PRE-ROMANTICISM & ROMANTICISM

The pre-Romantic tradition was characterized by an enthusiasm for the classical production of an increasingly personal nature that have elements of nostalgia and sublime.(the first difference is formal: the R. Poets didn't use the traditional verse patterns and they try to follow the rhythms of natural speech)The pre-R. poets wrote according to specific poetic traditions and they thought that high thoughts should be presented by high language.(the second difference refers to tone: R. speech in first person and reefer to his personal emotions)In pre-R. poetry personality was eliminated from the discourse.(the third difference is linguistic: R insisted on a new language that was simple)They used elevated diction and the poets wrote according to classical modes of thought. The poetry was concerned with man from a moral and social point of view. In this century the tradition of Churchyard poem had great popularity(Gray: in Gray's elegy the inspiration to reverie derives from Nature, and leads to a reflection on the human condition. He reflect on the levelling quality of death, which renders man, humble or great in life, equal in death. The elegy have some characteristics of the classical poems: the high poetic style with the use of metaphorical and figurative language and personifications. Is a pre-r poem for the setting and for the subject: meditation on death).Man's reflections on death, on the transience of human life developed from gloom towards a sense of melancholy.

Romanticism consist in the opposition of sentiment to reason. They place great importance on imagination: it allowed the poet to re-create the external world of experience. Nature has its own life and speaks to whoever can understand its language. Nature is a "living force". It became a main source of inspiration. The task of the poet was to meditate between man and nature, to give voice to the ideals of freedom, beauty and to teach moral truth. The poet wrote for themselves  and for the people who share his own sensitivity. He didn't need of particular language, because emotion are so powerful that can be expressed with simple language and because express simple emotion.

Wordsworth is interest in the relationship between Nature and man. W.'s idea is that man and nature are inseparable. Nature is something that include both inanimate and human nature. Both man and nature are permeated by the same living spirit. He define themselves as a priest because he adore nature that is permeated by a holy spirit. For the poet childhood was the most important stage in man's life: child was purer than an adult because he was unspoilt by civilization. What the child sees is more imaginative than the perceptions of an adult. The poet's task was to show men how to enhance their feelings and improve their moral being.

The influence of nature on man are: aesthetic(how to appreciate the beauteous  form of nature); ethic;cognitive(separation of his soul from his body to see beyond the things).For the poet poetry is a "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings". This take his origin from emotions that are collected in tranquillity in the mind of the poet. When he is far from the country and he is in a particular state of mind, lives those emotions again, thanks to his memory.

For Coleridge nature is vindictive and it is permeated by a vital spirit. He make a distinction between fency and imagination:1)is the ability of that all man have to feel emotions and to collect them in their mind.2)is a truly creative principle. It is the ability of the poet, starting from his emotions, to create a poem. C. use supernatural events and make they credible; W. describe common events and he coloured they with imagination

For Byron nature is a stormy nature; poetry is the result of his passional(personal) feelings. The influence of neoclassical poetry can be traced on the satirical aim of most of his poetry. He popularized the "Byronic hero", a passionate, moody and mysterious man, who hides some horrible sin or secret in his past. He is characterized by proud individualism(he rely on himself) and rejects the conventional moral rules of society. He is an outsider, isolated and attractive at the same time. He has a great sensibility to nature and beauty. Women cannot resist him, but he refuses their love

For Shelly, nature is a mighty power, represent the favourite refuge from the disappointment and injustice of the world. The poet is a moral teacher, is a sort of prophet, a person who is divinely inspired and his task is to diffuse the truth towards mankind. Almost all works show his refusal of social conventions, political oppression and any form of tyranny, and his faith in a better future. His language is very powerful.

Keats is a predecessor of english aestheticism. He considered nature as a form of beauty. In fact he doesn't look for God in nature(no pantheistic vision). His only consolations is beauty represented in art and he believed that it implied a spiritual beauty. He formulated the theory of negative capability that is the ability of the poet to leaves his emotions without rationalising them. And it is tanks to this ability that man can perceive, reach beauty. Imagination is the real engine of the poetry. He doesn't propose as unique beauty the classical beauty, but the emotions that it transmit.

-Rousseau represent man and social life, that corrupt man for social rules. He considered child as the archetypal innocent endowed with wisdom and happiness. In a state of nature man is good but the institution made he bad because our civilisation, especially for the ownership of property, created envy and inequality. The Augustan dualism between good and evil was replaced by the dualism between society, that are corrupted, and nature. Augustan nature was a sort of background in which man moves; the pre-Romantic nature was a living being which is prevented by a holy spirit, that was the same spirit that was present in the man. The Romantic nature was a living being which is prevented by a holy spirit, that was the same spirit that was present in the man.

Romantic novel

In the 18^th century we have the development of the novel. The writers use realism: it was an attempt to locate text specifically in a historical and social setting; it is an attempt to recreate reality through language. In fact the setting is the town, there are reference to streets, precise places and detailed descriptions of the interior of the house; the authors used clock time too. The characters don't have any psychological deep, the writers represented man as flat and he don't develop in the story. They are credible characters because they belong to the readers social class(middle class); they are business man that are interest in money, and their vision of life is puritan one(their are individualist, self confidence, self reliant). The aim of writers is to teach people in social behaviour, they teach people how to behave in society.