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THE ROMANTIC AGE
The relationship between Britain and the American colonies began to sour when the British attempted to impose strict rules on the colonies, this led to the drawing up of the Declaration of Independence on 4 July 1776 by Thomas Jefferson. The American colonies gained the support of France and Spain, the British army surrendered and accepted American Independence with the Treaty of Versailles. After the French Revolution, the British aristocracy became suspicious of social reforms, they banned public meetings of workers. The reform bill in 1832 extended the right to vote to the male middle class while women still couldn’t vote, although other favorable reforms came into action, such as the abolition of slavery and the new system of liberal education. The Industrial Revolution brought about enormous social and economic changes in Britain such as new materials, energy sources and new machines. Increase in the demand for products, meant a higher number of workers in factories and this resulted in a deterioration of working conditions and pay. In 1824, the first trade unions were formed and the socialist, political movement began to gain traction, resulting in a revolutionary spirit raising social issues such as child labour and women’s rights. Folk poetry became a popular genre before the Romantic period. It focused on friendship, love, drinking and animals. The Romantic period of poetry is said to have begun with the publication of “Lyrical Ballads”; man's connection to nature is one of the topics to be found. In the preface of “Lyrical Ballads”, William Wordsworth presents a linguistic manifesto of sorts: he stated that poetry should be feelings expressed spontaneously in the language of ordinary people. The importance of this was not to form a similar dialect, but to find a standard diction. The poetry and painting of the Romantic Period took inspiration directly from nature without referring to mythological and historical traditions. Gothic style architecture also had revival in this period, the gothic novel also came to prominence and was characterized by mystery and suspense. They generally had Italian settings, the most popular novel of this period is “the Mysteries of Adolfo” by Ann Radcliffe. The novel of manners also became a popular form of fiction and the novels of Jane Austen are famous works of this movement; novels of purpose and historical topics are also hallmarks of this moment. The American short-stories such as the works of Edgar Allan Poe incorporated some of the major features of the Romantic period.
LITERARY BACKGROUND
The British literary production between 1760 and 1837 can be divided into two main phases: the first phase from 1760 to 1801 is characterized by growing anti-classical tendencies and by emerging pre-Romantic trends. The second phase from 1801 to 1837, is called the Romantic Age. The year that represented a watershed between these two phases is 1801, the year of publication of the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth, which is considered the Manifesto of English Romanticism. Romanticism was a complex cultural and literary phenomenon in Europe and was a reaction against the triumph of Reason of the Enlightenment and Neoclassicism. In each European nation it acquired its own specific qualities: in Italy, for instance, it acquired a strong political meaning, while in Germany it became a rather philosophical and aesthetic movement thanks to the Sturm und Drang group. European Romantic literature re-evaluated the role of imagination and nature in the process of artistic creation and gave voice to a growing interest in emotions, feelings, the irrational and the supernatural. Originally the word Romantic meant ‘typical of old and medieval romances’. The word Romantic comes from the French ‘Romance’, which in the Middle Ages denoted the new vernacular languages derived from Latin and the works written in those languages. It referred to the artificial language and actions of Medieval romances (about chivalry and adventures). In the 18th century the term started to acquire a slightly different meaning, including ‘marked by feeling’ rather than rationalism. In time, it also came to be associated with the ideas of melancholy and loneliness. Today the word Romantic means both ‘related to love’ and ‘capable of having a strong effect on someone’s feelings’. In the last three decades of the 18th century poets began to express their dissatisfaction with the values of Classicism and rejected the idea that Reason was the leading faculty of man’s intellect. The poets who gave voice to this anti-classical reaction are called pre-Romantics because their works anticipated some of the features of Romanticism. The main features of pre-Romantic poetry are:
- the use of Classical forms to express Romantic themes;
- the idea that nature is the right and ideal state of man in contrast with civilisation, whose disruptive power can harm the fragile equilibrium of natural forces;
- the exaltation of primitive life in contrast with the dehumanizing effects of progress;
- the tendency to use a meditative and often melancholy tone;
- the rediscovery of the Middle Ages and of its literature as a charming and mysterious period in which unlearned geniuses composed their best works;
- the treatment of unusual themes such as ‘the exotic’, ‘the strange’, ‘the sublime’ (i.e. the feeling provoked by the contemplation of something dangerous and beautiful), which reflect a new idea of beauty in contrast with the rational beauty of Neoclassicism;
rational tone. The most recurring themes in Romantic poetry are Nature (both in its rustic aspects and in the sense of a benign entity that pervades the whole universe and gives order to it), childhood, imagination, pastoral life, and the exaltation of the past (especially the Middle Ages), and the role of the individual in the universe. Romantic intellectuals frequently show interest in contemporary social and historical issues and often see poetry as a means to escape from a narrow or sordid reality.
