This video lecture is on the definition, characteristics and causes of Romanticism and a brief but sketchy explanation over Romantic Literature and Romantic Era in English Literature. This lecture is in Week 1 of e-learning for the course Romantic Literature- 2 (ENG 409) at World University of Bangladesh. Faisal Ahmed Faculty Member Department of English World University of Bangladesh (WUB)

1. WEEK 1
“Introduction to Romantic Literature”
Course: Romantic Literature-2
(ENG 409)
Lecture by FAISAL AHMED
Faculty of English Literature, Department of English
World University of Bangladesh

2. Romantic Literature

3. In this Lesson, you will Learn:
• Romanticism
• Philosophy of Romanticism
• Causes of Romanticism
• Characteristics of Romanticism
• Major Poets & Authors of Romantic Literature
• Short Biography of John Keats, Jane Austin & Lord
Byron

4. Romantic Movement

5. Romanticism (1798 – 1837)
• Romanticism (also known as the Romantic era) was an artistic, literary,
musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the
end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the
approximate period from 1800 to 1850. Romanticism was characterized by
its emphasis on emotion and individualism, idealization of nature,
suspicion of science and industrialization, and glorification of the past with
a strong preference for the medieval rather than the classical.
• The publishing of William Wordsworth’s and Samuel Coleridge’s Lyrical
Ballads in 1798 is probably the beginning of the movement and it ended
with the crowning of Queen Victoria in 1837.

6. Romanticism (1798 – 1837)
• It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but
had a major impact on historiography, education, chess, social sciences, and
the natural sciences. It had a significant and complex effect on politics, with
romantic thinkers influencing conservatism, liberalism, radicalism, and
nationalism.
• The movement emphasized intense emotion as an authentic source of
aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as fear,
horror and terror, and awe — especially that experienced in confronting the
new aesthetic categories of the sublime and beauty of nature. It elevated
folk art and ancient custom to something noble.

7. Romanticism (1798 – 1837)

8. Romanticism (1798 – 1837)
• Although the movement was rooted in the German Sturm und Drang
movement, which preferred intuition and emotion to the rationalism of the
Enlightenment, the events and ideologies of the French Revolution were
also proximate factors since many of the early Romantics were cultural
revolutionaries and sympathetic to the revolution. Romanticism assigned a
high value to the achievements of "heroic" individualists and artists, whose
examples, it maintained, would raise the quality of society.
• In the second half of the 19th century, Realism was offered as a polar
opposite to Romanticism

9. Philosophy of Romanticism
• The roots of Philosophical Romanticism can be found in the work of Jean-
Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. Rousseau, (who is credited with the
idea of the "noble savage", uncorrupted by artifice and society), thought
that civilization fills Man with unnatural wants and seduces him away from
his true nature and original freedom.
• “Man is born free but everywhere he is in chains.”---- Rousseau
• Emotion is more fundamental to the human experience than logic.
Imagination is more powerful and necessary than logic.
• The individual is more important than the collective persons.
• Nature is a sure path to spiritual and moral growth.

10. Philosophy of Romanticism
• The process of conceptualizing the romantic intuition of man and being, and
the doctrines resulting there-from; also the movement, with its witnessing
documents, in which this process transpired historically. Romanticism views
man as pure, vital activity, generative of self and of the world, and as a finite
principle open to an infinite revealing itself interiorly as the inexhaustible
self-generative force of life, which is deployed through determinate
expressive forms that can always be transcended. Romanticism views reality
as the immanent determination of such activity. Historically, romanticism
has been the expression of this vision in the complex culture succeeding to,
and reacting against, the enlightenment and embracing all aspects of life:
literary, artistic, political, social, religious, and scientific.

11. Causes of Romanticism
• Romanticism was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the social
and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, and the scientific
rationalization of nature—all components of modernity.
• Romanticism was a revolt against the aristocratic, social and political
norms of the Age of Enlightenment/Neoclassicism and also a reaction
against the scientific rationalization of nature.
• Romanticism believed in the intrinsic ability of mankind to understand
nature and its phenomena.
• Neoclassicism: emotional restraint, order, logic, elegance of diction, clarity,
dignity and decorum
• The rise of industrial revolution & urbanization.

12. Characteristics of Romanticism
• Romanticism was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the social
and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, and the scientific
rationalization of nature—all components of modernity.
• Romanticism was a revolt against the aristocratic, social and political
norms of the Age of Enlightenment/Neoclassicism and also a reaction
against the scientific rationalization of nature.
• Romanticism believed in the intrinsic ability of mankind to understand
nature and its phenomena.

13. Characteristics of Romanticism
• 1. Individuality/democracy/personal freedom. “I” more important than “we”.
• Spiritual/supernatural/gothic elements
• Nature as a teacher
• Interest in past history/ Ancient Greek and Roman elements
• Celebration of the simple life
• Interest in folk traditions
• Use of common language and subjects
• One sided/opinionated
• Idealized women
• Frequent use of personification
• Examination of the poet’s inner feelings?subjective
• Symbolism: Love, Death, Peace etc.

14. Major Poets & Authors of Romantic Literature
Poets
• William Blake
• William Wordsworth
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• John Keats
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Lord Byron
Authors
• Goethe
• Sir Walter Scott
• Mary Shelley
• Victor Hugo
• Jane Austen
• Charles Lamb (Essayist)

15. Major Poets & Authors of Romantic Literature

16. John Keats

17. John Keats
John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet prominent in the second generation
of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, although his poems had been in
publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. They were
indifferently received during his lifetime, but his fame grew rapidly after his death.
Notable Works: John Keats wrote sonnets, odes, and epics. All his greatest poetry was written in a single
year, 1819: “Lamia,” “The Eve of St. Agnes,” the great odes (“On Indolence,” “On a Grecian Urn,” “To
Psyche,” “To a Nightingale,” “On Melancholy,” and “To Autumn”), and the two unfinished versions of
an epic on Hyperion.
Cause of death: Tuberculosis
Literary movement: Romanticism

18. Lord Byron

19. Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, FRS (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), simply known as Lord
Byron, was an English poet and peer. One of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, Byron is
regarded as one of the greatest English poets. He remains widely read and influential. Among his best-
known works are the lengthy narrative poems Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage; many of his
shorter lyrics in Hebrew Melodies also became popular.
Born: 22 January 1788, London, England
Died: 19 April 1824 (aged 36), Missolonghi, Aetolia, Ottoman Empire (present-day Aetolia-Acarnania,
Greece)
Resting place: Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Hucknall, Nottinghamshire
Alma mater: Trinity College, Cambridge (1805–1808)

20. Jane Austen

21. Jane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique and
comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots often explore
the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic
security.
Born: December 16, 1775, Steventon, United Kingdom
Died: July 18, 1817, Winchester, United Kingdom
School of Thought: Literary realism
Notable Works: Jane Austen is known for six novels: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice
(1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815), and Persuasion and Northanger Abbey (both 1817).

22. The End of Lesson