英国文学The Romantic Period (浪漫主义时期)

The Romantic Period (浪漫主义时期)
本章概述:
一. 浪漫主义产生的历史文化背景:
二. 浪漫主义时期文学创作的基本特征/基本主张;
三. 对同时代与后世英国文学及文化的影响.
四. 主要作家与作品.

文学史分析
一. The time Period
English Romanticism is generally said to have begun in 1798 with the publiction of Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads and to have ended in 1832 with Sir Walter Scott's 沃尔特.斯各特death and the passage of the first Reform Bill 改革题案in the Parliament .
二. The cultural background and sources :
1.The ideas of Rousseau:. 卢梭
A.Rousseau published two books that electrified Europe -Du Contrat Social 社会契约论and Emile埃米尔, in which he explored new ideas of Rousseau's provided necessary guiding principles for the French Revolution 法国大革命.
B.The news of the Revolution aroused great sympathy and enthusiasm in English liberals and radicals . Patriotic clubs societies multiplied in England , all claiming Liberty , Equality and Fraternity .友爱 [fr?'t?:niti]
2. The literary Sources :
A. The Romantic Movement expressed a more or less negative attitude toward the existing social and political conditions that came with industrialization and the growing importance of the bourgeoisie .
B. Under the influence of the leading romantic thinkers like Kant 康德（德国哲学家and Post Kantians ,they demonstrated a strong reaction against the dominant modes of thinking of the 18th-century writers and philosophers .

3. The differences between neoclassism and Romanticism .
A. Where their predecessors saw man as a social animal , the Romantics saw him essentially as an individual in the solitary state .
B. Where the Augustans emphasized those features that men have in common the Romantics emphasized the special qualities of each individual 's mind .
三. The literary forms :
1. the poetry :
A. The poetic revolution :
a. The Romantic period is and age of poetry .
b. Blake 布莱克, Wordsworth ,Coleridge ,Byron ,Shelley and Keats are the major Romantic poets .
c. They started a rebellion against the neoclassical literature ,which was later regarded as the poetic revolution .
B. The theories of poetry :
They explored new theories and innovated new techniques in poetry writing . They saw poetry as a healing energy . they believed that poetry could purify both individual souls and the society .
a. Wordsworth's theory of poetry is calling for simple themes drawn from humble life . He defines the poet as a "man speaking to men ." and poetry as "the spontaneous自发的 overflow 溢出of powerful feelings . "
b. Imagination , defined by Coleridge , is the vial faculty that creates new wholes out of disparate elements . The Romantics not only extol 赞颂the faculty of imagination . But also elevate the concepts of spontaneity自发性 and inspiration , regarding them as something crucial for ture poetr

y .
c. The natural world comes to the forefront of the poetic imagination .Nature is not only the major source of poetic imagery , but also Provides the dominant subject matter .
d. To escape from a world . Wordsworth , Coleridge and Southey chose to live by the lakeside so as to escape from the "madding crowd ", which Byron and Shelley rejected the entire english society by their self-imposed exile .
e. Romantics also tend to be nationalistic .
C. The rules of poetry :
a. To the Romantics , poetry should be free from all rules .
b. They would turn to the humble people and the common everyday life for subjects .
c. They have also made bold-experiments in poetic language , versification and design ,and style .
d. Examples of such can be found in Blake's visionary prophetic预言 poems in Coleridge's mystic ballad , The Ancient Mariner , in Wordsworth 's spiritual autobiography , The prelude前奏, and in Shelley's symbolic drama Prometheus Unbound .
2. The prose :
The Romantic period is also a great age of Prose . Coleridge , Hazlitt,黑兹利特 Lamb , and De Quincey德昆西 were the leading figures .
A. William Hazlitt is a great critic on Shakespeare , Elizabethan drama , and English poetry .He has developed an eloquent courageous and arbitrary prose style . His last book is a four-volume life of Napoleon .
B.Charles Lamb is a lovable essayist . The essantial characteristic of this essays is a strong clear intelligence ,commanding in its centrality . its courage . and its vital irony Lamb 's Essays of Elia is a good work that leads to a delightful interpretation of the life of London .
C. De Quincey is one of the keenest intellects of the age . The great literary merit of his confessions of an English Opium Easter lies in his subtle revelation of the potentiality of human dreams .
3. The novels :
A. About Jane Austen :
Austen is of the 18th-century in her moral outlook, Her view of life is a totally realistic one . The major theme of her novels is love and marriage .
B. About waiter Scott 沃尔特.斯科特
After establishing himself as a writer of romantic historical narrative poetry , Scott Switched to novel writing . He is the first major historical novelist .
C. About Gothic novel 哥特式小说
a. Nature :
Gothic novel , a type of romantic fiction that predominated in the late eighteenth century ,was one phase of the Romantic movement .
b.Subject matters :
Its principal elements are violence , horror,and the supernatural .
c.works :
Works like the Mysteries of Vdolpho by Ann Radcliffe拉德克利夫 and Frankenstein弗兰肯斯坦by Mary Shelley 玛丽雪莱( are typical Gothic romance .
4.Poetic dramas :
A.Besides poetry and prose , there are quite a number of writers who have tried their hand at poetic dramas in this period .
B.Shelley's Prometheus Unbound 解放了的普罗米修斯and The Cenci,钦契一家 Byron's Manfred 曼弗雷德and Coleridge's Remorse are generally regarded as the

