Romanticism and Poetry.pptVIP

An Introduction to European Culture Romanticism and Poetry I. Background At the turn of the 18th and 19th century romanticism came to be the new trend all over Europe. It rose and grew under the impetus of the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution. Generally speaking, the romanticists expressed the ideology and sentiment of those classes and social strata who were discontented with and opposed to, the development of capitalism. But owing to difference in political attitudes, they split into two schools, Passive Romanticists and Active Romanticists. II. Two Schools of Romanticism Some romantic writers reflected the thinking of the classes ruined by the bourgeoisie, and by way of protest against capitalist development turned to the past as their ideal. These were the passive romanticists, represented by Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey. Others expressed the aspirations of the classes created by capitalism and held out an ideal, though a vague one, of a future society free from oppression and exploitation. These wee the active and younger romanticists represented by Byron, Shelley and Keats. Two sharply contrasting tendencies should be distinguished in romanticism, the passive and the active. Passive romanticism endeavors to reconcile man with his life by embellishing that life, or to distract him from the things around him by means of a barren introspection into his inner would, into thoughts of life’s insoluble problems, such as love, death and other imponderable … Active romanticism strives to strengthen man’s will to live and raise him up against the life around him, against any yoke it would impose. III. Characteristics of Romanticism Works The general feature of the works of the romanticists is a dissatisfaction with the bourgeois society, which finds expression in a revolt against or an escape from the prosaic, sordid daily life the “prison of the actual” under capitalism. Their writing are filled wi