英国文学18-19世纪浪漫主义

Part Five: Romanticism in England

the Age of Poetry

Teaching Arrangement:

I. Historical Background

II. Romanticism

III. A. poets

1. Escapist romanticists / Lake Poets(湖畔派诗人) (William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey)

2. active romanticists /demonic group/Satanic school (撒旦派) (George Gordon Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats)

B. essayists (Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, Thomas De Quincey)

C. novelist (Walter Scott)

I. Historical Background

(1) Industrial Revolution —transformed Britain from agricultural to industrial country, responsible for the change in the pattern of social life and the worsening of social contradictions;?

(2) American revolution in 1775— the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776, with its emphasis on individual rights;

(3) The French revolution in 1789 —introduced the democratic ideals: liberty, equality and fraternity for everybody;

(4)the abolition of slavery in the British colonies;

(5) the introduction of system of national education;

(6)the Factory Acts《工厂法案》by which the employment of children under nine was forbidden by the law.

(7) Lyrical Ballads, 《抒情歌谣集》a collection of poem by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, published in 1798, which marked the start of Romanticism as a literary trend. II. English Romanticism

1. definition—English Romanticism is generally said to have began in 1798 with the publication of Wordsworth & Coleridge‘s Lyrical Ballads and to have ended in 1832 with Sir Walter Scott’s death and the passage of the first Reform Bill《改革法案》in the Parliament.

English Romanticism is a revolt of the English imagination against the neoclassical reason. The French Revolution of 1789-1794 and the English Industrial Revolution exert great influence on English Romanticism.

Romanticists show in their works their profound dissatisfaction with the social reality and their deep hatred for any political tyranny, economic exploitation and any form of oppression, feudal or bourgeois. In the realm of literature, they revolt against reason, rules, regulation, objectivity, common senses, etc. and emphasize the value of feelings, intuition, freedom, nature, subjectivism, individuality, originality, imagination, etc.

2. The features of the Romantic writings:

1)? Dissatisfaction with the bourgeois society.

2) Their writings filled with strong-willed heroes or even titanic images, formidable events and tragic situations, powerful conflicting passions and exotic pictures.

3) pay attention to spiritual and emotional life of man. Most works are supernatural and full of