best verse plays during this period .


主要作家与作品

威廉*布莱克
一. The thoughts :
1. Black never tried to fit into the world . He was politically of the permanent left and mixed a good deal with the radicals .
2.Like Shelley , Blake strongly criticized the capitalist 's cruel exploitation .
3. Literarily Blake was the first important Romantic poet, showing contempt for the rule of reason .
二. The works :
1. The earlier period :

A. The first printed work :
Poetical sketches诗草 is his first printed work , which is a collection of youthful verse .
B.The songs of Innocence天真之歌
It is a lovely volumn of poems ,presenting a happy and innocent world .
C.The song of Experience 经验之歌
It paints a different world ,a world of misery , poverty , disease , war and repression with a melancholy tone . childhood is central to Blake's concern in the Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience ,and this concern gives the two books a strong social and historical reference .
D.Marriage of Heaven and Hell :天堂与地狱的结合
Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell marks his entry into maturity . In this poem , Blake explores the relationship of the contraries .
2. The later period :
A.In this later period ,Blake wrote quite a few prophetic books , and showed the poet himself as the spokesman of revolt .
B. The major ones are : The Books of Urizen 尤莱森之书, The Book of Los 洛斯之书, The Four Zoas and Milton 弥尔顿.
三. The Artistic features :
1. The strong visual mind :
From Childhood , Blake had a strongly visual mind ; Whatever he imagined , he also saw .
2. The language :
Blake writes his poems in plain and direct language . His poems often carry the lyric beauty with immense compression of meaning .
3. The symbolism in wide range is also a distinctive feature of his poetry .


威廉*华兹华斯

一. The works :
1. Wordsworth had a long poetic career . His first volumes are Descriptive sketches , an Evening Walk . 黄昏漫步曲
2. The Lyrical Ballads抒情歌谣集 differs in marked ways from his early poetry , notably the uncompromising simplicity of much of the language ,the lyrical Ballads are among the best of his achievement .
3. The prelude序曲 is regarded as Wordsworth's great work .
4. In 1807 Poems in Two Volumes was published . The work contains much of Wordsworth's finest.
5.I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud我如行云独自游
二. The subject :
According to the subjects , Wordsworth's short poems can be classified into two groups : poems about nature and poems about human life .
1. The worshipper of nature :
Wordsworth is regarded as a "Worshipper of nature ".大自然的崇拜者 He can penetrate to the heart of things and give the reader the very life of nature . To worthsworth , nature acts as a substitute for imaginative and intellectual engagement . It's nature that give him "strongth and knowledge full of peace ."
2. The theme of hi

s works :
Wordsworth thinks that common life is the only subject of literary interest . The joys and sorrows of the common people are his themes .
三. The Artistic features :
1. The memory of the past :
Wordsworth is a poet in memory of the past . To him , life is a cyclical journey . His philosophy of life is presented in his masterpiece The Prelude .
2. The deliberate simplicity :
Wordsworth's deliberate simplicity and refusal to decorate the truth of experience produced a kind of pure and profound poetry which no other poet has ever equaled . He maintained that the scenes and events fo everyday life and the speech of ordinary people were the raw material of which poetry could and should be made .
四.The contributions :
1. William Wordsworth is the leading figure of the English romantic poetry , Inspires his audience to see the worldfreshly , sypathetically and naturally .
2. The most important contribution he has made is that he has not only stared the modern poetry , but also changed the course of English peotry .


