The document provides historical context on the Romantic Age in Britain. It describes how the Industrial Revolution led to the rapid growth of dirty, overcrowded industrial towns with poor living conditions for workers. British society was divided into landowners/aristocracy, businessmen/industrialists, and the working masses. Several political reforms in the early 1800s aimed to improve conditions for workers and the masses. The document also gives an overview of English Romanticism in literature and some of the major Romantic poets of the period.

1. THE ROMANTIC AGE

2. Romanticism

4. Prosperity and confidence in 1700’s American and French revolutions disappointment in bitter and violent ends - Napoleon Industrial Revolution dirty, unorganized cities emerge huge class shift

9. Anthology of Romantic Poetry Selected Works & Analysis of ____ ____ __ ______ _________

14. The Lamb and The Tyger Blake wrote two books: “ Songs of Innocence”and “Songs of Experience”. In “The Lamb” from the Songs of Innocence Blake presented with an image of a gentle, benevolent, loving God. In “The Tyger” from Songs of Experience, God is vindictive and terrifying.

25. I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare . The lone and level sands far away. - Ozymandias Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley was an English Romantic poet who rebelled against English politics and conservative values. Shelley was considered with his friend Lord Byron a pariah for his life style. He drew no essential distinction between poetry and politics, and his work reflected the radical ideas and revolutionary optimism of the era. Like many poets of his day, Shelley employed mythological themes and figures from Greek poetry that gave an exalted tone for his visions. Shelley d ied July 8, 1822 . Percy Bysshe Shelley Back to Index Onward to Wordsworth Analysis of “Ozymandias”

36. “ Romantic” • From “Roman” – a poetic or prose heroic narrative , in late medieval literature • Term is revived to describe a “movement” or set of shared beliefs and themes… • … growing out of late 18th and early 19th C • … and present as a continuing influence or tendency

37. Four Principal Ideas • Nature • Equality/egalitarianism • Imagination • “ Sensibility”

38. Nature • In Nature, Humanity is – Inspired – Informed – Redeemed – Transformed – Idealized

39. Equality • Egalitarian view of society • The “social union” among people • Nationalism (loyalty to “nation” v. “rulers”) • Revolution and reform • Humanity can be perfected

40. Sensibility” • Idealism • Intensity of emotions • Significance of actions • Worthiness of common person • Humanity’s best is glorified in the – Classical – Medieval

41. Imagination • Power of imagination to “transport” • Mind heals, condemns itself • Subjective nature of truth • Spontaneous response

42. Perhaps the most striking feature of the poets of the Romantic Movement is their attitude to nature. The solitude of real nature is alien, immeasurable, inhuman; the Romantic solitude is a vision of nature which reflects the solitude of the poet. The Romantic finds everywhere in nature his own image. -Stephen Spender

43. The [Romantic] poet. . .loves to escape from the heat and pressure of humanity, and so from himself as a social being, and to lose himself in the freedom of lonely places. - Joseph Warren Beach

44. What the Romantics beheld when they looked at life was a radical difference between the world of appearances and the world of reality. What seemed important in the world of appearances (the world as it looks to the ordinary man, the man of “common” sense) was revealed as unimportant or false when it was observed by the man of true imagination. ... Thus freed from unimaginative blindness, the Romantic saw Nature and Man in their true light, their essential character, and in their genuine worth. - Ernest Bernbaum

45. The most universal image [in Romantic poetry] is perhaps that of light, a fit symbol of spiritual illumination, of the transcendental vision, of the work of the imagination, of the ideal to which the poet aspires. - R.A. Foakes