Romantic Period Webquest

I work as coal miner. I have to drag sleds of coal up and down the shafts. I have to crawl through the shafts because since the tunnels are only about three or even two feet high, carrying a candle as it is pitch black in the mine; I generally become black with coal by the end of the work day. This is job as dangerous as frequently the shafts collapse, trapping the miners, or candle is lit in a gas pocket causing an explosion; by the time the shaft is clear again the miner may have suffocated. I do this for 12 hours every day except sunday, when I sleep, and during strike riots when I don't have to worry about food since I can easily steal food in the chaos of the riot. I live in an small apartment in the slum, where I generally go home and sleep and keep eat gruel for dinner.

Lord Byron - She Walks in Beauty

I like how Byron describes the night as a kind and gentle woman. The night makes up the better part of my day, it is when I can rest and sleep. The darkness of the night isn't dirty like the coal mines, it's warm and clean and restful.

"She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies."

I like the way the poet writes of the night sky, I never see it now as it is covered in smog, it reminds me of my home before I came to the city.

William Wordsworth - By the Sea

The poet talks of walking by the sea in the evening, with a child. The sea makes the poet sad and silent, but the child is stilly happy and natural, as if they walked by the sea all the time.

"Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year, And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine."

This makes me think of when I went to the sea as a child, I was very young. The sea is clean and cool and everlasting, it will still will be after the slum and coalmine and factories are abandoned and gone. I would like to go back there.

Percy Bysshe Shelley - A New World

This poem talks about the buildings and the cities empires of the earth falling away like a bad dream and the world being reborn. If the empires of the earth includes London, I am all for this.

"Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream."

After the world is reborn, the old and great beings and heroes of the ancient world will return and be in their youth. I am not a great being or hero, but perhaps I will have a place in this new world also, and I will leave this black hole beneath the ground and live in work in the fields and forest of the world.

"A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
And loves, and weeps, and dies.
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore."

John Keats - Robin Hood

This poem is about Robin Hood and Sherwood Forest. The poet talks about his regret at the loss of the wildness and freedom of the forest.

"No! those days are gone away,
And their hours are old and gray,
And their minutes buried all
Under the down-trodden pall
Of the leaves of many years:
Many times have winter's shears,
Frozen North, and chilling East,
Sounded tempests to the feast
Of the forest's whispering fleeces,
Since men knew nor rent nor leases.

I have known rent and leases, and can honestly say I regret both. But theres nothing that can be done, theres nowhere in the world one can go without having someone demanding rent, even the most shriveled of apples is already owned and on its way to market.

"She would weep, and he would craze:
He would swear, for all his oaks,
Fall'n beneath the dockyard strokes,
Have rotted on the briny seas;
She would weep that her wild bees
Sang not to her--strange! that honey
Can't be got without hard money!"

Lord Alfred Tennyson - Flower in the crannied wall

This poem is written about a flower which the poet has plucked from an old wall and examined. He writes:

"Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower -but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is."

Though he has the flower materially in hand, he implies that the flower has a being and depth of meaning which is beyond the full grasp of his understanding. This shows the Victorian poets idea of the transcendent aspect of reality, beyond the material.

The Victorian Era

The Victorian era was more prosperous than the preceeding eras; largely because of the profit from the colonies of the British Empire, allowing a large middle class to develop. Britian was not involved in any major wars from 1815, at the Battle of Waterloo, until 1914 and the beginning of World War II, however there were multiple rebellions and conflicts in their colonies. In 1832 a reform act was passed, making major changes to the electoral system and allowing a larger portion of the population to vote in parliament. There were several movements attempting to limit labor abuses, particularly a law passed in 1842 which prohibited women and children from working in coal, iron, tin, and lead mines; however child labor continued into the 20th century.

While the Victorians were concerned with social reform, without entirely discrediting them it seems that much of this was an arbitrary and superficial effort to establish a "civilized" society. The Victorian middle class generally attempted to edit out topics such as death, birth, sex, or any other subject which they considered "uncivilized" or unpleasant. The Victorians valued material progress, cleanliness and order, and generally swept anything which they felt might be otherwise under the rug. The streets of the rich and middle class were kept clean and well lit, and a large police force was established to keep the poor on the correct side of the railroad tracks. Many of the lower class accepted this and placed primary importance on maintaining the appearance of civility and the maintaning of the "Victorian ideal", as though it were something which actually benifited them.

The Victorian Era appears to be mainly a violent reaction against the chaos which occured in the time of the Romanticist movement. this they set themselves up on stilts and placed bans and taboos and on anything they considered be anything other than pleasant and dandy, creating a superficial social veneer; they seemed to feel that as long as they stayed inside these parameters, their material comfort and safety was ensured.

Most Victorian writers were against this view of the world, considering the current society to be superficial and materialistic. Some gave descriptions the sufferings and passions of the world outside of their social constructs, intentionally breaking the taboos and decorums of the Victorians against horrors the uncontrolled and unpleasantness. They considered their writing an attempt to change others perception of the world, raising questions towards society and social priorities and revealing a world beyond the material, focusing on the eternal and transcendental.

Common People in the Restoration

The most important thing to the common people at this time was probably staying alive for as long as possible, which meant primarily meant avoiding disease and finding something to eat. The poor were reduced to a basic view of life, the main question being whether they were hungry or not hungry, or during the plague whether they were diseased or not, and most of their actions revolved around ensuring the latter; other concerns would have naturally become very secondary.

"These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants: who as they grow up either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes."

