University of Goce Delcev Shtip Faculty of Philology

An independent research based on the documentaries The Romantics -BBC

-Liberty, Eternity ,Nature Liberty -200 years ago Monarchy was falling to the power of peoples revolution; -industry and commerce were becoming the driving forces of existence; -advances in science were changing the way life itself was understood; -the artists from all over the world were inspired by these dramatic changes; -In Britain a group of poets appeared that were looking very differently on the world; - the most famous amongst them were: William Blake Samuel Taylor Coleridge William Wordsworth George Gordon Byron Percy Bysshe Shelley John Keats

-21 January 1793 the French King Louis XVI was beheaded on the streets of Paris; -This event announced the French Revolution that would later inspire the Romantics and the movement itself in support of this ideas of revolution and liberty for all of the monarchy and its tyranny; -but everything begun some 40 years before the killing of the king; -the primary ideas of revolution were born by two philosophers, although with different beliefs, still supporters of the same idea of revolution; -these two men were Denis Didrot and Jean Jacques Russeau;

-Didrot believed that the future will be built on reason: Man is born to think for himself (LEncyclopedie 1751) while Russeau believed in the contrary, he chose feeling over thought; To feel is to exist, and our feeling count most incontestably before out thoughts(Lettres morales 1758); -they both believed that the system of control in France was inhuman; -they were preaching liberty and freedom for the individual; -but this dangerous ideas led to Didroes imprisonment just because he was thinking differently; -he was mainly arrested for writing and publishing the great Encyclopedie , dedicated to the ideas of progress and science; -he was visited by him friend Russeas who at the occasion had the revelation which led to the Social Contract of 1762- Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains; -for these ideas he was expelled from France; - but Russeas had experienced a vision that would become the single most important inspiration for the English romantic poets; -He had seen that emotion could unlock the prison of civilized society; -the key to freedom lay in individual will and feeling; - he believed that science is wicked, that civilization is harmful and that all culture are corrupt; Nature never deceives us. It is we who deceive ourselves. Our greatest evils flow from ourselves Emile 1762; -but the old regimes of Europe would not accept such revolutionary ideas and a lot of radicals and supporters of revolution flew to the newly found world, America; -Thomas Paines Common Sense 1776 would become the main stimulator of the American Revolution for independence; -The American Revolution was the fuel that would fire the Romantic revolution; -William Blake

-he saw the events in America as a great prophecy of the future of the world; -Blake believed that the imagination was the force that made the great art; -he was a radical and libertarian; -he had a few readers and was obliged to published his own work himself; -according to him the will and imagination of every person were locked away and life itself had become a prison ; -Blake as Russeau had seen people chained in their daily life; -14 of July 1789 was a day of a political and social upheaval for Europe; - the French Revolution has awaken the feelings of the radicals and libertarians in Britain who were against the total authority of the monarchy; -William Wordsworth -for him the Revolution seems as one of the greatest events in history, promising the future freedom of the human race; - he travelled in France to be nearer to the Revolution; -there he met and fell in love with a Frenchwoman Annette Vallon and had a daughter Caroline with her but he was forced to return to Britain due to the hostility between France and Britain; -after the revolution Wordsworth never again saw Annette and his daughter and became a wanderer looking for a new direction in which to pursue his vision; - for him to wander without destination, to seek out new territories was itself a revolutionary act ; -the wild landscape was a place for contemplation and of healing where he could be more natural and most himself; -this contemplation resulted in his great poem in 14 book The Prelude 1805; -later he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge and they together composed the great collection of poems entitled The Lyrical Ballads , collection of rustic lines written in simple language, a pure expression of romantic ideals , published in 1798;

-their writing had the same purpose as the French Revolution: to create a democratic world in which our voices had much right to be heard as anyone elses, in which women and children has also a voice; - the French Revolution which proclaimed the liberty for everyone, descended into madness; but by making art of the revolutionary philosophy, Wordsworth and Coleridge succeeded where the revolution had failed, they gave politics a human face; -The Lyrical Ballads was a revolution in 23 poems; -The Rime of the Ancient Mariner(most famous Coleridges poem from the Lyrical Ballads); -Idea: A warning that man must respect his fellow creatures ; -a journey into the natural world; Nature -W. Wordsworth, Marry Shelley and W. Blake -a story of mens escape of the industrial changes to the freedom of nature; -XVIII century for Britain was a time of industrialization; -the cities were forcing order and discipline in the lives of its inhabitants; -strict rules were set in the daily life; -the everyday life was turned into a big machine; -W. Blake whilst a child had a vision; -he believed it was a glimpse into the eternal world; -the Romantics believed that the spontaneous childs visions were the source of adults visions; -a child allowed to play and dream would become and imaginative adult; but children were destroyed by the industrial age; -they were forced to work from their earliest age ; -most became deformed; -W. Blake was horrified by this pictures and begun to write rimes for their redemption;

-these short rimes about children became a collection of illuminate poems, entitled Songs of innocence inspired by his childhood spent with his brother Robert; -he had another vision watching his brother Robert on his deathbed; -he was so angry to see the horrifying pictures on the streets of the children who were treated like slaves that his anger entered into his poetry ; -in addition to the Songs of innocence he wrote the Songs of experience in which there was no redemption for the children; -he was one of the first who raised his voice for the destructive effect of the industrial revolution; -Albian Mill- the first factory in England; -Blake referred to Satan as the miller of eternity; -Samuel Taylor Coleridge; -he had similar ideas to those of Blake; -he escaped from the city to the countryside in order to preserve the innocence of his child; -he wrote a poem dedicated to the premature birth of his son; -he wanted his son to be schooled by nature; -Frost at Midnight 1798 -for the Romantics, childhood was inseparable from nature; -Wordsworth had experienced nature as a child when he sailed with a boat in the Lake District and he was profoundly inspired by the power of its landscape that later became the main inspiration for one of his main poems The Prelude; -The Lake District was the place where Wordsworth always felt most at home; -at the age of 20, he travelled to the Alps ; -this journey was a search for emotion; -the further he travelled to the Alps, the closer he came to his inspiration; -from this journey, he realized that this close encounter with the nature was something more that a retreat from the disappointment and private pain;

