La poesia romantica inglese del XVIII secolo, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica La poesia romantica inglese del XVIII secolo e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! The gothic novel: New trends in poetry Key points - Augustan vs. Early Romantic Age - Early Romantic Poetry: main characteristics - Early Romantic Poetry: the Elegy - Early Romantic Poetry - Pastoral Poetry - Nature Poetry - Ossianic Poetry - Graveyard Poetry - The Sublime Augustan vs. Early Romantic Age Let's take a look at this table showing the main differences between Augustan age and Early Romantic Age. The AGE OF REASON Realism and rationalism Reason Satire Common sense Imitation Interest in the known Interest in Ancient Rome and Greece Interest in towns Nature no more as something functioning according to set principles and ordered by man's intellect (remember the geometrical symmetry of the garderns) The AGE OF SENSIBILITY Imagination and symbolism Feelings Sentimentalism Pathos Creativity and originality Interest in the unknown Interest in the Middle Age and folk traditions Interest in the countryside Nature as something with its own soul, something to live in harmony with, a source of inspiration to be described as it was Relationship between man and nature Main characteristics Poetry was essentially reflective. New feelings, more intimate as Melancholy, coming from the disproportion between dream and reality, pervaded poetry. Early Romantic poets reacted to the social changes taking place in the country with a re-evaluation of rural origins and poor, humble people Meditation on death (favoured by Methodism, that although based on hard work, also preached an awareness of the vanity of life) Early Romantic Poetry: the Elegy The poets were characterized by a reflective mood, a melancholy that favoured long solitary walks in the woods or on the hills. Elegy is a kind of poem lamenting someone's death or meditating on death in general In contrast to most of the neo-classical writers only interested in Man as a social being rather than an individual with his own soul, they escaped in nature or in the humble life of the country people, rediscovering the pleasure of meditation. Early Romantic Poetry Now let's look at Early Romantic Poetry in more detail. The new sensibility had its roots in different poetic trends. The new generation of poets did not lay down a precise programme of rules, they established new trends which, though failing to break completely with the Augustan tradition, managed to prepare the way for the Romantic poets. While the early 18th-century poets had dealt with impersonal material with a loud and noble eloquence, the later poets tended to use subjective, autobiographical material, thus marking a new trend towards the expression of a lyrical and personal experience of life. The poetry at this time was essentially reflective. Many factors produced this change. The noisy activity of the industrial town was compared negatively with the simple serenity of the countryside. There was a growing interest in humble and everyday life in opposition to the elevated subjects of Augustan poetry. Related to this was an interest in melancholy, often associated with meditation on the suffering of the poor and on death. A new taste for the desolate, the love of ruins, graveyards, ancient castles and abbeys were part of a revival of interest in the past felt as a contrasting period to the present reality. - Pastoral poetry Pastoral poetry expressed the idyllic pleasure and happiness of rural life in the works of William Cowper (1731-1800), who, in his main work The Task (1785), celebrated and praised country life for its simplicity and domesticity. He also described landscape details and reflected upon them; nature was to him a source of innocence and delight. Early Romantic poets reacted to the social changes taking place in the country with a re-evaluation of rural origins and a sense of melancholy and sadness. Pastoral poetry 2 Roman Emperor; Macpherson and his supporters detected references to and Carausius. The cult of a simple and primitive life and a growing interest in folk traditions were responsible for the success of Ossianic poetry, a cycle of poems by a legendary Gaelic warrior, called Ossian, who lived in the 3rd century in Scotland. James Macpherson (1736-96) collected and published some of Ossian's works in Fragments of Ancient Poetry (1760). The authenticity of the work was controversial; however, the poems were very successful not only in England but also all over Europe. Their appeal lay in the melancholy and suffering produced by war or by contrasted love, and especially in the description of a wild, gloomy nature. - Graveyard poetry Thomas Percy (1729-1811) found an important source of inspiration in 'national folk poetry' and published Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765), a collection of ballads, songs, sonnets and metrical romances dating back to the Middle Ages. Another influential group of poets is known as the 'Graveyard School' because of their melancholy tone and the choice of cemeteries, ruins and stormy landscapes as the setting of their poems. Though the most important work of this school was Thomas Gray's (1716-71) Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751), the vogue began with Edward Young (1683. 1765) and his Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality (1742-45), where the tomb became a symbol eliciting contemplation of death and immortality. The works of the Graveyard School continued to be popular into the early 19th century and were instrumental in the development of the Gothic novel, contributing to the dark, mysterious mood and story lines that characterize the genre — Graveyard School writers focused their writings on the lives of ordinary and unidentified characters. They are also considered pre-Romanticists, ushering in the Romantic literary movement[5] by their reflection on emotional states. This emotional reflection is seen in Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode" and Keats' "Ode on Melancholy". The early works of Southey, Byron and Shelley also show the influence of the Graveyard School. - Other poets - William Blake The poet William Blake can be regarded as a forerunner of Romantic poetry because of his interest in social problems and his unique use of symbols. Robert Burns (1759-1796) exemplified the myth of the natural genius, able to create poetry from everyday experience. His best work was written in Scots, a northern dialect of English spoken by Scottish peasants. His poetry revived the English lyric, explored the literary forms and legends of folk culture, and used the language really spoken by the common folk. Sublime 5 Sublime refers to a linguistic, literary or artistic form which express noble or elevate feelings and behaviour. The Sublime doesn't arise from the pleasure produced by beautiful forms and also not from the detached contemplation of the object, but it has its roots in the feelings of fear and horror created by what is infinite and terrible. Void, obscurity, loneliness and silence are sublime. This 'horrible' beauty gave aesthetic dignity to anything ugly existing in nature, and affected the literature of the end of the 18th century. 6