Who was Jean-Jacques Rousseau?
- first Romantic philosopher
- 1762, published ‘The Social Contract’ on society and human rights
o centred on idea of freedom as active participation in political life
State Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s quote abt the freedom of man
“Man is born free but everywhere is found in chains.”
Describe Rousseau’s key beliefs
o downplayed role of intellect and instead pushed for feeling + innocence
o ‘man was born free but everywhere is found in chains’
o children born good + have in-built capacity to learn through exp
o formal education and society distort child’s natural creativity, imagination and freedom to develop naturally
When was the American Independence War?
1775-1783
When was the French Revolution?
1789 - 1799
What was the significance of the American Revolution?
- colonists’ demands drew attention to the failures in the English governmental system
- represented the promise of change in home country (England)
- seen as a blow to monarchy and a victory for Republicanism
What was the significance of the 1794 executions of previous leaders of the French Revolution (Danton, Robespierre etc.) and Napoleon’s rise to power the following year (1795)?
- alienated many previous supporters of the French Revolution and what it stood for
- gave way to a new tyrannical power and destroyed the point of the rev. in the first place kind of
o Browning + challenging uneven distribution of power
What was said in Thomas Paine’s ‘The Rights of Man’ (1791-2)?
- attack on hereditary gov. and the monarchy
o called abolition of monarchy + the House of Lords - advocated equal political rights for all men over 21 in Britain
o would create Commons willing to pass laws in favour of the working class
What was the impact of Paine’s decision to give free reprinting rights to his ‘The Rights of Man’?
- cheap editions produced so could reach a wider, working class readership
o 200000 Brits bought in ~2 years - 1792, led to London Corresponding Society set up
o aim = enfranchisement for all adult males
What was said in Thomas Paine’s ‘The Age of Reason’ (1794) and what was the impact?
- attacked Christianity
o OT untrue + immoral
o Gospels contradictory - these beliefs aligned w/many Christian sects
o called Dissenters due to dissent against the English state Church system w/monarch as head - caused outrage and lost support from some of previous supporters, like Blake
Who were the Dissenters?
- Christian sects disagreeing w/state Church with monarch as head
- often seen as political revolutionaries due to their rejection of monarchy, hierarchy in state and church, as well as their espousal of equal rights
o these divided people into classes and justified the grant of civil rights to only a select few, keeping the majority unnaturally poor
o core belief = God didn’t make/society didn’t exist to enslave certain ranks of people, so should not be so now
Describe the social change in the latter half of the 18th century in Britain
- first phase Industrial Rev.
o mills + foundries thus established, as well as use of agricultural machinery - changed patterns of work and residence - cities like Manchester began to grow as industrial hubs
- weavers working from home hit by machinisation
o 1811 -18, machine-wrecking riots in Midlands and Northern England
o Luddites - rural poverty extreme and widespread
o machinisation of agricultural work
o landlords changing enclosure system in countryside, thus leaving many peasant farmers w/o food or work - move to abolish slavery
- 1819, Poor Relief Act
Describe child labour in 18th cent. Britain
- chimney sweeps
o orphans in workhouses or children from poor families often sold from age 4 as apprentice chimney sweeps
o often spurred on during the job by prods, fires lit beneath them
o worked mornings before being abandoned on the streets
o no education, often deformed and sick due to the work they did - apprentices
o many equally poorly treated, as apprentices = form of cheap labour
o no welfare regulations, so many died in childhood due to neglect or cruelty - prostitutes/harlots
o prostitution rampant in late 18th cent. -> wider spread of venereal diseases
o many = young, poor girls forced into the work by circumstance; regardless, many prostitutes jailed
o reformers like Elizabeth Fry (Quaker) advocated for these young women and female prisoners in general
Describe the abolitionist movement in 18th cent. England
- main issue uniting political and religious opinion
o abolitionists and supporters from wide range political groupings and religious allegiances - drew strength from
o Evangelical movement in CofE
o influential dissenting sects
o freedom emerging in political opinion as an inalienable human right
o emergence of humanitarian social policies - unrest from people against nation + gov. (from econ. + power perspective, slavery and colonialism was very much in Britain’s favour as had large investments in Caribbean and American plantations (depended on slave labour))
How did the government respond to the Luddite weaving machine wrecking riots in 1811 - 1818?
