The period from the Declaration of American Independence (1776) to 1830 was marked by great revolutions: Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution
MAIN FEATURES
- End of the illuminist period:
This period is characterized by a new sensibility, it's a reaction against the reason, the emotions and the natural behavior are more important than mind governed by reason. This theory followed very well Rousseau's philosophy.
Imagination gains a key role to give expression to emotional experience and to create the setting of the stories, the place becomes a reflection of the poet's feelings.
- Industrial Revolution's effects:
Child gains a key role: it is the symbol of the Natural behavior but also a pure creature, uncorrupted and unspoilt by civilization.
Nature is a new concept, it becomes a living being and the relationship with nature changes. It's a symbol of opposition against industrial town, there is a new cult of exotic: the remote and the unfamiliar are more interesting than usual.
The beginning of the mass society give importance to the atypical, the rebel, the solitary: Romanticism gives a key role to individualism than generals.
Early Romantic Poetry: (Blake)
The authors use autobiographical material to write poems, in traditional forms, characterized by melancholy and sad tone. The settings are solitary place and suitable for reflection, a gloomy and sometimes dark Nature. The most frequent theme is the cult of simple and primitive rural life.
Romantic Poetry:
The authors use traditional forms, as the ballad, the sonnet and the lyric poems, with new poetic technique as a language of sense impressions, symbols and images as means of visionary perception.
First generation: Wordsworth and Coleridge.
Second generation: Byron, Shelley and Keats.
Gothic Novel: (Shelley)
The adjective gothic was first applied to architecture and then used by Horace Walpole for his book's subtitle: The Castle of Otranto, a gothic story.
This genre is characterized by the atmosphere of gloom and mystery given by darkness of night and based on terror, horror and suspense. The setting are ancient, like isolated castles with dungeons and secret rooms, and the characters are the typical heroines with fear of imprisonment or personal violation, the heroes save heroines running in terror from villains as supernatural beings, vampires, monsters, ghosts or witches.
