The age of romanticism (1800 1850)

The Age of Romanticism (1800-1850)The Age of Romanticism (1800-1850)

• 19th-Century England 19th-Century England : Romantic Period

( poetry); Victorian Period ( prose).

• RomanticismRomanticism: first fifty years of the 19th

Century.


Causes of the Striking out of RomanticismCauses of the Striking out of Romanticism: :

• Methodism: Evangelical movement (John

Wesley);

• Made religion less a matter of argument /

creed and more a passionate, supernatural

experience of the soul.


The Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper The Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper

& Jean-Jacques Rousseau & Jean-Jacques Rousseau


• Man: essentially good, happiest in a state

of nature, free from institutions and

artificial restraints of organised society.

• Contemplation of / communion with Nature

( not through reason).


• Primitivism: philosophy of education in

France (Rousseau ,1712-1778).

• “Rustics” (country people):most perfect (least corrupted by the institutions of government ,i.e., school, marriage).

• Emile,1762.


• Anthony Ashley Cooper (1801- 1885).Anthony Ashley Cooper (1801- 1885).

• Student of the Classics.

• Investigated “Pauper Lunatics” and Mental

Asylums.

The Age of Romanticism The Age of Romanticism (1800-1850)(1800-1850)

• Laboured to implement the 10-hour day

( children worked 15 hours!).

• “The Climbing-boy Bill”, 1840. (Enforced in

1875 – “The Shaftesbury Act”).


• The Ragged/ˈraɡɪd/School Union: poor children taught on Thursday and Sunday evenings.


The Industrial Revolution:

•Changed the pattern of English life.

•An agricultural nation that became the chief

industrial nation in the world.

The Age of Romanticism (1800-1850The Age of Romanticism (1800-1850))

• Old Cottage Economy Old Cottage Economy (individual craftsman

and his hand-labour) could not compete

with the machines.

• CraftsmenCraftsmen forced to leave the countryside /

villages and live in cities, in slums, with

paltry wages.


• Overproduction and overpopulation.

• Agricultural Revolution: open fields were

“enclosed” ( they had been own by the

villages since Saxon times).


American (1776) and French Revolutions

(1789):

•Dramatic effect on the political, economic

and intellectual future of England.

•Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.


The French revolution : influential on English

intellectuals and writers [ demand for more

democratic government and awareness of

social injustice].

•Dissapoinment for its tyranny the (gillotine).


Pre-Romantic WritersPre-Romantic Writers

• Transitional poetry (late 18th-century).

• Intense feeling.

• Greater freedom in the choice of subjects.

• Genuine concern with the individual and

with personal experience.


• Imagination: the central force of the romantic prose /poetry of the 19th Century.

• William Blake (1757- 1827).William Blake (1757- 1827).

• Robert Burns (1759- 96).Robert Burns (1759- 96).

Education

The age of romanticism (1800 1850)