severe penalties on those convicted
- had support of many notable English Romantics, like Keats and Shelley, as well as Byron (made a speech to the House of Lords in 1812 on behalf of the weavers)
Describe what happened at Peterloo (1819) and its impact
- peaceful crowd gathered in St. Peter’s Field, Manchester
o to hear Henry Hunt on political reform - peaceful gathering attacked by the authorities
o local militia tried to seize some of the crowd’s banners
o cavalry ordered to charge
o 11 killed
o 400 injured
o excessive reaction = fear of evens like in France ?? - led to 1819 ‘Six Acts’ -> restrictions on press and the right to public assembly
Describe the development of Romanticism in literature
- reaction to the Enlightenment movement/Age of Reason which preceded it
o thus, emphasis shifted from focus on form and logic/intellectualised satire, to focus on emotion, the soul and imagination - standard form of the Age of Reason was the heroic couplet
o rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter
o masculine rhymes
o tends to give effect of neatness and finality
o can be a mechanical form if used by less gifted poets - in the Romantic period, tended towards freer or more interesting forms such as odes (no set form), ballads (no set metre, though iambs are typical, and with ABCB rhyme scheme) or sonnets
- in the Age of Reason, also a fashion for ‘improving’ children’s moralistic verse -> simple, closed form, usually with an iambic meter, simplistic rhyme scheme like ABAB -> reinforced simple, controlling message of the verse (eg. Isaac Watts ‘SONG 24: The Child’s Complaint’)
o Blake used the style ironically to parody the typical content of the verse and the beliefs expressed in them
What did David Wright (intro to the penguin classics ‘English Romantic Verse’) say about the nature of the birth of the Romantic movement?
“it was the spiritual and metaphysical implications of the scientific and technological revolution… together with the changed and changing view of man’s place in the universe, that sparked off the Romantic Movement.”
OR
“the birth of a new kind of sensibility which had to do with the new kind of environment that man was in the process of creating for himself.”
What does David Wright say about the importance of the French Revolution to Romantic poets?
“they saw [the French Revolution] as essentially a revolution to emancipate the individual.”
What does David Wright say about the Romantic treatment of the human imagination?
“If the individual was on the way to being regimented, then poets and artists… balance the scale by giving the greatest value to individual consciousness. In doing so they exalted Imagination as the noblest of human faculties.”
What was one of the original titles for Wordsworth’s ‘Prelude’?
‘A Poem on the Growth of an Individual Mind’
What does David Wright say about the Romantic treatment of nature?
“where earlier poets - like Shakespeare or, say, Chaucer - accept and enjoy [nature], Romantics elegise and idealise.”
OR
“with the Romantics nature is for the first time no longer taken for granted: it is valued, as we always value something we realise we might lose.”
What was Wordsworth’s unexecuted biggest work called?
‘The Recluse’
Who was Edmund Burke?
philosopher who first concretely defined the sublime
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A Streetcar Named Desire - context69
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A Streetcar Named Desire - quotes113
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A Streetcar Named Desire - essay plans by theme/q2
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Material - Ros Barber31
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An Easy Passage - Julia Copus35
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Genetics - Sinead Morrissey21
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To My Nine-Year-Old Self - Helen Dunmore24
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Effects - Alan Jenkins0
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The Gun - Vicki Feaver21
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A Minor Role - U.A Fanthorpe14
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The Furthest Distances I've Travelled - Leontia Flynn19
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Please Hold - Ciaran O'Driscoll15
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Blake88
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Wordsworth93
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Byron0
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Shelley0
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Keats0
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Romantics: context36
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Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Context1
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Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Quotes0
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Wuthering Heights - context27
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Wuthering Heights - quotes23