-it was indeed the power at the heart of his imagination-the Romantic imagination; -this feeling was beyond the rational, rather the feeling of the sublime and all the divinity in the natural world; -for the Romantics, it represented the longing to be free; -1816 the year of a great volcanic eruption in Indonesia; --the nearby vegetation was ruined; -a new generation of Romantics appeared who gathered in the house of Byron and they rebelled against the older generation of the Romantics being too conservative; -Child Harolds Pilgrimage- Byrons best well-known work; -Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin; -Frankenstein 1818; -theme: Science might be disused by those who tend to experiment with nature; -Idea: Respect nature because it has the power to destroy you. Science alone in not enough . It is a warning many people are repeating to this day! Eternity -in the autumn 1797 Coleridge was exploring the wild coast; -he was ill and consumed opium; -this drugs were the source of some of the most remarkable poetry in the English language; -Kubla Khan 1797; -he had the vision in one of his dreams which led to the composition of the above mentioned poem; -while writing the lines of poetry of Kubla Khan, he was visited by a local villager of Polo, and later when he tried to continue the poem, he realized he had lost the vision; -as he was composing poetry, opium was slowly taking control over him; -for the Romantics anatomy and science were an empty and purposeless pursuit, rather they believed the body was led by a spirit;

-the body could not be charted nor understood in scientific terms; -Biogparhia Literaria 1817; -he believed that the imagination had the ability of creating new worlds and even to change lives; -John Keats -he was surgeon attorney; -but later on, he chose art upon science, the imagination over the body and became a poet; -he wanted to heal through his words and images; -The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream 1819; -Keats and the new generation of Romantics were studying the human soul as the anatomists were studying the human body; -their quest was to understand the true nature of life, to explain their purpose on the Earth; -One of the Romantics was an atheist; - Percy Bysshe Shelley -he was a brilliant Oxford student named Percy Bysshe Shelley; --In 1811 at Oxford an anonymous pamphlet appeared entitled The Necessity of Atheism ; -it proclaimed that without proof of the existence of God it was nonsense to believe in him; -after 20 minutes it was demanded that all copies were burnt; -the writer was committing blasphemy, a crime punishable with imprisonment; -he was attacking the foundation of Europen civilization; -later he met and married Mary,the daughter of the famous philosopher William Godwin and the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft ; -he wrote a poem dedicated to their union; -To Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin 1814; -Notes on Queen Mab 1814;

-Georg Gordon Byron -1812 prepared a poem for publication; -about a dissatisfied nobleman who travelled Europe for new exotic experiences; -Child Harolds Pilgrimage 1812; -he was leading a controversial life in England: allegedly he was having affairs with many ladies, he had committed an incest with his half sister Augusta and finally he divorced from his wife; -finally he fled from England and traveled around Europe; -he finally made a home in Venice; -John Keats believed that genius of the poet lay in the transcendence of the ordinary self and the loss of identity. This way he could imagine himself in a thousand different lives and forms; -but Byron disliked the more sensitive sense of Keats and for him the sensationalized experience was the key for the creative imagination; -Unlike Byron, Keats was a very different Romantic. He experienced tragedies from his earliest age but succeeded to transform it into beautiful verses; -he was only 8 when his father Thomas Keats died, and by the time he was 23 he witnessed the deaths of his mother and his brother and he suffered of depression; -Ode to the Nightingale 1819; -in one occasion he had an experience that would mark his life until his death; -it was his illness; -he was dying of tuberculosis ; -he decided to go in search for a way for eternity and he found it in the form of art; -he made a long journey to spend his last days in Rome; -Ode on a Grecian Urn 1819; -Those ancient ruins in Rome further intensified Keats senses of mortality; -for Keats, ancient ruins were the only human achievements that could transcendent the destructive process of time and give eternal fame to their creators and if a poet could achieve such works of genius too, he might leave forever;

-Keats feared that in death he would be forgotten; -23 February 1821 he died in his 26th year; -in his last hours he thought that his quest for immortality had failed; -he was buried in Rome ; -he chose his epitaph: Here lies the one whose name was writ In water; -after the news of his death, his poetry begun to be read more intensively; -two months after Keats death reached Shelley , he wrote a poem comparing Keats to Adonis , character from Greek mythology; -Percy Shelley Adonais 1821; -for Shelley, Keats was a new Adonis and his suffering had inspired him sublimed poetry; -in this poetry Shelley suggests that Keats was too sensitive to survive the troubles of the world; -for Shelley poetry became a substitute for religion; -If poetry was the new religion, than the poet could become God-this idea would lead Shelley into a dark place, a place of horror and loneliness, a place where he would come face to face with his own self; - 27th of April 1822 Shelley started to see visions and fathoms all around him; -on the 8th of July he went up sailing with a friend , and in a storm he was drowned and in his pocket was found a piece of poetry by Keats; -he was burned on the beach by Byron and a group of friends; -we are all striving into an insecure future- became the leading idea of all Romantics;

Mentor: prof.doctor Marija Emilija Kukubajska

Kandidate: Gorgieva Sanja Index number: 16616