I need help with the Romantic Era/Romanticism?

[slimshady]

Hi everyone,
For an English task, I have to create an anthology about a certain theme of romanticism.
I have chosen to go with 'follow your heart' or 'emotions over reason' and so far have created a tumblr blog with pictures of "Mulan" and other movies. The thing that I'm struggling with, however, is finding poems by Romantic Era authors that can go under the 'follow your heart' category. I am hoping to find poems by Wordsworth, Shelley, William Blake, Coleridge, or Keats as these are the most well-know authors of that particular period. I have looked at many poems so far and none of them seem to have this theme, so I was wondering if anyone could help me find some extracts, poems, or quotes by romantic poets that can go under the 'follow your heart' category. All help will be greatly appreciated. Also, do you think Mr Darcy from Pride and Prejudice could fit under this category?

[mal4mac]

So many novels have that theme! I'm reading the excellent "Woman in White" by Wilkie Collins, at the moment, which has an interesting twist in that the heroine *doesn't* follow her heart, leading to lots of problems. The "not following her heart" theme climaxes early in the novel, so you can read the first few chapters and see if it might fit your anthology, without reading all 700 pages (though I defy you not to get hooked!) It's some time since I read P & P but I think it does fit the theme, though Darcy takes a long time to reveal his heart.

[MorpheusSandman]

Pride and Prejudice is not really a good example of Romanticism. Austen belonged more to the satirically rich tradition that preceded Romanticism. As for your chosen theme, though many associate Romanticism with "emotion over reason," I think you find such a thing much less explicitly expressed within the poetry from that era. Perhaps the most common formulation of this ideology was Keats' Negative Capability, but it was in a letter, not his poetry. You could read his Ode on a Grecian Urn as representing that theme symbolically, where all of his "questioning" leads to the conclusion that "beauty is truth, truth beauty" and how that's all one needs to know on Earth.

I was running through my head most of the major poems from that era and none come immediately to mind that express that theme. I'm sure there's plenty I've read and forgot (I've read the entire works of Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, Byron, and Blake, and all early Wordsworth), but none of the "major" works come to mind. Blake's Auguries of Innocence does contain the famous couplet: "If the sun and moon should doubt, / They'd immediately go out." but that whole poem is basically a collection of aphorisms, so the whole poem isn't about that.

[mal4mac]

Pride and Prejudice is not really a good example of Romanticism. Austen belonged more to the satirically rich tradition that preceded Romanticism.

But surely Darcy is a romantic hero? I agree that social satire is more present and obvious throughout the novel, but Austen did read Byron and Scott, and is too great a novelist to completely ignore Romanticism. Likewise you find romantic strands in George Eliot, Dickens, and Wilkie Collins.

I also couldn't immediately think of poems that express that theme. Maybe the subject has too many prosaic elements? In Victorian novels, you get a lot of back story, often involving the push for the hero/heroine to get married to someone of a similar social standing, rather than following her heart. "Class", "inheritance", "lawyers", and "land titles" are not great subjects for romantic poetry.

Maybe the theme gets covered better before the Romantic era? Romeo & Juliet is the obvious example. Shakespeare avoids all that Victorian bureaucracy, and increases the romanticism, by having two warring families keeping the lovers apart. In fact, Shakespeare deals with the theme so well, in this and many other plays, that perhaps the Romantics were too afraid to take him on. Or couldn't deal with the theme well enough, by comparison, so that even Morpheus can't think of a good example.

[kiki1982]

The main point of Romanticism is not, I don't think, 'follow your heart', but how feelings play a part in the decisions we make. Admittedly, most writings were preoccupied with love and marriage, but that came largely from a tradition where people married primarily for the sake of money. Love was secondary and was a good bonus. The Romanticists explored the aspect of love and how important it was in a relationship.
You see that in P&P in the background, but the major subject is how easily Lizzie goes along with the presumptions of others.
You see this disapproval of money-less marriages all through Austen's work although she seems to soften towards the end: in Persuasion the mother of the bride-to-be laments the idea that her daughter is marrying without real monetary prospects, but then considers that if they love each other they might as well make a go of it. Mansfield Park laments the marriage of Fanny Price's mother to a penniless sea captain all the way through, detailing the squalor her parents live in when she finally returns. Anne Eliot only marries Wentworth when he's got money. After all, he has sold booty from conquered warships worth some £25,000 and his brother-in-law is an admiral in the navy, so his career can only advance. She didn't marry him (was talked out of it) the years prior to that when he was still a young up and coming captain. OK, they both pine after each other, but life in the face of poverty was demeaning. Mr Bennet regrets having married his wife purely because she was beautiful. Willoughby decides not to marry penniless Marianne because his aunt has cut him off, believing he was playing with Marianne's feelings again.

