The Emergence of Romanticism and the Theme of Nature
Romanticism is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution. It was partly a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature, and was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature.
Romanticism is a response to neo-Classicism (or the Age of Reason) and in England it lasted from 1789 to 1832. Historians often see the rise of Romanticism connected with the Industrial Revolution, or with the American War of Independence and the French Revolution.
The Industrial Revolution
The term ‘Industrial Revolution’ was first popularized by Arnold Toynbee (1852-83) to describe England’s economic development from 1760 to 1840, but it is not possible to fix this period of time exactly. The term generally means the development of improved spinning and weaving machines, James Watt’s steam engine, the railway locomotive and the factory system. But there was a long series of fundamental, technological, economic, social and cultural changes which, taken together, constitute the Industrial Revolution. It must be seen more as a process than as a period of time (not revolution, but evolution).
The Industrial Revolution brought two kinds of changes, technological and socio-economic cultural changes. The technological changes included the use of new raw materials (iron, steel), new energy sources coal, the steam engine, electricity, petroleum and the internal combustion engine), the invention of new machines (spinning jenny, power loom), new organization of work (factory system), important developments in transportation and communication (steam locomotive, steamship, automobile, airplane, telegraph, radio)."These technological changes made possible a tremendously increased use of natural resources and the mass production of manufactured goods’’.
The non-industrial changes included agricultural improvements, economic changes (wider distribution of wealth), political changes (new political innovations corresponding to the needs of an industrialized society), sweeping social changes (growth of cities, development of working-class movements, the emergence of new patterns of authority, cultural transformations of a broad range.
The worker acquired new skills, his relationship to his work changed. He became a machine operator, subject to factory discipline. Finally there was a psychological change: man’s confidence in his ability to use resources and to master nature was heightened.
The French Revolution
‘French Revolution’ means the movement in France, between 1787 and 1799, which reached its first climax in 1789 (Revolution of 1789). The events in France gave new hope to other revolutionaries in Europe. All who wanted changes in other countries too, viewed the Revolution with sympathy. Revolutionary clubs were founded and there were demonstrations in the streets in many European countries. The killing of Robbespierre was a very important date for the other European movements.
English political philosophers were deeply influenced by the French Revolution, Thomas Paine for example. In 1787 Thomas Paine (1737-1809) left for England, but after the outbreak of the French Revolution he became deeply involved in it. Paine supported the French Revolution and defended it against the attacks by Edmund Burke. Because of a book that opposed the monarchy in England he was to be arrested, but after having been elected to the National Convention, he was already on his way to France. But 1793 under Robespierre he was arrested, because he had voted against the execution of the dethroned king Louis XVI. William Wordsworth (1770-1850) first viewed the revolution with sympathy too, but later under Robespierre and his reign of terror he was more and more disgusted with it and its violent excesses.
Here, we can say that the ideologies and events of the French Revolution laid the background from which Romanticism emerged. The confines of the Industrial Revolution also had their influence on Romanticism, which was in part an escape from modern realities; indeed, in the second half of the nineteenth century, "Realism" was offered as a polarized opposite to Romanticism. Romanticism elevated the achievements of what it perceived as misunderstood heroic individuals and artists that altered society. It also legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority which permitted freedom from classical notions of form in art. There was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability, in the representation of its ideas.
Romanticism and Nature
Nature meant many things to the Romantics. As suggested above, it was often presented as itself a work of art, constructed by a divine imagination, in illustrative language. For example, throughout "Song of Myself," Whitman makes a practice of presenting commonplace items in nature such as "ants," "heap'd stones," and "poke-weed" as containing divine elements, and he refers to the "grass" as a natural "hieroglyphic," "the handkerchief of the Lord."Romantics consider "nature" as the antithesis of inherited and institutionalized practices of thought, self-alienated ways of making sense and assigning values and priorities. They also see it as a substitute for traditional religion. By the mid-Victorian Period, "doubt" becomes endemic to the whole middle class. Religion is a source or moral knowledge, a source of faith that the world is intelligible. Moreover, Romantic "nature" is a vehicle for self-consciousness. The Romantics' preoccupation with natural phenomena amounts to a search for the true self, for one's real identity. For example, Thoreau's Walden Pond: "the wilderness is the salvation of the world." Nature makes people know what they truly are, what god wants them to be. In addition, nature is a source of healthy feelings. It is therapy for a diseased and heart. Humans can discover emotional health in nature. Such health leads to moral and spiritual clarity.
Besides, nature also is a provocation to a state of imagination. Sensation leads to imaginative vision for instance, the poem, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud." The speaker is traveling through nature when something stops him. He becomes Geoffrey Hartman's "halted traveler." What stops him? "a host of golden daffodils." Notice the Miltonic, biblical connotations of the word, "host." In this poem, sensation (the perception of the daffodils) transforms itself into vision. Romantic "nature" also is an expressive language. As in "The Solitary Reaper," natural images provide us with a way of thinking about human feelings and the self. So the natural image is at the same time an expressive one. (For example, if a tree can survive a great storm, the person who perceives it can survive his or her own trials.) Wordsworth uses mimetic language to describe or imitate nature. But at the same time, his mimetic imagery expresses something about the speaker's reaction. "The Solitary Reaper," for example, is about the speaker's emotional reaction to the Reaper's song: the poem's natural images represent an overflowing mind.
Moreover, particular perspectives with regard to nature varied considerably nature as a healing power, nature as a source of subject and image, nature as a refuge from the artificial constructs of civilization, including artificial language the prevailing views accorded nature the status of an organically unified whole. It was viewed as "organic," rather than, as in the scientific or rationalist view, as a system of "mechanical" laws, for Romanticism displaced the rationalist view of the universe as a machine (e.g., the deistic image of a clock) with the analogue of an "organic" image, a living tree or mankind itself. At the same time, Romantics gave greater attention both to describing natural phenomena accurately and to capturing "sensuous nuance"--and this is as true of Romantic landscape painting as of Romantic nature poetry. Accuracy of observation, however, was not sought for its own sake. Romantic nature poetry is essentially poetry of meditation.
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