“The Romantic Age was an eclectic age. The Enlightenment was no
monolithic structure -- neither was Romanticism, however we define it. Ideas of
an age seldom exist as total systems. Our labels too easily let us forget that
past ideas form the context in which new ideas are developed and expressed.
Intellectuals do manage to innovate and their innovations are oftentimes not
always recombinations of what they have embraced in their education (Kreis).” The Romantic Era occurred when the world was changing in a myriad of
ways. The Enlightenment was beginning to lose momentum in light of the Age of
Revolution it spurred. Lingering effects of that more logically founded
movement still pervaded the works of the Romantic poets, such as the heavy classicism.
However France’s rocky attempt to follow America’s smoother- by comparison-
break from monarchy began to dissuade Europeans against rationality and into a
more subjective domain of temporal context. Romantic poets were
“exponents of the related form the Germans called Universalgeschichte—a philosophical scheme of the human past,
present, and predictable future—in both England and Germany during that
remarkable period of creativity, the three or four decades following the
outbreak of the French Revolution (Abrams 1).” This then led
to questions concerning the past, specifically regarding history. What
constitutes history? Who should have access to history? Doris Van de Bogart
said that Romantic individualism empowered and emancipated "ordinary
man", who "found for the first time in history that he had the right
to express his own opinions, to reveal his own emotions, and especially to
exercise his own imagination. Over the course of this semester, we have
continually returned to dialogue concerning how the Romantics reflected on the
past and -more importantly- why. The Romantic Poets deeply reflected on the
past in terms of all aspects of their world including societal history and reform as well as individual understanding and imagination.
(William Hilton's portrait of John Keats embodies reflecting on the past. He is musing, therefore the past that is the foundation for all thought is being employed by default. You can see Keats looking to the future here as well, illustrating the idea that it depends on the past.)
HISTORY
What constitutes history?
As previously stated, the romantic era was a time in
which history was being evaluated. After the Enlightenment brought preservation
of ancient civilizations as well as contemporary ones to the forefront of
importance, the academic world had to redefine history and put some
restrictions around the genre. The Romantic poets had to fight for their right
to have a say in history. The Noble Savage elaborates in her post, “Peacock’s
Grand Narrative,” stating that “the definition of history
changes in the period we are studying, and Peacock’s criticism seems to devalue
poetry that documents historical micro-moments and not epic events. This idea
that history could only be large-scale or individual has still not been
officially dealt with. Even my classmates differ on whether they value the
minority and obscurity in history. The Noble Savage continues saying, “And I’m
not sure how Wordsworth’s inability to “describe a scene under his own eyes
without putting into it the shadow of a Danish boy or the living ghost of Lucy
Gray” is not a historical account, even though it’s small and not the sweeping
tale of the end of a civilization.” On the other hand, when we covered the
novel, Castle Rackrent, a blogger
stated, “Who am I to care about an old Irish estate and its many turnovers into
new hands as decades unfold?” in the post, “A Great Regard of the Family: Point
of View.”
Who has access?
Perhaps
an even larger question concerns who has access to the creation and
dissemination of history. This stems from the duality of the culture at the
time. The Enlightenment stressed reason and, along that line, factual
credibility, but the Romantics stressed personal experience and emotion.
Therefore during the Romantic Era, poets were personalizing history and the
past in their works and being constantly criticized based on standards of a
movement that was phasing out. Every work created during this time was
dissected by contemporaries questioning the reliability of the literature. “Historical writings are, historically, very easy to manipulate,
and the importance of understanding the past relies then on what those writing
the history are willing to divulge,” the Noble Savage pointed out another post, “The Editor, and
Irish Life for the Ignorant English Reader.” For example, when we discussed Persuasion, we noted how easy it was for
Mr. Elliot to alter his family history in the Baronetage- with the twitch of
the hand. Probably the most obvious issue with the reliability of history is
that it is monopolized by the male gender. Women are delegated to as to what
they are allowed to learn, and supposing they were allowed to study whatever
they should like, it was only to be wrongfully fed the ideals of men, not the
truth of the matter. In a post by S-Cat, “Anne’s Blooming Moment- A Moment of
Feminism,” she aptly asserts, “Captain Harville's chief argument
that history is against women is quickly countered by Anne's assertion that all
writers of history are men. Persuasion traditionally falls into the hands of
men via literature and history; the women are victim to men's opinions and
viewpoints of history and everyday life because what will be written will be
assumed to be "fact." Which brings us to how the past is connected to
Reform during the Romantic Era.
FEMINIST REFORM
(The women's reform movement may not have made much headway during this time period, but its large following paved the way for the advances of the later centuries. Here is a depiction of women that straddle the line between social expectation and feminine agency. They are on the cusp of two realms, interior and exterior. It is interesting to note the woman on the left seems to embody women that give the sex a bad reputation, while the one on the right seems to be more feminist.)
Time
is a never-ending entity, and perhaps it is because of this fluidity that when
reflecting on the past, ideals of the future soon take hold. A definitive way
in which reflections on the past are used is to reform. We can look at the past
and analyze the ways in which improvements may be made whether societal or
personal. One of the most major reform movements was that of the female
education. As previously stated, men had controlled the history of the world up
until the Romantic Era. They also controlled society, for their books are what
teach women to be seen and not heard, learn accomplishments, and leave the rest
to the “stronger” sex. Writers of this time began to warn of the inhibiting of
an entire gender without which society would crumble. Libby concisely points
out the detriment in this situation in her blog post, “Wollstonecraft.” “Strength
of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the desire
of establishing themselves, the only way women can rise in the world-by marriage.