A Journal of the plague Year

Defoe's descriptions are very grotesquely realistic, he engrosses the the reader in the plague London. I was disappointed on reading that the account was fictional and Defoe did not actually witness these events first hand. He communicates the immense and suffocating fear of the plague, which was literally everywhere, and also the despair, as halting its spread was like trying net a patch of air in a disintegrating butterfly net. It seems it would have been nearly impossible not to have contracted the plague, as the city was drowning in it. "There was a strict order to prevent people coming to those (burial) pits, and that was only to prevent infection. But after some time that order was more necessary, for people that were infected and near their end, and delirious also, would run to those pits , wrapped in blankets or rugs, and throw themselves in, and, as they said, bury themselves." The stories of resistance to the death and madness, against the sheer breadth, were encouraging if melancholy. Particularly the story of the man who kept himself alive by swimming across the Thames and ceaselessly running through the city until the exertion of his body forced the plague spots to break down and ingest, and the joy of the diary keeper on finding himself alive after the passing of the plague.

"A dreadful plague in lond was
In the year sixty-five,
Which swept a hundred thousand souls
Away; yet I alive!"

Romantic Poetry

William Blake - The sunflower

This is a short poem written about a sunflower who aspires after the sun. The sun flowers ambition is reflected by the poets own desire, showing a the romanticist theme of of escape from industrial society into nature and natural things. "Ah, Sunflower! weary of time,Who countest the steps of the sun, Seeking after that sweet golden clime Where the traveller's journey is done."

William Wordsworth - By the sea

Wordsworth describes a walk by the sea in the evening, in which he is made silent and "solemn" with awe. However a young child who is with him seems unchanged by the scene, as if it were their natural environment. He comments that they are "untouched by solemn thought" and writes "Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year, And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine." In other words this state seems natural to children who are less accustomed and influenced by the corruption of the industrialist society. This admiration and belief in this natural state, and the desire to return and stay in it, are romanticist ideas.

Lord Byron - She Walks in Beauty

In the poemt Byron compares the beauty of a woman to the beauty of the night.

"She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies."

The poem expresses a love of natural beauty in general. "And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent" The poet describes the feeling of beauty, using anologies to nature and natural things, prefering intuition over rational description, displaying romanticism.

Percy Bysshe Shelley - A New World

In the poem the empires and structures of the old world fall and a new world arises, beggining again. "Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream." The poet writes of the young Greek gods being reborn on the earth, this time fuller and brighter.

"A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
And loves, and weeps, and dies.
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore."

This displays the romanticist desire for a return to an earlier time and place, here time and place is reborn, a return to the youth of the world.

John Keats - Robin Hood

In his poem Keats writes about the shrinking and degradation of the world. He laments the taming of Sherwood forest and absence of adventure.

  "No! those days are gone away,
And their hours are old and gray,
And their minutes buried all
Under the down-trodden pall
Of the leaves of many years:
Many times have winter's shears,
Frozen North, and chilling East,
Sounded tempests to the feast
Of the forest's whispering fleeces,
Since men knew nor rent nor leases."

He is clearly against the rise of industrialization and privatization
of the world, which he has in common with Romanticist and also
the Luddites ( a group which destroyed factories and revolted against
 industrialist) writing:

  "She would weep, and he would craze:
He would swear, for all his oaks,
Fall'n beneath the dockyard strokes,
Have rotted on the briny seas;
She would weep that her wild bees
Sang not to her--strange! that honey
Can't be got without hard money!"

The Romantic Period

The enlightenment occurred shortly before the romantic era. During this time many new scientific principals and technologies were being discovered at a rapid rate, as well as the discovery or rediscovery of many philosophical and political ideas. This led to a sense of revolution on many different levels, political, social, technological and economic. The most well known of these were the political revolutions which occurred during or shortly after this time, the American and French revolutions.

The second significant event occurred as a result of this and was more negative. The industrial revolution was enabled by the scientific progress of the enlightenment. This movement largely operated on the basis of somewhat narrow rationalist principals, namely efficiency, centralization and "progress", which primarily seems to mean economic progress and profit. The sense of humanity and aesthetics were largely sacrificed here.

The life of the common people was degraded during this era. Most skilled workers were unable to compete with the low cost and high production rates of the factories, and were forced to give up their trades and go to the cities to find work. They worked long hours to receive low wages to pay for basic sustenance to allow them to continue to work, life was stale.

The romanticist were against this for obvious reasons. Their poetry is based on intuition and rather than rationalism, an attempt to capture feeling and sensation. According to Williams Wordsworth the poetry came from “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”, while the poetry itself, as described by Samuel Coleridge, was the “the mediatress between, and reconciler of nature and man”.

Nature and pastoral life was another theme of romanticist work. They attempted to express nature not only in the sense of the forest and fields, but in the sense of a return to the natural state of things, which had been imposed on by society. Their Poetic form also reflects this, they tried to use natural expression over classical or formal. Their subject matter reflects this also, much of it is removed from their immediate geography and era.

A Modest Proposal

This is satire because it exposes the actuality of a political issue in its bare bones. The wealthy, particularly the English aristocracy, at this time were living their comfortable and extravagantly dignified lives at the extreme expense of the poor, who the wealthy regard as a social impediment or political problem. To express this Swift suggest that since the poor have no real way to support themselves without inconveniencing the rich economically, to eradicate the problem their babies could be sold and cooked as a delicacy for the aristocrats.

Satire

Satire uses irony and sarcasm to create a caricature of a subject, focusing on and enlarging its inconsistancies and ridiculus aspects to expose, denounce, or make a point about it, such as political cartoons.