Romanticism

End of the 18th century – half part of

the 19th century
• The publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 by
the Lake Poets (Wordsworth, Coleridge and
Southey) marked the start of the Romantic
movement in English Literature.
 Romanticism was:

• a reaction to the Industrial Revolution

• A revolt against the political norms of the Age
of the Enlightenment
 The Industrial Revolution had
transformed the social landscape
• The Industrial Revolution enabled manufacturers and
capitalists to amass huge fortunes.
• The gap between the rich and the poor remained wide.
• People moved from the country to the city.
• The migration overpopulated the already crowded
cities.
• Poverty, disease and hazardous factory condition
became widespread.
• Industrial Revolution was powered by child labor.
• (Child labor was the crucial ingredient which allowed
Britain's Industrial Revolution to succeed)
The Industrial Revolution
enabled manufacturers and
capitalists to amass huge
fortunes.

The gap between the rich

and the poor remained
wide.

People moved from the country

to the city.

The migration overpopulated

the already crowded cities.

Poverty, disease and hazardous

factory condition became
widespread.
 Industrial Revolution was powered by child labor.
(Child labor was the crucial ingredient which allowed Britain's
Industrial Revolution to succeed)
 Romanticism characteristics

•Experimentation with poetic form

•Love of nature The Romantics had a huge crush on
•Ruins and relics of the ancient past nature. These guys (and sometimes
•Rebellion gals) loved trees, flowers,
•Heroism mountains, clouds, crags, birds…you
•Emotion name it. As long as it was outdoors,
•Sense and Sensuality they loved it.
•Sublime In nature, the Romantics found
inspiration for their poetry, wisdom,
and straight-up happiness.
 John Keats
Ode on a grecian urn
 Themes
The inevitability of death, the
contemplation of beauty
 Symbols

Music and musicians, the Ancient

World
 Motifs
•Departures and reveries, the five senses and art, the disappearance of the poet and
the speaker
Literary Devices

•Personification, imagery, rhyme, assonance, metaphor

La Belle Damme Sans Merci
1819
 Themes
Impossible love, terminal illness
Motifs:
dreams

Symbols:
paleness, the lake
 Literary devices

imagery, personification, metaphor,

repetition, narration
 Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice 1813

Jane Bennet
The
Elizabeth Bennet
Bennet
Mary Bennet
sisters
Catherine Bennet
Lydia Bennet
 Historical Context
Jane Austen’s life and writing career overlapped with one of the most transformative
eras in British history, marked by revolution abroad and unrest at home.

•Britain was engaged almost without cease in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
of 1793–1815, one of the most significant conflicts in British history.
The Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars
represented a period of great financial instability.

A third of the country’s populations lived on the verge

of starvation.
The conception and the role of women began to change.

The British culture became focused on the accumulation of

wealth within the family.

One way for families to rapidly accumulate capital was through

advantageous marriages.

The daughters became the means through which a familiy could

attain great wealth.
Another significant change that occurred during Austen’s life was
the expansion of literacy and print culture in England.

Almost everyone could read and the novel became the main
form of literature.
Jane Austen contributed to what has been called as the NOVEL OF
MANNERS, a kind of fiction focused on everyday routine life and events.

Her novels are based on the premise that there is a vital relationship
between manners, social behaviour and character.

They are usually set in those levels of society where people do not have to
struggle for survival and where they are free to develop more or less
elaborate RULES, CODES and CONVENTIONS of daily behaviour.

Given this kind of situation, the novel of manners explores character,

personal relationships, class distinctions and their effect on character
and behaviour; the role of money and property in the way people treat
each other; the complications of love and friendship within this social
world.

Conversation plays a central role in these novels and passions and

emotions are not expressed directly but more subtly.
The realistic novel defined by an objective narrator, lots of
characters, description of the realities of domestic life was in
part inaugurated in Austen’s Pride and Prejudices.

It is difficult to classify Jane Austen's works into one literary

movement because she reacted against major literary
movements of her time and thus created a style all her own.
While it is difficult to classify her novels under Realism, we can
certainly say that all aspects of her novels are realistic.

Although romanticism and realism are the primary genres of

Pride and Prejudice , the flexibility of genre goes further,
incorporating elements of Gothic literature.
 Themes
Love, class, reputation
 Motifs
Courtship, journeys
Symbols
Pemberley
 Literary devices

irony, simile, imagery, foil, satire,

personification
 Point of View

Third person limited omniscient