塞*特*科勒律治
一.The thoughts :
1. In philosophy
Coleridge opposed the limitedly rationalist 理性主义者trends of the 18th-century thought . He courageously stemmed the tide of制止 the prevailing doctrines drived from Hume and Hartley , advaocating a more spiritual and religious interpretation of life .
2. In literature :
He belived that art is the only permanent revelation of the nature of reality .
3. In politics :
Politically , coleridge was first an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution . But in his later period , he was a fiery foe敌人 of the rights of man , of Jacobinism .雅各宾主义
二.the works
Coleridge's actual achievement as poet can be divided into two remarkably diverse groups : the demonic and the coversational .
1. The demonic group :
The demonic group includes his three masterpieces :"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ,"古舟之咏
"Christable "and "Kubla Khan忽必烈汗 ." Mysticism and demonism with strong imagination are the distinctive features of this group .
A. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner "told an adventurous story of a sailor .
B. "Christable "use a freer version of the ballad form to create an atmosphere of the Gothic horror at once delicate and sinister .
C. "Kubla Kham "was composed in adream after coleridge took the opium .
2. The conversational group :
A.Among the Coversational group , "Frost at Midnight " 夜莺is the most important .
B."Dejection : An Ode "沮丧，一段颂歌is also an intimate personal piece in which Coleridge utters his innermost thoughts and sentiments .
三. The Artistic feature :
1. Coleridge is one of the first critics to give close critical attention to language , maintaining that true end of poetry is to give pleasure "through the medium of beauty ."
2. Coleridge was esteemed by some of his contemporaries and is generally recognized today as a lyrical poet and literary critic of the first

rank .
3. He was of the most influential English literary critics and philosophers of the 19th century .


乔治*戈登*拜伦

一. The works :
1. The first two cantos of Childe Harold 's Pilgrimage 恰尔德哈罗尔德游记brought Byron fame .
2. Don Juan 唐璜is Byron's masterpiece , a great comic epic of the early 19th century . The unifying principle in Don Juan is the basic ironic theme of appearance and reality .
3. The narrative poem The Prisoner of Chillon 乔仑的囚犯, the verse drama Manfred 曼弗雷德, the verse dramas cain 该隐and the narrative poem The Island in the greatest political satires , The vision of Judgement .审判的幻境
二. The Byronic hero :
1. Byron's chief contribution is his creation of the "Byronic hero ," a pround , mysterious rebel figure of noble origin .
2. The Byronic hero would carry on his shoulders the burden of righting all the wrongs in a corrupt society , and would rise single-handedly against and kind of tyrannical rules either in government , in religion , or in moral principles .
3. Such a hero appears first in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage .
4. The figure is , to some extent , modeled on the life and personality of Byron himself , and makes Byron famous both at home and abroad .
三. The Artistic features :
1. Byron's poetry was immensely popular at home , and also abroad , where it exerted great influence on the Romantic Movement .
2. Byron's diction has on the whole a freedom , copiousness and vigor . His description are simple and fresh , and often bring vivid objects before the reader .
3. Byron's poetry is like the oratory . The glowing imagination rises and sinks with tones of his enthusiasm .


珀*比*雪莱
一. the works :
1. The first long serious work :
In 1813 he published his first long serious work , Queen Mab 麦布女王: A philosophical Poem .

