PartVIITheRomanticPeriod浪漫主义.pptVIP

The Romantic Period Introduction Romantic Poets William Wordsworth S.T. Coleridge G.G. Byron P.B. Shelley John Keats Introduction Romanticism as a literary movement came into being in England early in the latter half of the 18th century. English Romanticism begins in 1798 with the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s The Lyrical Ballads and ends in 1832 with Walter Scott’s death. The eighteenth century was distinctively an age of prose. The Age of Wordsworth—like the Age of Shakespeare—was decidedly an age of poetry. Lake poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge and Robert Southey were known as Lake Poets because they lived and knew one another in the last few years of the 18th century in the district of the great lakes in Northwestern England. They were friends and traversed the same path in politics and poetry. The former two published The Lyrical Ballads together in 1798, while all three of them had radical inclinations in their youth but later turned conservative and received pensions and poet laureateships from the aristocracy. Passive and Active / Revolutionary Romantic Poets Romanticists were discontent with and opposed to the development of capitalism. They split into two groups. Some Romantic writers reflected the thinking of those classes which had been ruined by the bourgeoisie called Passive Romantic poets, represented by Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey. Others expressed the aspiration of the labouring classes called Active or Revolutionary Romantic poets, represented by Byron and Shelley and Keats. Characteristics of Romanticism Romanticism is a literary trend prevailing in England during the period 1798-1832. Coming along with the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, the English Romanticism, compared with the neo-classicism which emphasized what men have in common, focuses mainly on the special qualities of individual’s mind. So its features run in contrary with the Neoclassism: Firstly, the Romanticism tended to probe into t