Romanticism- Keywords PDF

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ROMANTICISM: KEYWORDS-FREDERIK BURNIK 1.GOTHIC -Originally referring to the Germanic tribe of Goths acquired additional meanings: (1) the pointed arch style of architecture introduced in the twelfth century; (2) the black letter font in printing; (3) writings belonging to, or imitating the style of, the medieval period.

-As a literary style it was broadly scorned as semi-literate, monkish, or barbarous -The first to advance the Gothic as a literary mode Horace Walpole  1764 The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story.  the term Gothic implicated a generic imitation of medieval romance and the superstitions of a bygone era. -the Gothic portrayed an older world, once rich and thriving, now corrupted, decadent, falling into ruin. - the Gothic necessary fictional distance  to expose the unspeakable crimes - For many women writers of the Romantic era the Gothic settings were transparentThe depiction of degenerate male villains, guilty of greed, lust, and cruelty, coincided with recurrent domestic conditions readily recognized by the female readers the fantasy of haunted castles masked but did not impede the realistic description of the cruelty suffered by many women in their own homes. Xes. Mary Wollstonecraft in Mary: A Fiction (1788) -The settingtypically in a dark forest, a castle or the Gothic ruins of an abandoned abbey. - The plot, not rigidly formulaic, often concerned the fate of a virtuous young maiden under assault by a lecherous guardian or corrupt monk. -Motives for the assault  financial as well as sexual, involving a secret dowry or inheritance. -The villain has the assistance of an older woman who resents the heroine’s youthful beauty and thinks to gain favor as loyal accomplice. -The hero is both courageous and virtuous, willing to brave dangers in order to rescue the young maiden. - the supernatural element,arising from hell, from the tomb, or from the mind of one of the charactersEven if the ghost or demon is only imagined, the supernatural infuses its psychological charge of horror and dread into the shadows and dark corners of the Gothic setting. -Gothic melodrama gained considerable success on the stage  music, mime, and spectacular stage effects for the super natural apparitions. - contemporary lifethe melodrama o found a suitable site for horror in the country inn, where a villainous or insane landlord could drug his guests, slit their throats, or abduct helpless maidens.

2. MONSTERS -The monsters created by the Romantic imagination  were modeled after the creatures of age-old superstition and folklore the ghost, the vampire, the werewolf, the witch, the revenant, and creatures conjured or humans transformed by occult powers. - Monsters proliferated in response to the increase in foreign immigration, urban crime, and the fear of “unholy” scientific research. -new monsters the mummy, the alien, the zombie -The ghosts  heritage from the Shakespearean ghosts of Hamlet, Macbeth, and Richard III metaphorical resilience as tokens for the fear of death or divine retribution. -the vampire of the Romantic era is distinguished primarily by his aristocratic status (blood-

suckers of the aristocracy) - the werewolf  were more prevalent in regions where wolves roamed in marauding packs (Eastern Europe lycanthropy was more fanatically persecuted than witchcraft.) The most popular werewolf of the stage was an adaptation of “Little Red Riding Hood” - the zombies  the monsters generated by the circumstances of the time  intensified guilt, grief, and fear of death and were most often directed against cruel plantation owners. - the resurrected mummy did not assume its role as monster until later in the period 1. the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt (1798– 1801) and the ransacking of Egyptian artifacts/ 2. discovery in 1799 of the Rosetta StoneThe great fascination in England was the Egyptian cult of the dead and the remarkable preservation of the mummiesThe fantasy of the mummy reanimated was promptly absorbed into the literature. bringing the dead back to life with the ancient past - Extraterrestrial aliens  A rare instance of in the literature of the period - mere mortals perverted by demonic agency more frequent among the monsters of Gothic fiction

3. PICTURESQUE - meaning “like a painting” or “suitable for painting,”the term gained currency in the eighteenth century  travelers on the Grand Tour acquired more resonance in aesthetic discourse to standards and rules of art. - An ekphrastic mode of nature description  prominent among Romantic-era authors Ann Radcliff The Mysteries of Udolpho describes landscapes

-The picturesque involved not only art imitating nature, but also nature imitating art. - the picturesque  between the ideals of beauty and sublimity -Coleridge’s interest in the picturesque  Beautiful =“When this perfection of form is combined with pleasurableness in the sensations excited by the matter or substance so formed.”/ Picturesque = “When the Parts by their harmony produce an effect of a Whole, but there is no seen form of an Whole producing or explaining the Parts / Sublime = is the experience of “Unity as boundless or endless”  the objects serve only to mediate the sublime -The landscape induces a varying psychological response with smooth scenes of calm juxtaposed to rough scenes of tempest - the meaning of the picturesque shifted applied in varying contexts and changed with the tastes of the times. - For many readersinitiation into the picturesque and the aesthetics of landscape will come through the novels of Jane Austen xes. the discussion between Marianne and Edward about the picturesque in Sense and Sensibility xes. her discrimination of consciously beholding in Mansfield Park

4. PROMETHEUS -Prometheus, one of the Titans of Greek mythology, created man from clay and gave fire to mankind defies Zeus who sentenced the Titan to be bound forever to a rock, where each day an eagle would devour his liver, which regenerated only to be eaten again. - Prometheuschampion of mankind, agent of human progress, and defiant rebel against the gods  suited the concerns of revolution and Romanticism. - Tale was adapted by Goethe, by Blake, Byron and Mary Shelley In Shelley’s version he gave mankind language -Mary Shelley radically alters the myth in her short novel, Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus (1818) She develops the role of Prometheus as the creator of man and as the firegiver. -The subject of the creation of life by a scientist Victor Frankenstein’s exclusively male usurpation

of the procreative act is only the point of departure. -The major focus is on Victor’s abrogation of all responsibility for nurturing and educating the creature that he has brought to lifeHe is a father figure much like Jupiter in Goethe’s poem. -Mary Shelley has disassembled and distributed the consequences result  paradoxical disassociation and shifting of sympathies in which the monster is more human than his creator more lovable than his creator and more hateful, more to be pitied and more...