- Types of poem: Classicists tend to use long poetic forms, while Romantics tend to write mainly short poems, narrative poems, romances and ballads.
- Poetic forms: Classicists tend to use fixed poetic forms such as the heroic couplet, while Romantics tend to use blank verse.
- Language: Classicists use highly ornate and artificial diction, while Romantics use mainly everyday language.
- The concept of beauty: for Classicists beauty is harmony and emerges from the balance between different parts, while for Romantics beauty tends to be associated with the sublime, the exotic or the irregular.
TWO GENERATIONS
OF ROMANTIC POETS
The event that officially marked the birth of English Romanticism was the publication of the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1801) by the poet William Wordsworth. Wordsworth’s ‘Preface’ contains the definition of some of the main traits of British Romanticism, which are: ● a predominant role played by Nature, which is depicted as the ideal place for man to live in contrast with the dehumanizing effects of industrialisation and a source of spiritual power and truth; ● a subsequent distrust in progress and factories; ● a vivid interest in humble and rustic life; ● the use of imagination and of poetry as a tool to understand the beauty of the universe and to create truth; ● a rejection of all the artificial conventions of Neoclassical poetry in favor of a more spontaneous form of poetry; ● an accent on spontaneous feelings and on the expression of emotions; ● a totally new interest in the inner world of the self. English Romantic poets can be divided into two main groups: the First Generation of Romantics, which includes William Wordsworth, who focused on the power of imagination and ‘common life’, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who gave importance to imagination, the supernatural and the sublime; the Second Generation of Romantics, which includes Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats, who embodied the ideal of the poet as a rebel and a bohemian and often gave voice to the sense of disillusionment of the years that followed the French Revolution.
THE FIRST GENERATION
The two main authors belonging to the First Generation of Romantic Poets were William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). Wordsworth and Coleridge represented the two opposite and complementary sides of English Romanticism: together they represent the ‘two souls’ of English Romanticism in its early phases. Their poems were collected in a volume called Lyrical Ballads, published in 1798, at a time when the two poets lived in the Lake District. Wordsworth’s poems focus on the depiction of humble, rustic life and are characterized by the use of the common language of ordinary people. Wordsworth’s poetic creation followed these steps: first the poet feels emotions in nature and freezes them in his mind. Second, the poet recollects his emotions in the tranquility of his home: this allows him to purify his emotions from the imperfections of everyday life. Third, the poet uses words to express his purified emotion. In this sense the poet is a creator, because his poetry is the ‘re-creation’ of an emotion. Coleridge’s works are pervaded by mysterious characters and supernatural events, as shown by his The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), a long poem suspended in a dreamlike atmosphere. Coleridge’s poem is the representation of the visible effects of an act of human ‘hybris’, an act of disrespect towards Nature which destroys its rules and provokes disruptive consequences.
THE SECOND GENERATION
The poets belonging to the Second Generation of English Romantic poets were very different from one another: Percy Bysshe Shelley, for instance, embodied political rebellion and a peculiar kind of visionary mysticism; Lord Byron gave voice to a sense of rejection of social conventions and moral limitations; John Keats focused on poetic introspection and explored the nature of sensations and beauty. What united them was the fact that they left their country, which they considered unmodifiable and conservative, were attracted by Italy and its art, and they all died at a very young age. Lord Byron’s poetry was immensely popular and Byron became a sort of a living legend. In his lifetime Byron embodied all the mythical qualities of the Romantic poet: he was a rebel, he was passionate, he condemned social hypocrisy and he fought for freedom. All of these qualities were essential traits of the ‘Byronic hero’, a typical character named after Byron himself. Percy Bysshe Shelley was another key-figure of English Romanticism.