The subject of Romanticism is more the emotions that play in the decisions we make. The question is what will prevail: reason (like during the Enlightenment) or emotions. Although reason told Werther from Goethe's novel that Lotte was engaged to another he persisted in pining after her and look what happened: he killed himself. That's not the way to go. At the point in Jane Eyre where Jane is faced with Rochester as a liar, she decides to leave because she would not be able to resist. Admittedly, she doesn't forget him and he doesn't forget her, but they only give in to these feelings once the obstacles are out of the way (Rochester's domineering ways have been tempered and his wife is dead). So initially reason pretty much wins the battle. In Ivanhoe both Ivanhoe and Bois Guilbert pine after the Jewess Rebecca, but both know their love must platonic at best, because she is Jewish, so nothing happens. In The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Huntingdon the abuser seduces Helen who insists on marriage from a follow your heart perspective, despite all the remonstrances of her aunt. She flees from him in the end and finds love with another eventually, but it is clear that feelings are not always a good guide.
The novel that deals with this issue the best in non-amorous terms that springs to mind right away is Trollope's Warden. Here is a curate who is the warden of an almshouse for 20 poor men who receive some £20 a year each from a legacy left some time during the Middle Ages. Noble cause, you say. No doubt if the warden himself wasn't getting £800 for his wardenship, more than the upkeep of the poor men actually costs. Admittedly, he is a nice man and everything, but he has no moral right to the money really. The local doctor (a young man in love with the curate's daughter) starts to question this set-up and alerts the press, but the curate himself (a lovely modest man who only wants to do good) is caught in the middle. He likes his job, but he too understands that he has no moral right to the money. His son-in-law the local archdeacon, forbids him to give his job up, but the curate persists, only he will face poverty if he does give it up, having only the income of his parish which is about £150 a year, enough to get one room above a shop. Matters are confounded by the fact that his daughter too is in love with the doctor, the very man who gets her father into trouble. In the end, MAJOR SPOILER she gets to doctor to back down because of the grief he is indirectly causing her and they marry, but the curate does face poverty as he concludes, against the massive pressure his son-in-law the archdeacon is putting on him, that he indeed has no moral right to the money for the wardenship and thus leaves his beloved house and job and the poor and infirm men he cares about for one room in the highstreet. Admittedly, he can ask both his daughters for help, they will not hesitate to give it to him if he needs it, but still he is not independent. MAJOR SPOILER OVER. Here again, the conflict between what he wants (a life of quiet contentedness and ease) and what others want or is proper.But then what woud his feelings be if he were to stay? There is a feeling of sadness where before Romanticism Reason would have made sure there was a reward in store, i can't help think.

It is a constant problem for Romantic characters (and by extension sometimes Realist and Naturalist ones) what they have to do: go with society and generally accepted (unwritten) rules or go with their heart and what the consequences of that will be and how this would influence what they feel in turn.

[Ecurb]

Septimus Harding rules! One of my favorite scenes in all literature is in "The Last Chronicle of Barset". Mr. Harding is an old man, by then (and has starred in a couple of other novels in the series since The Warden, where his modesty and Christian virtue lead readers to admire him). He lives with his daughter (the same one mentioned in kiki's post) and her husband (a different one than mentioned in kiki's post). In his youth, he loved to play the cello. But now that he is old, his hands no longer have the skill they once did, so he never plays. However, sometimes, when the rest of the family is away, he sneaks up to the attic and takes his old cello out of its case and looks at it and touches its strings. Obviously, my description doesn't do the scene justice -- but perhaps it will remind some who have read "Last Chronicle" of its poignancy, one of many examples of Trollope's talent.

[kiki1982]

Oh, I'm working on the series (at the third one Dr Thorne now). That brought a little tear to my eye and I haven't read it yet. I'll definitely keep on going to reach that last one.

I found that love scene with Harding's daughter in Barchester Towers so beautifully written. It really made you weak at the knees.
Trollope's great talent. :)

[cafolini]

Excuse me, very important development. President Bush, the elder, appears as witness to marriage of long time lesbian friends in Maine. The Bush family appears next to him as he signs the license.

[JBI]

Romanticism is not about follow your heart. It is more along the lines of a change from "I think therefore I am" to "I feel therefore I am." The focus of understanding in the world of the Romantic moved from the rational understanding through meditation (reason) to the world being understood through feelings and personal experience. If thought before then is dominated by the Platonic notions of truth through rational thought, and philosophy - the power of the mind - Romanticism rather contradicts this, and says thought is and contemplation are nothing to "Feeling" and impulse.

[JCamilo]

I do not know well what "follow your heart" means. Being passionate? Acting on impulses? In love?

[kiki1982]

Romanticism is not about follow your heart. It is more along the lines of a change from "I think therefore I am" to "I feel therefore I am." The focus of understanding in the world of the Romantic moved from the rational understanding through meditation (reason) to the world being understood through feelings and personal experience. If thought before then is dominated by the Platonic notions of truth through rational thought, and philosophy - the power of the mind - Romanticism rather contradicts this, and says thought is and contemplation are nothing to "Feeling" and impulse.

That was more or less what I was thinking of. I was never good at 'short' ;).