Wollstonecraft argues that this process of acquiring knowledge is cyclical in
nature, which is why women need to be educated before they are mothers so they
can pass on the knowledge to their children and the cycle can end.” Not only
are women being hurt by this norm but so are the future generations of men.
Women loudly published their radical works in the hopes of change. C. pointed
out Hemans clever inclusion of an excerpt of her own history at the beginning
of Wife of Asdrubal in his post
entitled “Ancient Universal History,” he thinks the choice “speaks to the
unbalanced education received by men over women.”
UNDERSTANDING TIME
The
universal desire to make sense of or justify the events of the past encompasses
the works of the Romantic poets and philosophers. They relied not on histories
exactly, but the imaginative version of truth that existed in their mind once scholastic
histories were digested. Carly K elaborates in “Sense of Transportation in
Keats” stating, “his poems… portray a
sense of mental movement through the act of imagination. This is particularly
evident in “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” in which he takes a cerebral
journey through language into the epic landscape of Homer’s ancient Greece.
Keats is transported within his imagination back to ancient Greece, when these
pieces were constructed. Keats takes us on a full-circle mental journey
through his poems, which allows us to explore how our own imaginations respond
to the images he presents for us.” By taking this journey facilitated by Keats,
readers are able to glean an understanding of the past they have no realistic
access to. The Romantics were not singularly enrapt with the
ancient past. The
very more recent history of the chaotic French Revolution frankly frightened
most of the primarily English group of artists, and they were baffled at how a
man of obscure beginnings such as Napoleon could rise to a position that so
shook the world. Poems such as “I Griev’d for Buonaparte” and “Ode to
Napoleon…” imagine the possible upbringing of the emperor in effort to justify
his glory. Byron pushes further in “Ode…” in his efforts to understand the man
who was Napoleon by laying him next to other powerful figures in history. Kat
points out in her post, “Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte,” how these figures had all
suffered terrible falls. This sets up a dichotomy of before and after shots
that echoes the idea of searching the past for its connection to the future.
Kat illustrates this idea with this passage:
'Tis done---but yesterday a King!
And armed
with Kings to strive---
And now thou
art a nameless thing:
So
abject---yet alive!
IMAGINING THE PAST
A
memory can “take you back in time” but it is impossible to relive a moment in
its authenticity. However a memory is history cast through the prism of the
mind. It is evident that the argument as to whether or not the Romantics were
historians is not black and white. Romantics captured moments in time, but
their imaginative treatment of those moments rendered the credibility of their
work questionable as mentioned previously. An emotional example of this is
explored in “The Frenzied Playboy.” Brandon points to the metamorphosis of the
memory of a lover in Byron’s poem “When We Two Parted”:
As Byron cycles through the grief and sadness described above, he
comes to blame his lover for the separation, even to resent them. His
progression of emotion seems unhealthy, fostering sentiments of bitterness and
hate. His reversal of the roles of pop star and fan becomes a commentary on the
status of celebrity and the foolishness of admiring it.
How could you trust these glimpses into individual history the
Romantics were known for to be true if they could evolve? In “Absense Makes the
Heart Grow… Fonder?” I discuss how Mary Robinson’s memoir similarly goes back
into her past and imagines it in a different light. Her romanticized
memories bring to attention William Hazlitt's essay, "Why Distant Objects
Please.” He declares, “Whatever is placed beyond the reach of sense and
knowledge, whatever is imperfectly discerned, the fancy pieces out at its
leisure.” Robinson recounts the story of her birth, exaggerating the
circumstances and demonstrating how they followed her throughout her life:
“The wind whistled round the dark pinnacles of the minister tower, and
the rain beat in torrents against the casements of her chamber. Through life
the tempest has followed my footsteps; and I have in vain looked for a short
interval of repose from the perseverance of sorrow.”
IN CONCLUSION
The past is vitally important to humanity. Over this past semester our course has covered the span of the Romantic Era from 1780-1830, and there have been many differing ideologies presented from differing factions of scholars and artists. However the Romantics would indeed agree. They were intensely aware of the past and how it pervades all aspect of a possible future. It must not be forgotten in the myriad of historical dilemmas and contemporary conundrums to sort out that above all it is the individual who rises from it all. The Romantics obsessed their entire lives over self-discovey, the unique circumstances of the individual, and the purification of the soul. They strove to use reflection into the past as a tool for the illustration of their ideologies.
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Works Referenced
Abrams, M.H. Natural
Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature. New
York: W.W. Norton Company, Inc., 1973. 1-5. eBook.
Kreis, Steven.
"Lecture 16: The Romantic Era." The History Guide: Lectures on
Modern European
Intellectual History. historyguide.org, 04 AUG 2009. Web. 26 Apr 2012.
Overview of characteristics of Romantic Literature:
Romantic
Chronology:
Image
1:
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2:
http://www.users.muohio.edu/mandellc/projects/mclainjl/
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