WILLIAM BLAKE
According to the popular opinion of his contemporaries, William Blake was a madman, but he is now hailed as a visionary poet and artist. William Blake, one of seven children, was born on November 28th, 1757, to James and Catherine Blake. They resided in London, and William lived in the family home on Broad Street in Soho until he was 25. His education was unorthodox, he left school at the age of 10, having learned to read and write, and thereafter was self taught with guidance from his mother. He read the Bible and other theological treatises, which would influence his work for the rest of his life. Blake showed great sensitivity to art, poring over books of prints from the masters Raphael and Michelangelo. He began attending drawing classes and, at the age of 14, was apprenticed to an engraver called James Basire. There is a peculiar story associated with Blake’s apprenticeship. Basire was not the first choice of William’s parents because they had originally selected William Ryland, the royal engraver, to serve as young William's mentor. But something about the man’s look disturbed William Blake, who told his father the engraver was sure to be hanged as a criminal and his father took William’s words to heart and placed him with a different mentor. Oddly, years later, Ryland was hanged as a forger (falsario). Under Basire’s guidance, Blake learned a somewhat old-fashioned technique of engraving, which may have hampered (ostacolato) his popularity during his lifetime. Still, Blake fed his imagination during his apprenticeship, visiting Gothic churches and publishing his first volume of verse, called “Poetical Sketches” in 1783. At the end of his apprenticeship, at the age of 21, Blake became a student at the relatively new institution, the Royal Academy of Arts, which was directed by the influential painter Sir Joshua Reynolds. Blake’s views on art differed from Reynolds and he found himself a reactionary in this environment, preferring the classic works of Michelangelo and Rapahel he so loved as a child, to the newer fashionable painters of the day. Still, Blake was able to begin showing his own work at the Royal Academy and, during this time, Blake also met his wife, Catherine, whom he taught to read and write after they were married. William Blake then embarked on his career as a professional engraver. In 1784, Blake and a partner, James Parker, opened a print shop, turning out mainly radical political pamphlets. They enjoyed some success and the print shop was a favorite haunt of such luminaries as Thomas Paine, Joseph Priestley and Mary Wollstonecraft. Meanwhile, William Blake began experimenting with new engraving techniques for his own writings; he invented “relief etching”, a kind of reverse
engraving on copper plates where the background is dissolved away with acid, leaving the words and pictures to stand out. “Song of Innocence”, one of the first books by William Blake illuminated in this style, was published in 1789. An expanded collection, “Song of Innocence and of Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul '', was published 5 years later. The poems explore the innocence of childhood and the balance between knowledge and corruption. At first glance, the simple lyric poems resemble writing for children, but the subject matter often dealt with society’s ills and social inequities (disuguaglianze, ingiustizie). Blake’s poems and the accompanying artwork present a rich experience where one enhances (esalta) the enjoyment and understanding of the other. Blake continued the philosophical investigations into the nature of good and evil in his later works, which included “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”, “Visions of the Daughters of Albion'', “Milton” and “Jerusalem”. In his writings, Blake rejected what he saw as the corruption of the Industrial Revolution in England, writing of “dark satanic mills” and celebrating the beauty of nature. He scoffed at the feeble efforts made thus far to understand our world, stating “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite”. William Blake and his wife Catherine lived happily together for many years, despite some financial hardship. Catherine assisted William, and together they produced a remarkable body of writing and illustrations. Unfortunately, his works with engraving materials may have taken a toll on William Blake’s health: he suffered for years from an unknown ailment, with stomach pain and muscle weakness. These symptoms are consistent with biliary cirrhosis, which can be caused by prolonged exposure to toxins, such as fumes produced when acid eats away the copper. Blake continued to work up until his death, expressing no fear about his own mortality. William Blake died on August 12th, 1827, and was buried in Bunhill Fields, the resting place in London set aside for nonconformists. He is now celebrated as a favorite son of England, the “Jerusalem” lyric from the preface of his epic poem “Milton” was set to music by Sir Hubert Parry in 1916 and is now considered the unofficial national hymn of England.
SONG OF INNOCENCE
AND SONG OF EXPERIENCE
- Songs of Innocence is written in the pastoral mode with simple imagery. It deals with childhood as the symbol of innocence.
- Songs of Experience is more complex and pessimistic. The poems pair those of Songs of Innocence.
- The world of innocence is full of joy and happiness, while the world of experience is full of cruelty and injustice.
