英国文学史期末复习指南.doc

Romanticism in England 1. The Historical Background 2. The literary trends *****3、Romanticism A movement that flourished in literature, philosophy, music and art in western culture during most of the nineteenth century, beginning as a revolt against classicism. There have been many varieties of Romanticism in many different times and places. Many of the ideas of English Romanticism were first expressed by the poets, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 2.2 Romantic Movement The Romantic Movement expressed a more or less negative attitude toward the existing social and political conditions that came with industrialization and the growing importance of the bourgeoisie. The Romantics, who were deeply immersed in the most violent phase of the transition from decadent feudal societies to the fundamental in humanity of the economic, capitalist economy, saw both the corruption and injustice of the social and political forces of capitalism. They felt that the society strong reaction against the dominant modes of thinking of the 18th –century writers and philosophers. They saw man essentially as an individual in the solitary state. They emphasized the special of each individual’s mind. Thus, Romanticism actually constitutes a change of direction from attention to the outer world of social civilization to the inner world of the spirit, In essence it designates a literary and philosophical theory which tends to see the individual as the very center of all life and all experience. 2.6 Lake Poets Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey have often been mentioned as the Lake School or揕akers攂ecause they lived in the lake district in the northwestern part of England. The three traversed the same path in politics and in poetry, beginning as radicals and closing as conservatives. William Wordsworth（1770-1850） William Wordsworth, （1770-1850）the representative poet of the early romanticism, was born in a lawyer’s family at Cockermouth, Cumber. He is considered the leader of “