2. The lyrics :
In " The cloud ."云之歌 Shelley created a platonic symbol of the spirit of man . In "To a skylark "致云雀 the bird , suspended between reality and poetic image . Adonais is an elegy for John Keats .Best of all the well-known lyric pieces is Shelley 's "Ode to the West wind ".西风颂
3. The poetic drama :
Shelley 's greatest achievement is his four-act poetic drama , Prometheus Unbound .解放了的普罗米修斯 The play is an exultant work in praise of humankind's potential , and Shelley himself recognized it as "the most perfect of my products . "
二. The thoughts and literary creation :
1. The thoughts :
A.He held a lifelong aversion to cruelty , injustice , authority , institutional religion .
B. He believed that his age was one of the wars of the oppressed against the oppressors . He felt that the existing despotic government could be overthrown by revolution .
C. He realized that the evil was also in man's mind .
D. He predicated that only through gradual and suitable reforms of the existing institutions could benevolence 仁慈be universally establis

hed and none of the evils would survive in this "genuine society ".
2. The creations :
A. Shelley expressed his love for freedom and his hatred toward tyranny .
B. One of Shelley 's greatest political lyrics is "Men of England .致英格兰人民 " It is not only a war cry calling upon all working people to rise up against their political oppressors , but an address to them pointing out the intolerable injustice of economic expoitation .


约翰*济慈
一. The works :
1. The first important poem :
"on First looking into chapman's Homer "读恰普曼译荷马
2. The first volume :
One of the good poems in this volume was "Sleep and Poetry ".睡与诗
3. The poem based on the Greek :
Endymion 安狄弥翁
4. The best of his volumes of poetry :
Lamia 拉米亚, Isabella 伊丽莎白, The Eve of st. Agnes 圣阿格尼斯节前夕, and Other Poems其他诗歌 .
5. The most mature works :
His four great odes :"Ode on Melancholy忧郁颂 ." "Ode on a Crecian Urn ," 希腊古瓮颂"Ode to a Nightingale ,夜莺颂" "Ode to psyche"普赛克颂
二.The literary views :
1. The issues concerned :
At the heart of these poems lies keats's concern with how the ideal can be joined with the real , the imagined with actual , and man with woman .
2. The subject matter :
Their subject matter is the poet's abiding preoccupation with the imagination as it reaches out to union with the beautiful .
3. The theme :
A. "Ode to a Nightingale " expresses the Contrast between the happy world of natural loveliness and human world of agony .
B. "Ode on an Grecian Um " shows the contrast between the permanence of art and the transience of human passion .
三. The Artistic features :
1. Keats' poetry is always sensuous , colorful and rich in imagery .
2. Keats delights to dwell on beautiful words and phrases . He draws diction , style and imagery from works of shakespeare , Milton and Dante .
3. Keats produced a variety of kinds of work , including epic , lyric and narrative poems .
4. Keats' poetry , characterized by exact and closely knit construction , sensual descriptions , and by force of imagination , gives transcendental values to the physical beauty of the world .


简*奥斯汀
一. The literary creations :
In her lifelong career , Jane Austen wrote altogether six complete novels , which can be divided into two distinct periods .
1.The first three novels:
A.Her first novel , sense and sensibility , tells a story about two sisters and their love affairs .
B.Pride and Prejudice傲慢与偏见 , the most popular of her novels , deals with the five Bennet sisters and their search for suitable husbands .
C.Northganger Abbey satirizes those popular Gothic romances .
2.The last three novels :
All her last three vovels deal with the romantic entanglements of their strongly characterized heroines .Mansfield Park 曼斯菲尔德花园, Emma 爱玛, Persuasion 劝告.
3. The incomplete works :
Several incomplete works were

published long after Austen's death . These include The watsons , fragment of a Novel ,and plan of Novel .
二. The Artistic features :
1. the style :
In style , she is a neoclassicism advocator , upholding those traditional ideas of order,reason , proportion and gracefulness in novel writing .

2. The subject matter :
A. Austen's main literary concern is about human beings in their personal relationships .
B. Austen shows a human being not at moment of crisis , but in the most trivial incidents of everyday life .
C. As a novelist Jane Austen writes within a very narrow sphere . The subject matter and plots are all trestricted to the provincial life of the late 18th-century England .
3. The theme :
Jane Austen is particularly preoccupied with the relationship between men and women in love .