- The child becomes the object of Blake’s poetry because he is closer than the adult to the original state of harmony with nature.
symmetry”) combines fear with the beauty of the symmetry. This combination of opposites makes the Tyger sublime, a reality that escapes the poet’s understanding. The urgent questions the poet asks the Tyger come quickly after one another; they reveal details of the anatomical parts that were made by the blacksmith (the creator) in the furnace, but this only leads to the rhetorical question of stanza 5 (“Did he smile his work to see?”), which is based on the narration of the creation of the world by God in Genesis. In the Bible, God is pleased with what he has created at the end of every day. The same God that created the Lamb created the Tyger, and he smiled when he saw this fierce animal, not a symbol of evil, but of power and energy which come from the same hands that forged the innocence of the Lamb. The mystery of the Tyger is greater at the end of the poem than it was at the beginning. The change of “could” into “dare” in the last stanza shows that the poet now wonders not if the creation of the Tyger was possible, but how God had the courage to make such a dreadful creature.
THE NATURE OF THE CREATOR
The nature of the creator, which the poet is trying to understand, appears clear and simple to understand in the Lamb: the creator must be a benevolent figure because he has created the joyful Lamb. The more the might of the Tyger’s creation is shown through the urgent questions in the poem, however, the more incredulous the poet becomes that the creator made such different creatures. Nonetheless, the evidence is clear; the creator made both, and this is the first example of Blake’s attempt to use symbols to describe complementary and opposite realities as two halves of a complex and contradictory whole which escapes reasoning and can only be grasped by intuition.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
William Wordsworth was born in 1770 in Cumberland, in the English Lake District. In 1791 he got a degree at St John’s College, Cambridge and in 1791, he traveled to Revolutionary France and was fascinated by the Republican movement. In 1792 he had a daughter, Caroline, from a French aristocratic woman, Annette Vallon. The Reign of Terror led him to become estranged to the Republic, and the war between England and France caused him to return to England. In 1795 he moved to Dorset with his sister Dorothy, who was his most faithful friend. In the same year, he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with whom he became friends and this friendship was crucial for the development of English Romantic Poetry. They worked together on the “Lyrical Ballads”, a collection of poems mostly by Wordsworth and just four by Coleridge; it was first published anonymously in 1798. The second edition followed in 1800, including a preface in which Wordsworth clarifies the two poets’ conception of the principals of poetry. In 1799 William and Dorothy settled in the Lake District and, in 1802, he married one of his childhood friends Mary Hutchinson and they had 5 children together. In the following years, his reputation continued to grow and, in 1843, he was made Poet Laureate and then died on the 23 of April 1850 at the age of 80. The Lyrical Ballads were published in more editions, in the second one there’s a preface that became the manifesto of English Romanticism; in this period, Wordsworth wrote some of his most famous works. In 1807 “Poems, in Two Volumes” was published, he wrote an impressive number of poems including short wordspace on nature, narrative poetry and log meditative works on nature written in blank verse. The Prelude is an autobiographical work and it describes the development of his ideas and his poetry as well as his changing political attitudes. The Excursion is a philosophical reflection on man, nature and society. The themes of his works and their language remain consistent throughout his production and respect the indications that Wordsworth himself set out in the preface of the lyrical ballads. Wordsworth poetry is the recollection of past memories and it urges from genuine feelings, in the preface he states that poetry should flow from emotions recollected in tranquility, focusing on these feelings rather than on poetique technique. Wordsworth was very interested in the relationship between the natural world and human consciousness: he didn’t want to record an objective observation of a natural phenomenon, but with his poems he wanted to explain the complex interaction between man and nature. He believed that man and nature are inseparable, in fact men don’t exist out of the natural world and they play an important part in it. In his view, it is also a source of joy who teaches man to love, to act in a moral way and it is a divine healing force.
- The primary can be experienced by every human being because it is linked to perceptions. It is an unconscious process that manifests itself through images which recall relevant past sensorial experiences.
- The secondary can be experienced only by the poet, where he dissolves the images linked to past experiences in order to recreate. The result of this process is the “new world” of the poet. The fancy is a mode of memory that is not creative so it is inferior to imagination. It is the poet’s logical faculty to create devices, like metaphors and similes, in order to blend various “ingredients”. Coleridge's view on nature is different from Wordsworth's, because the former did not view nature as moral guide or a source of consolation. It represented the awareness of the presence of the ideal in the real, not identified with the divine. Nature had an essential role in poetic creativity, because it stimulated the poet to find natural symbols that could reflect his emotions and feelings. The shapes and colors of nature represented and symbolized emotional and mental states.
THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner tells the story of a mariner who commits an act against nature by killing an albatross. At the beginning of the poem the mariner stops a wedding guest: he ‘cannot choose but hear’ a sad, mysterious story about the burden of the mariner’s guilt. The mariner expiates his sin by traveling around and telling the people he meets his story, in order to teach them love and respect for nature’s creatures. The mariner is unnaturally old, with skinny hands and ‘glittering eyes’. The sailors are ill-fated members of the ship carrying the mariner. The wedding guest is one of three people on their way to a wedding reception. After the Ancient Mariner’s story, he becomes both ‘sadder and... Wiser’. Death is embodied in a hulking form on the ghost ship. He plays dice with Life-in-Death and wins the lives of the sailors. Life-in-Death, embodied by a beautiful, ghostly woman who wins the Ancient Mariner’s soul playing dice and condemns him to a limbo-like living death. The atmosphere is mysterious and dream-like. This poem has been interpreted in different ways: the description of a dream, an allegory of the life of the soul from crime, through punishment, to redemption. A metaphor of man’s original sin in Eden or the poetic journey of Romanticism: The Mariner represents the poet and his guilt is the origin of poetry. There’s also a regret for a state of lost innocence caused by the Industrial Revolution.
GEORGE GORDON
BYRON
George Byron was born in 1788 in Dover, Kent. He began to write at Trinity College, but he really was an outlier among the Romantic poets, he was a celebrity and made contributions to Romanticism. In 1809 he set out on his Grand Tour of Spain, Portugal, Malta, Albania, Greece and the Middle East. He supported the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire and died in 1824, while preparing to lead Greek troops into battle. His life was a life of scandals, flamboyant, reckless, often in debts: he was clearly bisexual and had a love affair with his half-sister, Lady Caroline Lamb. He lived in many countries because he left England in a self-imposed exile. After his return to England in 1812, he published “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”. Byron didn’t reject the poetry of the Enlightenment and his inspiration was Alexander Pope, he uses satire to denounce the evils of society and a cynical attitude to political matters. He made fun of the “Lake Poets”, which he called Lakers. Liberty was very important for him and he took an active role in the fight for freedom with actions and investments. Even if he didn’t reject the poetry of the Enlightenment, his mood and choice of themes were Romantic. For the poet, Nature is not a source of consolation and joy, he gains no wisdom from nature. For him, it was only about the sublime, it doesn’t embody any theory or any message. He doesn’t idealize simple people or use a simple language. The Byronic Hero is a character still significant today, characterized by proud individualism. We can see that there are many versions of this character in his poetry, but the most famous one was the public image of himself as one. Because of that, people read his poetry as a self-portrait. A Byronic Hero is someone proud, moody, cynical, arrogant, who wants revenge but is also capable of love and affection; women cannot resist him, but he refuses their love most of the time. He is an anti-hero, world-weary (no longer enthusiastic about anything), charismatic, alienated from society, sexually attractive, haunted by the past and the love for a woman.
CHILDE HAROLD’S
PILGRIMAGE
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is divided into 4 cantos, united by the protagonist who wants knightwood. The first 2 canto are set in Spain, Greece, Portugal and Albania, the poet talks about the monuments and landscapes. The third canto talks about the human capacity to forget, creativity and the natural world. The fourth canto is set in Italy with the description of nature as the sublime and eternity.
