New sensibility, romantic poetry and nature PDF

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Riassunti sulla new sensibility, sui caratteri della Romantic poetry e sulla natura...

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A new sensibility

In the second half of the 18th century a new sensibility became dominant which came to be known in Literature as Romanticism. It was a reaction against faith in reason and promoted the supremacy of feeling and emotions. Indeed, there are many differences between Augustan and Early Romantic poetry Augustan: The Augustan poets emphasize reason so balance, order, moderation, rules. They had a rational thinking , they controlled emotions and imagination The language was sophisticated , artificial based on fixed schemes and not spontaneous and poets had dealt with impersonal material They were interested in elevated subject, poor were ignored and society was placed before the individual. Nature was seen as an abstract concept, as a set of divine laws and principles established by God, which man could control and order with the use of reason

Early Romantic

Early Romantic poets emphasize the irrational so the sensibility, freedom, feelings and spontaneity. They were more subjective, used the imagination to describe personal experience life They had a free play of imagination, they had not controlled emotions or imagination They poets were more interested in humble and everyday life. They thought that poor men were a sort of wise because they were in contact with nature ,then with God. The poetry was the expression of emotions and was less intellectual but more intimate. (Seen as the expression of the soul) And nature was seen as a living creature and man lived in communion with it.

Sublime

A main theme in 18th century aesthetic was the distinction between the beautiful and sublime. For Edmund Burke whatever provoked terror and idea of pain or danger could be defined as sublime. Pain, terror, fear are the strongest emotion So the sublime is in nature in its most terrifying aspects , such as stormy seas Sublime is founded in terror and to make things even more terrible two conditions are essential: obscurity and mystery In contrast beauty according to Burke originates from everything that in the observer produces an effect of deep harmony.

Early Romantic poetry Pastoral poetry :expressed the idyllic pleasure and happiness of rural life. William Cowper celebrated and praised country life for its simplicity and domesticity so the good atmosphere. Nature was to him a source of innocence and delight. Nature poetry: James Thomson saw nature in its physical details . His observation included wild scenery and led reflection on the primitive man in contrast to the civilised man Ossianic poetry: is a cycle of poems by a legends Gaelic warrior,Ossian, who lived in Scotland. Ossianic poetry had success because the growing interest in folk tradition and the cult of of a simple and primitive life. Some of Ossian’s works are collected in fragments of ancient poetry by James McPherson the poems were successful in Europe and are characterised by melancholy and suffering produced by war , love... Graveyard poetry: it characterises by a melancholic tone and choice of cemetery ,ruins and stormy landscapes as settings. The grave became a symbol of contemplation of death and immortality. The main representative was Thomas Gray. William Blake: was regarded as a forerunner of Romantic poetry because of his interest in social problems and his use of symbols.

Romantic poetry At the end of this century and at the beginning of the 19th century, English Romanticism saw the prevalence of poetry which best appropriated the need to give expression to emotional experience and individual feelings. The imagination had an important role, because the poets used fantasy ,imagination to discover the truth , to see beyond surface reality and the poet was seen as a prophet, he gave voice to ideals of freedom, beauty and truth instead in Augustan age the poet was the spokesman of society. For the Romantic poet the child was sacred, purer he was unspoilt by civilisation. So he being the closest creature to God and so the source of creation. The adult learns about his childhood experience while in Augustan poetry the child must be disciplined and civilised to conform with the society The Romantics had seen man in a solitary state, and stressed the qualities of each individual’s mind, the Augustan had seen man as a social animal. Romantics also exalted the atypical, the outcast, the rebel. The society was considered an evil force and Jean Jacques Rousseau said that the conventions of civilisation represented a restriction on the individual personality and corrupted the natural behaviour that was in origin good, in contrast with the behaviour which was governed by reason and by the rules of society. the noble savage may appear primitive but he has a knowledge of himself and of the world superior to an civilised man. Rousseau’s theory influenced the cult of exotic so the veneration of what is far way in space and time, such as the unusual, the unfamiliar in custom and social outlook. About the new of nature the Romantic poet regarded nature as a living force and as the expression of God in the universe. Nature Became a stimulus to thought, a source of comfort , joy and inspiration. The Romantic poet searched for a new, an individual style ,they not used artificial or aulic style but more vivid and familiarity words Symbols and images lost their decorative function to assume a new function one. Became the vehicles of the inner visionary perceptions.

The Romantic poets are usually divided into two generation. In the first generation there are William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge They both agreed that Wordsworth would write about beauty of nature and ordinary things the aim was making the interesting for the reader Coleridge should have deal with visionary topics(supernatural, mystery) Into the second we have Byron,Shelley,Keats. They all die young and far from home. In this generation the alienation of the artist from society were stronger They state a political disillusioned and a tendency to escapism and individualism expressed in the rebellious-anti conformist, cynical attitude Byronic hero, the revolutionary Prometheus of Shelley and the escape in classical beauty of Keats

My heart leaps up (William Wordsworth ) Wordsworth describe the joy that he feels when he sees a rainbow and notes that he has felt this way since his childhood. And he says that he prefer die than get old and not marvel

at nature. The poet wishes to tie each of his coming days with the worship and love of nature as childhood.

The relationships between man and nature is an important characteristic of the Romantic age. Edmund Burke define the sublime as a particular way of perceiving and interpreting the nature. The German idealism influenced the literary production of romanticism in which nature can be dramatic, mysterious and reflect poet’s mood. Primitive ,wild landscape or night scenes transmit the inner feelings of the poet, connecting his soul with the supernatural and divine as in the poem of Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley.Some writers as Wordsworth developed the concept of nature from a consoling view others think that nature is an indifferent entity to man’s destiny, we have Giacomo Leopardi,Alphonse de Lamartine, Thomas hardy. In romanticism nature also meant an escape from familiar experiences and from limitations of reality. The relationship between man and nature continued to evolve in the direction of a deeper symbolism towards the end of the 19th century. France: Rousseau =the novel Juliet the most expression of the conflict between nature and society, between the pure reason of heart and social conventions. René de Chateaubriand =wrote about nature as the seats of God’s existence and the mirror of man’s passion. In Alphonse de Lamartine =nature reflects the poet’s joy and sorrows and in l’isolememt the poet is completely indifferent to nature Charles Baudelaire= interprets the correspondences between nature’s perfume, colours, sounds and human moods. Italy: Ugo foscolo’s epistolary novel Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortiz was influenced by Goethe’s the sorrows of young werther. In Ugo Foscolo epistolary nature appears as a refuge in moment of ecstatic contemplation and also makes man aware through its omnipotence between action and fate. Leopardi in his diary Zibaldone spoke of the contrast between nature which at the begging is positive and lead men to happiness, but this vision change and nature become indifferent to man suffering’s. Gabriele D’Annunzio also created a mysterious correspondence between nature and the poetic world....