THE ROMANTIC AGE - HISTORICAL CONTEXT

In Britain the SECOND HALH OF THE 18TH CENTURY was characterised by great economic
and social changes known as INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.
The home-based industry gradually gave way to a factory-based system where, thanks to
the introduction of the steam engine, the whole production process was speeded up and more
and more machines replaced manpower . The most important technical innovations
involved machinery for cloth-making such as the “Spinning Jenny”.
This situation , together with the introduction of new machinery in agriculture, produced a
large number of unemployed people who started moving from the countryside to the towns in
search of work.
Because of this migration from the coutryside to the town, the urban population increased
considerably, but workers were forced to live in terrible conditions.
So during the FIRST DECADES OF THE 19TH CENTURY Britain’s internal situation was
extremely tense: the SEVERE UNEMPLOYMENT (due to the increasing use of machinery) and
the INHUMAN WORKING CONDITIONS in factories led to the Luddites Riots of 1811-1812,
when a group of workers called the “Luddites” destroyed the machines that they considered as
the cause of their misery.
Moreover, Britain’s political stability was threatened by the REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS brought
about by the American Revolution (1775-1783/ Declaration of American Independence:1776)
and the French Revolution (1789-1791).

The British government’s reaction to this social instability was VERY VIOLENT:
- on the one hand the government fought wars against revolutionary and then
Napoleonic France until 1815,
- on the other hand the government took repressive measures: for example machine-
breaking became punishable by death and trade unions (=associations of workers)
became illegal.

This period of great political and economic revolutions (American Revolution - French
Revolution – Industrial Revolution) deeply influenced the cultural and literary situation. In
fact a NEW SENSIBILITY became dominant which came to be known in literature as
ROMANTICISM.
The main aspects of Romantic Literature were:
 1. emphasis on feelings and emotions (in contrast to the previous faith in reason);
2. interest in humble and everyday life;
3. taste for nature and country life in contrast to the industrial town;
4. emphasis on IMAGINATION (as a means of expressing experience) and
CHILDHOOD ( as the ideal stage of Man’s life because a child is pure and unspoilt
by civilisation);
5. emphasis on the INDIVIDUAL and on INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM: this led to the cult of
the outcast and the rebel as heros living outside the evil force of society.
These key-ideas of Romantic literature were influenced by ROUSSEAU’s theories on
conventions and civilasation seen as evil forces which corrupt human behaviour.
In Britain the Romantic movement was mainly limited to POETRY.
The main features of Romantic poetry were:
1. emphasis on IMAGINATION seen as a divine facuty able to re-create and modify
the external world of experience;
2. The presence of the LYRICAL I;
3. The use of LANGUAGE OF SENSE IMPRESSIONS;
4. NATURE seen as a living force, as God’s expression (=pantheistic view of Nature);
5. The freedom of poetic expression;
6. Search for new poetic languages and new poetic subjects.
There were 2 main generations of Romantic Poets…