These themes were also present in Austen's personal life. Born in 1775, she lived in the social circles found in her novels. Jane’s parents supported her education, and provided space for her to write and publish her work anonymously, even though writing didn’t provide much money. Although she had sparks of chemistry, she never married. Elements of her circumstances can be found in many of her characters: often intelligent women with witty, pragmatic personalities and rich inner lives. These heroines provide an entertaining anchor for their romantic narratives. Like the irreverent Elizabeth Bennet of “Pride and Prejudice”, whose devotion to her sisters’ love lives blinds her to a clumsy suitor. Or the iron-willed Anne Elliot in “Persuasion”, who chooses to remain unmarried after the disappearance of her first love and Elinor Dashwood, who fiercely protects her family at the cost of her own desaires in “Sense and Sensibility”. These women all encountered difficult decisions about love, filial and financial stability, and they resolved without sacrificing their values or their sense of humor. These characters are far from perfect, they often think they have all the answers and by telling the story from their perspective, Austen tricks the viewer into believing their heroine knows best; only to pull the rug from under the protagonist and the reader. In “Emma”, the titular character feels surrounded by dull neighbors and friends, who can’t hope to match her wit. The reader begins to agree, Emma is the only exciting character in this quiet neighborhood. Yet despite her swelling ego, Emma may not be as in control as she thinks, in life or love. Austen’s use of perspective makes these revolutions doubly surprising, blindsiding both Emma and her audience. But rather than diminishing her host of heroines, these flaws confirm the inconsistency of all human characters. Their complexity has kept Austen prominent on stage and screen, and make her work easily adaptable for modern sensibilities.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
Edgar Allan Poe’s image is not just instantly recognizable, but it’s also perfectly suited to his reputation: from the prisoner strapped under a descending pendulum blade, to a raven who refuses to leave the narrator’s chamber. Poe’s macabre and innovative stories of gothic horror have left a timeless mark on literature. He is considered one of the greatest American authors, even if horror was a popular genre of the period with many practitioners; Poe stood out thanks to his careful attention to form and style. As a literary critic, he identified two cardinal rules for the short story form: it must be short enough to read it in one sitting and every word must contribute to its purpose. By mastering these rules, Poe commands the reader's attention and rewards them with an intense and singular experience, what Poe called the “Unity of Effect”. Though often frightening, this effect goes far beyond fear: Poe’s stories use violence and horror to explore the paradoxes and mysteries of love, grief and guilt while resisting simple interpretations or clear moral messages. While they
often hint at supernatural elements, the true darkness they explore is the human mind and its propensity to self-destruction. In “The Tall-Tale Heart”, a ghastly murder is juxtaposed with the killer’s tender empathy towards the victim, a connection that soon returns to haunt him. The title character of “Ligeia” returns from the dead through the corpse of her husband’s second wife or, at least, the opium-addicted narrator thinks she does. And when the protagonist of “William Wilson” violently confronts a man he believes has been following him, he might just be staring at his own image in a mirror. Through his use of unreliable narrators, Poe turns readers into active participants who must decide when a storyteller might be misinterpreting or even lying about the events they’re relating. Although he’s best known for his short horror stories, Poe was actually one of the most versatile and experimental writers of the nineteenth century. He invented the detective story as we know it with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, followed by “The Mystery of Marie Roget” and “The Purloined Letter”. All three feature the original armchair detective C. Auguste Dupin, who uses his genius and unusual powers of observation and deduction to solve crime that baffle the police. Poe also wrote satires of social and literary trends, and hoaxes that in some cases anticipated science fiction. Those included an account of a balloon voyage to the moon, and a report of a dying patient put into a hypnotic trance so he could speak from the other side. Poe even wrote an adventure novel about a voyage to the South Pole and a treatise on astrophysics, all while he worked as an editor, producing hundreds of pages of book reviews and literary theory. An appreciation of Poe’s career wouldn’t be complete without his poetry: haunting and hypnotic. His best-known poems are songs of grief, or in his words, “mournful and never-ending remembrance”, also “The Raven”, in which the speaker projects his grief onto a bird who merely repeats a single sound, which made Poe famous. Despite literary success, Poe lived in poverty throughout his career and his personal life was often as dark as his writing. He was haunted by the loss of his mother and his wife, who both died of tuberculosis at the age of 24. Poe struggled with alcoholism and frequently antagonized other popular writers. Much of his fame came from posthumous, and very loose, adaptations of his work. And yet, if he could’ve known how much pleasure and inspiration his writing would bring to generations of readers and writers alike, it may have brought a smile to that famously brooding visage.
MARY SHELLEY AND FRANKENSTEIN
Mary Shelley was born in 1797, 10 days later her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died. In 1814, after a brave courtship, Mary elopes with the married poet Percy Shelley, and her father disowns her for several years. One year later, in 1815, her first daughter was born prematurely and died 13 days later.
