Industrial revolution and Romanticism PDF

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Riassunto delle pagine riguardanti la rivoluzione industriale e il romanticismo dal punto di vista storico e letterario....

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INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION During the 18th century, Britain was recognised as the strongest country, in particular regarding the economic and colonial expansion. Britain’s colonies were both in America and India. In America, the colonised considered themselves as part of the British population. However, they realised that the British government didn’t have the same idea. In fact, the motherland started to impose taxes to the colonised to collect the debt caused by the Seven Years’ War. These taxes were the catalyst for the rebellion. It all started in 1773 when at the Boston Tea Party the rebels dressed as Native Americans threw the hated English tea into the harbour. The rebels maintained that the taxes were unjust, as the colony had no political power. The motto was “No taxation without representation”. Americans divided into Patriots (the ones who wanted to separate from the motherland) and Loyalists (the ones who wanted to remain part of it) and the War on Independence started in 1775. George Washington became the leader of the American army, managing to defeat the British army. On 4 July 1776 in Philadelphia, the congress signed the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson, a lawyer from Virginia. Britain recognised the independence in 1783 with the Treaty of Versailles. America adopted a federal constitution in 1787 and G.W. became the first president. With its virgin territory and people from all over Europe melted into a new race, America became the symbol of a new start. Those who didn’t want to be part of it (the Loyalists) moved into Canada. During the 18th century, the Scientific Revolution took place. It stimulated invention, which was applied to everyday life. There had been a vast increase in trade, both domestic and colonial, in farming and in industry. In particular, the first people who felt the change of Industrial Revolution were the weavers. Spinning wool into thread was the first process to be mechanised in the 1760s and 1770s. The weavers were de-skilled and became factory workers. The first machines were water driven, but the invention of the steam engine by James Watt was to change not only the textile industry but also coal mining and the production of iron. England was the land of the Industrial Revolution, which affected a lot the society. There were two main classes: those who lived by owning (wage-payers) and those who lived by earning (wageearners). The English landlords grew rich thanks to the freedom they had to exploit their land and to make money out of the minerals beneath the soil. However, they also provided enrichment to those who leased their farms and the industrial sites around. Wealth turned England into a consumer society. In these years, there was a shifting of population from the agricultural and commercial areas of the South to the North and the Midlands, where the new factories were built near the coalfields. Small towns, called mushroom towns, were built to house the workers (men, women and children). The labourers had to work long hours and live in very bad conditions: industrial cities lacked elementary public services (water, sanitation…), the air and the water were pulled and the houses were overcrowded.

ROMANTICISM The Industrial Revolution contributed to the birth of a new poetry: the Romanticism. The Enlightenment had brought tolerance and recognition of the value of a cultured society. But, it was thought that reason as the only way to progress, led to the repression of emotion. In the opposite, men began to refer to the impressions of their senses. Many factors produced this change:

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The noisy activity of the town against the serenity of the countryside Growing interest in humble and melancholy associated with meditation on the suffering of the poor and on death Revival of interest in the past as a period contrasting with the present The Gothic taste (art, architecture, popular traditions) as a facet of exoticism

Giving less importance to the reason, the concept of nature changed. The view of nature as a set of divine principles established by God that men could control with the reason, was replaced by the view of a real and living being to be described as it really was. This led to the need to elaborate a new aesthetic theory built on individual consciousness. David Hume denied the objectivity of experience: beauty exists in the mind that contemplates things. It is no quality in things themselves. A new concept of the sublime was born. The most remarkable work on the subject was Edmund Burke’s A philosophical enquiry into the Origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful. The beautiful is what appears nice at the sight. It is connected to the balance and the harmony, it is rational. On the opposite, the sublime has an element of darkness. This is why it threatens but at the same time attracts. It is irrational. The typical sublime themes are waterfalls, rocks, mountains. In plus, everything is even more sublime if it is set at night. There is a new emphasis on the significance of the individual. The Romantics saw the human in a solitary state. They exalted the atypical, the outcast. This attitude led to the cult of the hero and, on the other side, to the view of society as an evil force.  Rousseau: the conventions of civilisation represented intolerable restrictions on the individual personality and produced every kind of corruption and evil.  Consequence: natural behaviour unstrained and impulsive over the one governed by reason and the rules of society. The ‘noble savage’ concept is specifically romantic: he may appear primitive, but he has an instinctive knowledge of himself and of the world often superior than the civilised man do. Childhood as a state to be admired and cultivated. To a Romantic a child was purer than an adult was, because was unspoilt by civilisation. He was closer to God and the sources of creation. Romanticism implied the use of imagination as a means of giving expression to emotional experience not accountable to reason. Imagination helped the poets to see beyond the surface of reality and to re-create the world of experience. Poetry was the mean to transfer feelings into words. The poet was seen as a visionary prophet and as a teacher who mediates between man and nature. Romantic poet features:  Lyric I  Nature as a living force and as the expression of God in the universe  Language of sense impressions. Simple, so that anyone could comprehend  Freedom from models and rules. Individual style  Use of symbols and images as visible vehicles rather than decorative devices  Return to past forms, such as the ballad Two generations of romantic poets:

The lake poets (Wordsworth). Characterised by the attempt to theorise about poetry. Second (Byron, Shelley, Keats). Stronger individualism, escapism, alienation from the society.

WORDSWORTH writes about the beauty of nature and ordinary things with the aim of making them interesting to the reader. In “The solitary reaper”, he recalls strong emotions from the past and creates in the reader’s mind the scene he is describing. In the first stanza the poet is walking past a woman who is singing a melancholically while reaping. Then he refers to another wayfarer saying to not disturb the scene. In the second, there is a metaphor: the singing voice of the woman is compared to some nightingales. In the third, he asks himself if anybody understands what she is singing, because she speaks another language. The notes are low, so he supposes that she is remembering past events or daily struggles. Finally, whatever the theme is, the poet keeps walking and bringing in his hearth the song even away from her and not able to listen to them. Gothic novels (1760-1820)  Marked by the taste for the strange and the mysterious reflecting an historical moment characterised by increasing disillusionment with the enlightenment and rationality  Sublime as a celebration of terror, as a rejection of limits and constraints (Burke) as an exploration of forbidden areas (Burke)  The setting: importance given to terror, characterised by obscurity and uncertainty, and horror, caused by evil and atrocity. Ancient setting: mysterious abbeys and convents with hidden passages and secret rooms. Catholic countries as the setting of the most terrible crimes due to protestant prejudices against Catholicism  Characters dominated by exaggerated reactions in front of mysterious situations or events. Supernatural beings (vampires, monsters and ghosts). Sensitive heroes who save heroines persecuted by the villains. Satanic, terrifying male characters, victims of their negative impulses  Popularity: interest common to all strata of society...