The Romantic Period

1. Group 3:
edited by
Nguyen Thi Nga

2. I. INTRODUCTION TO ROMATICISM
II. TWO GENERATIONS OF ROMANTICS
III. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
IV. GEORGE GORDON

3. 19th Century English Romanticism
I. INTRODUCTION TO ROMANTICISM
1. What's Romanticism?
2. Essential features of Romanticism

4. 19th Century English Romanticism
1. What's Romanticism?
1.1 As an ‘ism’ in literature
- Romanticism:
• The embodiment of disillusionment in the consequences
of the French revolution.
• In the great theories of the Enlighteners.
• The embodiment of the negative attitude towards the life
of the post-industrial revolution bourgeoisie.

5. 19th Century English Romanticism
1. What's Romanticism?
The romantics contrasted:
- The romantic ideal to reality.
- The lofty flight of spirit to the earthy prosaic life of the
bourgeoisie.
- Their petty calculation and boredom.
- Their limited outlook and utter practicality.
=> Contradictions between reality and dreams

6. 19th Century English Romanticism
1. What's Romanticism?
1.2 In terms of literature
Romanticism was the embodiment of the revolt against
classicism.

7. 19th Century English Romanticism
2. Essential features of Romanticism
There are 4 essential features of this historical romanticism:
• A deep interest in nature and in obscure, humble or
underprivileged people.
• An enthusiasm in fighting against tyrannical authority and
glorifying liberty.
• A sense of disappointment mixed with a melancholy mood.
• A revolution in literary language-use.

8. 2. Two generations of the
romantics
Moderate trend: The Lake
school
Radical trend: The Cockney
school

9.  The Lake school
Why was the Lake?
 Name of beautiful lake
district where
Wordsworth and other
poets lived.
 Industry had not
invaded the district.

10. Lake poets:
- Introduced into poetry short forceful
words and constructions of every day.
- Brought sound and color into verse.
- Appreciated folk and national art.
All of them were humanists

11. Great poets:
- William Wordswoth (1772 – 1850)
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834)
- Robert Southey (1774 – 1843)
 Having the similar tastes in art and politics, they found a literary
circle.

12. Quotes about Poetry

13. Poems:
 William Wordsworth: Lyrical
Ballads, Daffodils…
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner,
Kubla Khan..

14. Cockney school
Including all romantics of the young generation
Expressing the ideas and interests  disappointed to
see the results of industrial revolution society.
Trying to look ahead and see the future.
Embodied the dream of social justice

15. Great poets of Cockney
school
 George Gordon
 Percy Bysshe Shelley

16. Works:
• Percy Bysshe Shelly : Bridal Song, a
dialog, alament..
• Lord George Gordon Byron: Don Juan,
She walks in Beauty,....

17. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
(1770 – 1850)
A major English Romatic poet
 Life
Works

18. 1. LIFE
•W. Wordsworth was born in Lake District, Northwestern,
England on April 7, 1770

19. • 1778: attended Hawkshead
Grammar School
 W. Wordsworth died at Rydal
Mount on April 23, 1850
• 1787: studied at St. John’s
College in Cambridge

20. 2. WORKS
2.1. Major Themes
• Two themes: Nature and
Man
“Come forth into the light of
things, Let Nature be your
Teacher”
(Hãy bước ra phía trước đến
với ánh sáng của muôn vật,
hãy để thiên nhiên làm thầy
của bạn.)

21. 2.2. Works
• W. Wordsworth’s best poetry was written between 1796 and 1808
• Some most famous poets:
- Lyrical Ballads (1798) - The Prelude (1850)

22. Lucy Gray (1799)
“Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray:
And, when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to see at break of day
The solitary child.
No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor,
--The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!
You yet may spy the fawn at play,
The hare upon the green;
But the sweet face of Lucy Gray
Will never more be seen
"To-night will be a stormy night
You to the town must go;
And take a lantern, Child, to light
Your mother through the snow."
"That, Father! will I gladly do:
'Tis scarcely afternoon--
The minster-clock has just struck two,
And yonder is the moon!”
At this the Father raised his hook,
And snapped a faggot-band;
He plied his work;--and Lucy took
The lantern in her hand...” (continued)

23. The Daffodils
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and
hills,
When all at once I saw a crow
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a
bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly
dance...(continued)

24. George Gordon, Lord Bryan

25. • 1. Life
• born in London on January 22th, 1788
• Singularly unfortunate in both parents:
 father was born in a aristocratic
family and he thought everything
belongs to him that he lived a wild and
reckless life.
 his mother was a woman of
passionate extreme whom his
father married because of money

26. Life
• At 13 he went to school at Harrow, at 17, he
went to Cambridge and in 1809 he got a MA
degree
• He got married in January 2, 1815 but his
married life was unhappy.
• April 21, 1816, in a legal deed of separation,
he left England and never returned
• In 1823, when Greece was fighting for
independence, he threw all his energies into
the cause
• He now was a practical politician and the
unrestrained libertines changed to study
military disciplinarian
• He contracted a fever in 1824 and died in
battlefield

27. 2. Works
His literary career can be divided in to 5 periods:
• The experimental period (1807-1811)
• The London period (1812-1816)
• The Swiss period (1816- 1817)
• The Italian period (1817- 1823)
• The Greece period (1824)

28. Freedom
• Freedom in language
• Feedom in symbols
• Freedom in topic

29. Famous works
• Hours of Idleness (1806)
• English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers (1809)
• Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812
– 1818)
• The Giaour (1813)
• The Bride of Abydos (1813)
• The Corsair (1814)
• Lara (1814)
• Hebrew Melodies (1815)
• The Siege of Corinth (poem)
(1816)
• Parisina (1816)
• The Prisoner Of Chillon (1816)
• The Dream (1816)
• Prometheus (1816)
• Darkness (1816)
• Manfred (1817