem, you take pleasure from the each part.

Poetry

•Coleridge sees the poetry as a source of knowledge

•The Poem must be cohesive unit with every part working together to build into a whole.

•Philosophy was so important, because it was the sum of all knowledge.

Poet

• ‘No man was ever yet a great poet, without at the sometimes being a profound philosopher.’

• He valued scientific thinking as a branch of philosophy. According to him; if a person is a poet, he should also be a philosopher otherwise he is not poet.

• The poet must be educated person who possess poetic genious.

Lyrical Ballad

• is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798 and generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature.[1] The immediate effect on critics was modest, but it became and remains a landmark, changing the course of English literature and poetry.

• Subject Matter Wordsworth• Childhood manners.• Rustic, humble and common life .• Beautiful forms of nature.( Anti-neoclassical )

Coleridge• Supernatural, extraordiinary and

mysterious elements that can be found in human nature.

• Nature is not only subject matter, he also talks about psychology of character ( NEW )

• Language • Language really used common man.• He used language and subjects of the

common man to convey his ideas.• He was against to Augustan Age

decorum and over-flow style. ( Anti-neoclassical)

• Metrical arrangement• Sophisticated• Ornamented• Elevated ( Neo-classical )

• Purpose of poetry • Duty of poetry is to spread humanitanal values and attitudes.

• It is to give pleasure and this pleasure is from whole parts and from each part

( NEW )

• Defination of poetry

• Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquillity.

• A poem is a composition which is opposed to works of science by its object.

Percy Bysshe shelley1792-1822

• Born August 4, 1792 in Sussex, England.

• regarded by some critics as amongst the finest lyric poets in the English language.

• A radical in his poetry as well as his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition for his poetry grew steadily following his death.

•The central thematic concerns of Shelley’s poetry are largely the same themes that defined Romanticism, especially among the younger English poets of Shelley’s era: beauty, the passions, nature, political liberty, creativity, and the sanctity of the imagination.

•Shelley fervently believed in the possibility of realizing an ideal of human happiness as based on beauty, and his moments of darkness and despair almost always stem from his disappointment at seeing that ideal sacrificed to human weakness.

•The center of his aesthetic philosophy can be found in his important essay A Defence of Poetry, in which he argues that poetry brings about moral good.

•No other English poet of the early nineteenth century so emphasized the connection between beauty and goodness, or believed so avidly in the power of art’s sensual pleasures to improve society

Ralph waldo emerson1803-1882

•Born on May 25, 1803 in Boston Massachussets

•Died on April 27, 1882

•He was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led theTranscendentalist movement of the mid-19th century.

The Poet

• It was written between 1841 and 1843 and published in his Essays: Second Series in 1844. It is not about "men of poetical talents, or of industry and skill in meter, but of the true poet."

•In the essay, Emerson expresses the need for the United States to have its own new and unique poet to write about the new country's virtues and vices.

• Emerson considers the nature and the functions of the poet, "the man of Beauty," to whom he ascribes a superior calling. Unlike the intellectual, who sees no dependence between the material world and the world of thoughts and ideas, or the theologian, who relies exclusively on historical evidence for truth, the poet acknowledges an interdependence between the spiritual and the material worlds. This relationship between the ideal — that which we aspire to be — and the real — that which is — is a central issue in the discussion. Continuing the image of the child from the epigraph, Emerson states that we are "children of the fire," and the energy and brilliance of this fire is similar to the spirit in each of us.

Matthew arnold1822-1888

• Born on December 22, 1822 in Laleham, Middlesex, England.

• Died on April 18, 1888

• He was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools.

• He has been characterised as a sage writer, a type of writer who chastises and instructs the reader on contemporary social issues.

•He was 'the first modern critic' [1], and could be called 'the critic's critic', being a champion not only of great poetry, but of literary criticism itself.

•The purpose of literary criticism, in his view, was 'to know the best that is known and thought in the world, and by in its turn making this known, to create a current of true and fresh ideas

•He was the founder of the sociological school of criticism, and through his touchstone method introduced scientific objectivity to critical evaluation by providing comparison and analysis as the two primary tools of criticism.

•To Arnold a critic is a social benefactor. In his view the creative artist, no matter how much of a genius, would cut a sorry figure without the critic to come to his aid. Before Arnold a literary critic cared only for the beauties and defects of works of art, but Arnold the critic chose to be the educator and guardian of public opinion and propagator of the best ideas.

•To Arnold poetry itself was the criticism of life: 'The criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty', and in his seminal essay The Study of Poetry' 1888) he says that poetry alone can be our sustenance and stay in an era where religious beliefs are fast losing their hold. 

Thank you for listening!!!