Romantics Exam

The Romantic Period (1785-1832)

- Moved away from "empirical" and rational worldview - Looked to nature to stimulate imagination

Revolutionary and Napoleonic period in France (1789-1815)

- Inspired liberation of self and expression from a totalitarian government - Was inspired by Haitian Revolution (1791)

Haitian Revolution (1791-1804)

- Self-liberated slaves in revolt of French colonial rule in Saint-Domingue - Became an independent nation

Enclosure Act of 1845

- Common farmland was divided among wealthy landowners - Forced many families to move to the cities - Expansion of the Middle Class

The Industrial Revolution

- Created a large wealth disparity in England - Factory work instead of agricultural work - Class struggle - Broke down aristocracy/rules (Romantic theme)

Aesthetics and Politics

- Heightened sense of "individuality" following revolutions (individual feeling and experiences) - Romanticism as a way to connect back to nature and past following industrialization

Slave Trade

- Transatlantic Slave Trade (Europe, to Africa, to America) abolished in 1807 - Emancipation of slaves in 1834-38

"The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa" by Olaudah Equiano

- Abolitionist piece that illustrated the life of a slave in the slave trade with authenticity - Chronicled life as a slave from Nigeria to Virginia and England - People as property: "torture devices," denial of intellect and freedom (despite paying for it) - "Gustavus Vasa" (Swedish nobleman) as baptismal - "Code-switching" and humble tone in order to appeal to a white audience

DJ Vassa

- Speculated that Equiano had not been born in Nigeria, but in South Carolina - Equiano as a "DJ" because he mixed different slave narratives to create a singular narrative

"Simon Lee" by William Wordsworth

- Effect of Enclosure Act (Simon Lee's poverty) - Wordsworth's POV: poem is about how good a guy Wordsworth is for helping Simon Lee

"London, 1802" by William Wordsworth

- Petrarch sonnet - Iambic pentameter - A call to return to older times - Nation needs someone like Milton (...Wordsworth)

Petrarch Sonnet

- Octave: first 8 lines - Sestet: 6 lines - Volta: shift in the poem

Iambic Pentameter

- 5 iambs - Iamb: unstressed, stressed - Troches: stressed, unstressed

Conversation poem

1) Speaking to someone that doesn't respond 2) Describes the external natural setting 3) Uses the external setting to look internally

"Tintern Abbey" by William Wordsworth

- The "Sublime" (to be swamped by wild + overwhelming rush of experience) - Material world vs your perception (lines 106-107) - One "Universal Being" that connects everyone (AKA transcendetalism) (lines 44-46) - Conversation poem

"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" by William Wordsworth

- Drew from Dorothy Wordswoth's journal on dandelions - Happiness in the company of nature - Image of nature can be drawn on command (lines 21-22)

"The Eolian Harp" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

- Conversation poem - Use of similes: harp being played as a "lover" by the wind (lines 15-16) - Synesthesia: mixing up of the senses (lines 27-29) - Transcendentalism through "one intellectual breeze" (lines 47-48) - Spiritus: Latin word that links wind, breath, soul, and inSPIRation - God is incomprehensible; respects Christianity, speculates nature as evidence of God

"Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" by Percy Bysshe Shelley

- "Intellectual:" nonmaterial, that which is beyond access to the human senses - Poem attempts to describe the undescribable - Mutually constitutive: cannot have good without bad; light without dark (lines 44-45) - Intellectual beauty comes in cycles like the seasons (lines 57-58) - Imagery of Intellectual Beauty casting as light over trees/landscape (first stanza)

"From the Grasmere Journals" by Dorothy Wordsworth

- Detailed accounts of nature; her job as a "secretary" to William; close relationship with her brother - Thursday, April 15th: William Wordsworth used used Dorothy's prose to write in verse (dandelions in "I Wandered as Lonely as a Cloud"); literal and figurative language about nature - Tuesday, May 4: Wordsworth wrote "The Leech Gatherer" from Dorothy's account of a leech gatherer from Friday, October 3.

Satire

Use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to criticize people's stupidity or vices

Irony

-Two contradicting meanings of the same situation, event, image, sentence, phrase, or story - Refers to the difference between expectations and reality.

Parody

- A work that imitates an existing original work in order to make fun of or comment upon it. - Derives from the Greek word "parodia," which referred to a type of poem which imitated the style of epic poems but with mockery and light comedy

Novel of Manners

- Novel written by women for women in order to dictate how to be a gentlewoman/proper lady

The Gothic

- Sensationalism, melodrama, and supernatural - Gothic castles with distinctive architecture, secret passages, ghosts, trap doors, and skeletons in closets - Radcliffe's Gothic: shifts emphasis to heightened consciousness of heroine  - Gothic Preoccupation with incest, rape, and murder now understood as political allegory for the age of Revolution

Volume 1: "Northanger Abbey" by Jane Austen

- Satirization of the "Novel of Manners" - Biographical Notice: Jane Austen's brother described his sister as a perfect, proper "heroine" - Catherine Morland as atypical heroine; loves "The Mysteries of Udolpho" by Anne Radcliffe; naive + honest - Chapter 3: Tilney and Catherine's first conversation (possibly poking fun at small-talk); Catherine does not keep a journal - Chapter 5: Austen addresses critics of the novel (poetic verse was seen as superior) - Chapter 14: Catherine sees history as, in a way, a construct just like the fiction that she reads; Jane Austen is sarcastic about "imbecility" being the only way a woman can charm a man

Volume 2: "Northanger Abbey"

- "Gothic" section of the novel (as a backdrop for Catherine's maturity) - Isabella moving on from James Morland to Frederick Tilney because he's richer. - Henry fell for Catherine because she showed interest in him first. - Chapter 4: Catherine concerned for her brother and Isabella; Tilney asserts that Frederick is not serious with Isabella - Chapter 6: Catherine creates her own "gothic horror" scenario based on the story Henry Tilney told her. - Chapter 7: Catherine sees General Tilney as a villain from a gothic novel - Chapter 9: Catherine runs into Henry when trying to snoop in his mother's room; confronted about her behavior - Chapter 10: Catherine shows maturity by cutting Isabella out of her life. - Chapter 13: Catherine is booted out of Northanger Abbey by General Tilney without money or an attendant (he found out she wasn't rich); ironic because General Tilney DID end up becoming the villain - Chapter 16: Catherine and Henry's proposal i granted by General Tilney because Eleanor married rich; fast pace possibly poking fun at the "happily-ever-afters" in romance novels

Inversion of the Poetic Hierarchy

- Changing the order of syntactically correct (as a critique on the elite; to emphasize certain subjects/objects) - "Simon Lee" example: "Few months of life has he in store" (line 57) ---> instead of "He has a few months of life in store"