Ⅴ、浪漫主义时期
1.时间界定
English Romanticism is generally said to have begun in 1798 with the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads and to have ended in 1832 with Sir Walter Scott's death and the passage of the first Reform Bill in the Parliament.
2.文化思想背景
A. The ideas of Rousseau: Rousseau（卢梭） published two books that electrified Europe - Du Contrat Social and Emile, in which he explored new ideas about Nature, Society and Education. After that, Patriotic clubs societies multiplied in England, all claiming Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
B. The literary sources: 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.
C. The differences between neoclassicism and Romanticism:
a. Where their predecessors saw man as a social animal（社会性的动物）, the Romantics saw him essentially as an individual in the solitary state(独立的个体).
b. Where the Augustans emphasized those features that men(人的共性) have in common the Romantics emphasized the special qualities of each individual's mind（人的个性）.
D. The literary views:
a. Romanticism constitutes a change of direction from attention to the outer world of social civilization to the inner world of the human spirit.
b. In the theory.It tends to see the individual as the very center of all life and all experience. It also places the individual at the center of art .
3.文学形式
A. 诗歌
A). 诗人运动
The Romantic period is an age of poetry. Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats are the major Romantic poets. They started a rebellion against the neoclassical literature, which was later regarded as the poetic revolution.
B). 诗歌理论
They explored new theories and innovated new techniques in poetry writing. They saw poetry as a healing energy(治疗的良方), the believed that poetry could purify both individual souls and the society(净化个人的灵魂和社会).
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 overflow 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 the faculty of imagination, but also elevate the concepts of spontaneity and inspiration, regarding them as something crucial for true poetry.
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," while Byron and Shelley rejected the entire English society by t
heir self-imposed exile.
e. Romantics also tend to be nationalistic(民族主义).
B. 散文
The Romantic period is also a great age of prose. Coleridge, Hazlitt, Lamb, and De Quincey were the leading figures.
A). William Hazlitt is a great critic on Shakespeare, Elizabethan drama, and English poetry. His last book is a four-volume Life of Napoleon.
B). Charles Lamb is a lovable essayist. 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 Eater lies in his subtle revelation of the potentiality of human dreams.
C. 小说
A). 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). After establishing himself as a writer of romantic historical narrative poetry, Scott switched to novel writing. Waverley, Old Martality, The Heart of Midlothian, Rob Roy, and Ivanhoe are among the most popular ones of his novels. He is the first major historical novelist.
C). 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 Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley are typical Gothic romance.
D. 戏剧
Shelley's Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci, Byron's Manfred and Coleridge's Remorse are generally regarded as the best verse plays during this period.
本章主要作家及作品
布莱克
William Blake
A. 创作
A). The earlier period:
a. The first printed work:
Poetical Sketches is his first printed work, which is a collection of youthful verse.
b. The songs of Innocence:
It is a lovely volume of poems, presenting a happy and innocent world.
c. The songs of Experience:
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:
Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell marks his entry into maturity. In this poem, Blake explores the relationship of the contraries.
B). The later Period:
a. In his 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 Book of Urizen, The Book of Los, The Four Zoas and Milton.
B. 艺术成就
A). The strong visual mind:
From childhood, Blake had a strongly visual mind; whatever he imagined, he also saw.
B). The language:
Blake writes his poems in plain and direct language. His po
ems often carry the lyric beauty with immense compression of meaning.
C).The Symbolism in wide range is also a distinctive feature of his poetry.
华兹·华斯
William Wordsworth
A. 创作
A). Wordsworth had a long poetic career. His first volumes are Descriptive Sketches, an Evening Walk.
B). The Lyrical Ballads 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 achievements.
C). The Prelude is regarded as Wordsworth's greatest work.
D). In 1807 Poems in Two Volumes was published. The work contains much of Wordsworth's finest.
B.作品主题
According to the subjects, Wordsworth's short poems can be classified into two groups: poems about nature and poems about human life.
A). The worshipper of nature:
Wordsworth is regarded as a "worshipper of nature." He can penetrate to the heart of things and give the reader the very life of nature. To Wordsworth, nature acts as a substitute for imaginative and intellectual engagement. It's nature that gives him "strength and knowledge full of peace."
B). The theme of his works:
Wordsworth thinks that common life is the only subject of literary interest. The joys and sorrows of the common people are his themes.
C. 艺术特色
A). 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.
B). 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 of everyday life and the speech of ordinary people were the raw material of which poetry could and should be made.
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