Romantic period (1776-1837)

ROMANTIC PERIOD (1776-1837)

THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT.

The Romantic Period is described by the historians as the "Age of revolution". It opens with the American Declaration of Independence and continues with the political Revolution in France and the Industrial Revolution in England.

The French Revolution (1789-1794) destroyed the old social system in the name of liberty, equality and fraternity with the rise of the middle class. Later on, in 1804 Napoleon became Emperor. He dominated Europe and involved Britain in several wars from 1793 till 1815 when the Duke of Wellington defeated his army at the Battle of Waterloo.

Meanwhile England was transformed by the Industrial Revolution, which caused several social unrests. It determined class conflicts between employers and workers like in the case of Luddite Riots (1811-12) when textile workers in the North of England destroyed the new mills and machinery which had substitute them in the work.

In this period British Radicalism spread: it wanted radical reforms of the electoral system and the universal suffrage. Radicals believed that Parliament should represent all the people and not only the property owners and aristocracy. The Tory government combated Radicalism prohibiting freedom of speech and association and through the use of armed forces. For this reason there was a clash between the two parts that ended with the Paterloo Massacre of 1819, in which 15 people, who had gathered in Manchester to require the electoral reform, were killed and a lot of them were wounded.

By the 1820 Radicalism was a spent force, both because of the success of the government tactics and because of the improvement in the economic situation. In the 1832 the First Reform Act was approved and extended the right to vote to the middle class and reduced the power of aristocracy.

The territorial expansion slowed down in the Romantic Period, but because of the Industrial Revolution, the development of more overseas markets was necessary; so England resumed the conquest of new territory.

THE SOCIAL CONTEXT.

Almost all the people greeted England's involvement with the French Revolution with general enthusiasm. The great exception was Edmund Burke who describes, in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, the event as a plunge back into savagery and advocated reform rather than revolution. Tom Paine and William Blake were of different opinion, thinking that the established institution were corrupted and malign. Tom Pain, in his Rights of Man, contrasted England unfavourably with revolutionary France and independent America and hoped that the democratic movement might soon affect the whole of Europe.

Britain's Industrial Revolution began around 1780; there was a radical change from an economy based on farms to one based on factories. In fact, while before there was a domestic system (or cottage) and goods were produced at home, with the new factory system there was a real transformation of the economy and the society.

The Industrial Revolution was favoured by the population growth, in fact the number of consumers and workers increases, so profits were higher and prices lower. The expansion in the industrial population brought with it the rise of the factory town. Many people moved to towns to find works in the mills and factories; several factory owners built houses for their workers near their works, but they were badly built with no water supply or sanitation. On the one hand the quality of goods was higher, but on the other hand living condition for workers were very poor and dangerous.

With the Industrial Revolution there was the Transport Revolution, too; in fact industrial system required more and better roads to bring materials to factories and goods to market.

In this period there were also technical innovation which favoured an Agricultural Revolution. Land was bought by great landowners, enclosed with fences and farmed on a bigger scale with the new machines.

THE CULTURAL CONTEXT.

The three main branches of the Romantic Movement were German, English and French.

German Romanticism had a preparatory stage in the Sturm und Drang movement of the 1770s and was essentially philosophical.

English Romanticism started in the 1780s and his ideas are best represented by the poetry.

French Romanticism developed mainly in drama and literary criticism and was influenced by Rousseau, whose most important idea was that man is good by nature but corrupted by society.

Italian Romanticism began later, in 1816, with a strong nationalistic component which found its best expression in poetry and novel.

There is a close relation between the cultural aspects of Romanticism and the socio-historical context.

We can recognise the two most important events of this period: French Revolution and Industrial Revolution. The political attitudes of Romantic writers were responses to the changes caused by the French Revolution. The expansion of industry and the economy destroyed the old economic system and theories. "The Wealth of Nations" was a seminal book in the development of laissez-faire theory. It established no interference from the government in economic activities and supported the idea that efficiency and profit are absolute goods.

Romantic movement presented several leading ideas which are matters of disagreement; we can recognise four of these key concepts:

the stress on imagination and on individual experience;

the conception of the artist as an original creator free from any neoclassical models;

the notion of nature as a living organic structure and the importance attached to natural scenery;

the original style in literature which made use of imagery, symbolism and myths.

From the beginning of industrial revolution there was a criticism from intellectuals to industrial system because workers conditions were very poor and values of industrial society were not human ones. In fact it was a materialistic system in which the relationship and the civilization are important because they are founded only on giving and having and not on friendship, human feelings and sympathy.

English poets were philosophers and were all against Newton and Rationalism.