THE VICTORIAN
AGE
Queen Victoria came to the throne at 18 in 1837 and reigned till 1901, she saw dramatic progress in science and economics and important social reforms. In 1840, she married prince Albert of Saxe-Cobra-Gotha, they had five children and their relationship was a model of respectability. He became Prince Consort and Victoria’s advisor. When he died, Victoria sank into depression in 1861, she wore black for the rest of her reign and rarely appeared in public. In memory of her beloved husband, she had the Albert Memorial built in London. The 1830s saw important social reforms: in 1832 the first reform act widened the right of vote to the middle classes and, in 1833, the factory act limited the working hours for children. The Poor Law Amendment Act, in 1834, created workhouses where the poor children could live for free in return for work, but they were hated for cruel conditions. A Second Reform Act, in 1867, widened the right to vote further, influenced by the chartist movement where a group of radicals had written a people’s charter, demanding more rights. The movement failed, but they influenced the widening of the franchise and the secret ballot became law 1872. A tragic potato famine in Ireland in 1845 brought many debts and mass emigration to america. It also persuaded the first prime minister, sir Roberto Peel, to abolish the corn laws in 1846. There were many causes such as the rise of population in 1845 and the dependence on potato crops. In 1851, a great exhibition organized by Prince Albert showed the world Britain’s industrial and economic progress. It was held in the crystal palace, a huge structure of glass in Hyde Park, which hosted more that fifteen thousand exhibitors. The money made was used to create several museums in London, the natural history museum, the science museum and the Victoria and Albert museum. The London work on the London underground began in 1860 and railways transformed the landscape and people’s lives. Workhouses were places where, often in return for board and lodging, employment was provided for: the poor, the orphans, the physically and mentally sick, the disabled, the elderly, unmarried mothers. The government, in the fear of encouraging laziness, made sure that people feared the workhouse and would do anything to keep out of it. Workhouses were designed to separate groups: people in the same family could meet during meals or in the chapel but they were not allowed to speak to each other; the official diets were so meager that they were described as a slow process of starvation. To protect the opium trade, Britain was involved in two opium wars against China from 1839 to 1860. The result was that Britain gained access to five Chinese ports and control of Hong Kong. In India, British troops put down a rebellion, the Indian mutiny, and took more direct control. Britain helped Italy gain independence from the Austrians and supported Turkey against russia. This led to the Crimean war, the
first with direct journalistic coverage; it is also famous for Florence Nightingale’s nursing organization of the wounded. During the reign of Queen Victoria, Great Britain ruled over a wide and powerful empire: an area of 4 million square miles and more than 400 million people. The Victorian Age was one of huge progress, but a moral hypocrisy. Great poverty existed alongside wealth, this victorian compromise meant that although religion was praised, they covered the injustice just below the surface. New philosophies and religious movements, evangelicalism emphasized moral conduct, Bentham’s utilitarianism was based on practical uses. This emphasis on reason was criticized by Dickens and Mill, who believed in progress through social reforms, education and art. Charles Darwin introduced the revolutionary theory of a revolution and natural selection in his book “On the Origins of Species by Means of Natural Selection” and British Catholics replied with the Oxford Movement, led by Newman returning to the tradition of their faith.
THE AMERICAN
CIVIL WAR
In the 19th century, America saw economic expansion, social change, interest in scientific discovery and inventions together with an extraordinary literary expression. Industrialization was well established in the north but the economy of the south was based on the vast plantation of tobacco and cotton using slaves. The population in the north was expanding rapidly with the influx of immigrants from Europe, while in the south there was little immigration and the rigid class distinction between plantation owners and about 4 million black slaves. After the 1830s, several northern states adopted emancipation and abolitionists attacked the exploitation of slaves. Northern abolitionists began to organize themselves as a political movement, the former Whig PArty became the Republican Party, demanding that slavery be excluded from all the territories of the Union. In 1860, the Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election and the 11 southern states seceded forming the confederate state of America under the presidency of Jefferson Davis. War followed when Lincoln refused to concede that any American state had the constitutional right to withdraw from the Union. The Civil War broke out in 1861 and lasted four years with six hundred and 25 thousand dead. Finally the northern troops defeated the confederates, five days later Lincoln was assassinated by a southern fanatic. The outcome was that United States would remain an invisible nation under a sovereign federal government, slavery was abolished. The abolition of slavery in 1865, didn’t grant the blacks equality and economic security, they were free but with no money or home. Some immigrated to the north but others remained in the south, there was resentment and violence in the racist movement in the Ku Klux Klan, which terrorized the blacks and their families. Black
