Контрольная работа: The Romantic Era

The continuous presence of opposites, of apparent opposites, is very significant of this period.

A new concept of the writer: the artist was an individual creator. His creative potential was more important than abiding the rules. Being original matters for the first time in history. Originality is the most important thing. This brings with it a new idea of the work of art as well. Poetry or literature in general was no longer a mere reproduction of reality (Neo-classical literature was a mirror over nature). External reality does matter, but it is the way it is reproduced, the author's personal interpretation, not the content, what is important.

Imagination is the gateway to reach the spiritual sphere. Experience is important too, but imagination is superior. It is the supreme mental faculty par excellence. It allows the individual to go beyond the world of experience in order to catch a glimpse of the divine.

There is also an obsessive interest in folk culture: something picturesque is something attractive because it is old and unspoiled. The past was something idealized because it would never come back. They found tight connections between their thinking and the 'agricultural past'. They were also very much interested in previous periods such as the Renaissance or the Middle Ages, which for them were not so dark.

We can also find a predilection for the mysterious: the awkward, the occult, all in all, a predilection for the sublime. The sublime is something very close to beauty, but they make you feel differently. Beauty infers peace, attraction… and the sublime, like a storm for example, makes you feel fear, which can also be very attractive. The sublime is the juxtaposition of both things: attraction and fear. According to the Romantics, the sublime allows you to reach a vertical axis, to realize that we cannot control the Universe. Another fantastic source for metaphor, for figurative language, for excessive feelings, etc.

Romanticism can be divided into two different faces:

The first face corresponds to the early Romantic period which was mainly concerned with establishing the theoretical foundations of the movement. Poetry and Philosophical treatises are the main literary forms used for defining Romanticism and its concepts.

The second face develops from the 1830' s onwards and is concerned with the spread of cultural nationalisms. As a consequence of this a renewed interest in the past, in origins sees the light. The past is idealized and recreated. A new genre emerged: the historical Romance which makes an emphasis on the imaginative component. The past is recreated with a touch of imagination, a good example of this kind of literature is Sir Walter Scott's Waverly Novels ('Ivanhoe').

The Romantic Movement had its own peculiarities in each country but we can distinguish two main branches: the German Romanticism which influences the whole of Europe except England, and the English Romanticism.

A third main influence upon Kant was exerted by Rousseau. He was a very different kind of thinker, a counter influence to the Rationalists, to the empiricists, to Hume. He rejected the predominance of reason over emotions (Emile). 'Man is good by nature, consequently, children should be brought up in the country, surrounded by nature and learn from experience. Nature purifies and civilization corrupts. Nature is a model to imitate'.

These three philosophical trends are completely opposite to each other but Kant uses the main ideas of each and innovates philosophical thinking. Like Rousseau Kant believed that, although human reason cannot justify the existence of a spiritual world, the spiritual world existed because we feel that God exists. Consequently Kant distinguishes two kinds of reason: theoretical or pure reason and practical reason.

4. The difference between “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience”

William Blake was the son of a London hosier. He was born in 1757 in London. When he was fourteen, he apprenticed to the engraver James Basire. This is where he developed his skills. He worked as an engraver, illustrator, and drawing teacher. During this time, he also wrote poems. His Songs of Innocence was published in 1789 and Songs of Experience was published in 1793. In 1794 an edition that combined both of the two, Songs of Innocence and Experience, was published. In 1809, Blake had financial problems and became depressed, he shut himself out from the rest of the world for the remainder of his live (Sparknotes).

The Lamb is one of the first of the poems in Blake’s Songs of Innocence. In this poem, I take it as the Lamb symbolizing Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Lamb of God. The Lamb seems to be from a child’s perspective also. When I picture Jesus, I see him as interacting with children and having a special fondness for them. There are many stories in the Bible about Jesus and children. A child in the poem is asking a question. He is asking who made him. In the second stanza, he attempts to answer the question. He says that he who made him also calls himself a Lamb and we are called by his name.

The Songs from Experience starts out with Earth’s Answer. This is a sorrowful poem, full of dread. It can see no joy in the world. Even through the most light-filled times here on earth, he seems to find something dark and dreary with it. He seems to think that the father of men is selfish and vain. Why would He create sorrow and sadness, when it would be much easier for everyone to be happy?

Little Black Boy is the next poem. This poem is about a little black child and his mother. The mother teaches her child about God and how he loves everyone. He created everyone the way they are and loves them the way he made them. He doesn’t care if you are black or white, when he comes to take you up to heaven with him it makes no difference. As long as you live according to his ways, he pays no attention to something such as skin color.

Holy Thursday is about many young orphans that are marching through the town to the church. They are going to church to pay respects and acknowledge the holiday of Holy Thursday. Holy Thursday is the day that Jesus Christ died for all of our sins. It is the day that we were forgiven and given the chance to have eternal life. They sang with great energy and loudness. This was a day that they got all of their troubles and hardships and put that energy into their praising God.

Many of these poems are hard to read because they are sad and not many are uplifting at all.

5. The thing unites authors in Lake School

The group of poets who gathered first in Bristol in 1795 and later in the Lake District introduced new accounts of the relationship of the mind to nature, new definitions of imagination, and new lyric and narrative forms. Their theories of creativity emphasized the individual imagination, but their practice of writing tells another story, one of collaborative writing. This practice originated in imagining a social community that Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey called pant isocracy, or government by all. Coleridge and Southey met in June 1794, planned to emigrate to Pennsylvania with a few friends to set up an ideal community based on abandoning private property, and together composed poetry and delivered public lectures to raise money for their emigration. Pant isocracy proved utterly impractical, and Southey withdrew from the plan in the summer of 1795. Their plans for a community of writers with shared property changed to a practice of collaborative writing, dialogic creativity, and joint publication.

6. The authors belonged to London Romanticism

1. Edmund Burke(1729-1797);

2. William Godwin(1756-1836);

3. John Thelwell (1764-1834);

4. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834);

5. Lord Byron (1788-1824);

6. William Cowper (17931-1800);

7. William Blake (1757-1827);

8. Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823);