[MorpheusSandman]

In the intervening day I did remember (and then proceeded to wonder how in the world I forgot) that most of Blake's "middle period" is dominated by the "emotion over reason" theme, but it's wrapped up in his elaborate, personal, mythological allegory. In Blake's mythology, reason, law, science, (social) order, etc. are summed up in his character Urizen who tries to order the chaos of the world after the "fall." Likewise, within that mythology, Orc represents emotion, feeling, etc., the very thing that Urizen has to "chain underground" to prevent him from overthrowing the order he's worked to create. Especially in Blake's Continental Prophecies (America and Europe) he presents Orc as the revolutionary power (emotion) that's sweeping those nations and overthrowing the establishments. It was only later that Blake incorporated Los, or the imaginative power that he felt needed to shape Orc (emotion) before such revolutions could take place.


But surely Darcy is a romantic hero? I agree that social satire is more present and obvious throughout the novel, but Austen did read Byron and Scott, and is too great a novelist to completely ignore Romanticism....

Maybe the theme gets covered better before the Romantic era? Romeo & Juliet is the obvious example....I'm not entirely sure what would make Darcy a romantic hero because we mostly only see him through the eyes/perception of Elizabeth. The point of P&P is how Elizabeth's "pride and prejudice" has been unknowingly shaped by her society, and she initially projects these qualities onto Darcy. I think many people mistakenly read Austen as a romantic writer because her stories deal with romances in a vaguely modern sense (I mean "love stories"), but the real point of all her novels are the satire through romance, or perhaps more accurately, satire through the social ordering of romance.

You say Austen read Byron, but Byron was also more a product of the preceding generation's enlightenment. Early Byron is mostly in imitation of Pope and Dryden, and later on he used those forms to satirize the romantic ideals of Coleridge and Wordsworth. Don Juan, his masterpiece, is almost a walking paradox in being a very romantic epic that parodies romanticism. So it would depend on WHAT Byron Austen had read. Another thing to keep in mind is that Austen directly satirized this "emotionalism" of Romanticism in Sense & Sensibility, where you have the "romantic" mother and younger daughter, Marianne, whom have to be "guarded" by the "sensible" Elinor who sees through their romantic delusions. In that book, Austen uses Cowper as a stand-in for romanticism, which is more obscure to us today, but he was an enormous influence on Wordsworth and Coleridge. kiki mentioned Jane Eyre above, and that would be a much better example. In fact, that kind of "Gothic fiction" was a staple of Romanticism (Wuthering Heights is another example) that Austen ALSO parodied in Northanger Abbey.

So, given all the above, I just don't see Austen as a romantic writer much at all.

[kiki1982]

Austen and pure Romanticism, I can't see it either.

Without all the references Morpheus has so kindly put forward, but I think Davies' adaptation from 1995 made Darcy into a romantic hero. Davies did base this on other literature of the time, so it's not unauthentic. You can see shreds of Darcy himself in the novel (pacing and things all betray his feelings), but he is not the foremost object of the novel. It is Lizzie's (and everyone's) unfair treatment of him that is really the object. And who knows why Austen made him fidget? Jane's feelings too are almost betrayed and she suffers greatly.Lyhia's elopement is also a mark of too much sensibility and too little realism, for the future and the immediate present.
But I agree that Austen wasn't the one to argue in favour of sensibility: Marianne, as has already been said, has her feelings betrayed, by coincidence, but she nonetheless has to become a little bit less feeling for her own good. Benwick (Persuasion) languishes about his late fiancée) and finally meets someone else, to the fiancée's brother's initial regret. Over-the-top reactions to things don't sit well either with Austen: General Tilney is told off by Austen for having kicked out Catherine in such an uncivil manner, merely because someone had made him believe (due to his own faulty judgement) that she had a fortune for his son. His son Henry is told off for telling his father to go swing with his controlling nature once his father tells him to forget Catherine. The over-sensitive Miss Thorpe (?) who calls everything the best 'in the world' is also an object of mockery. Indeed the whole novel mocks the heart flutters of early Romanticism. Mansfield Park doesn't only highlight the pitfalls of a disadvantageous marriage for love, in one of the last chapters a character elopes, another follow-you-heart thing that isn't the thing to do. Not to mention that Edmund's feelings are betrayed as well by an unworthy object, which he is initially pretty gutted about.
In S&S too, Edward Ferrars bears the problems of a secret he has (I won't say what because it's a spoiler), committed out of feeling too, no doubt.
The only novel where sensibility maybe wins it over realism is Emma where all three pairs: Frank Churchill and his girl, Emma and Knightley and Harriet and her farmer get to a good end, which was determined from the start. They all get what they want, despite the few detours they have to make to get there. Otherwise, there is not much in the way of such positiveness in Austen. All her characters find love, but they also find approved love, which is often not the one they initially want.

All in all, I think Austen is a realist first and then comes sensibility. Mind you, she was living in a world where this sensibility was over-the-top, not like later Romanticism. The Sturm und Drang that swept the literary world with Goethe's Werther was excessive and didn't stay long, because things were pretty much unrealistic and plays unplayable, due to the emotion, but also because they moved to such outlandish places that they were difficult to play. It's also a case of such excessiveness that you start to doubt whether these characters are at all normal. I remember reading Werther again when I was an adult (as opposed to a teenager of 18) and admittedly, I felt that he was a drama queen, felt slightly uncomfortable with it all. Later Romanticism (what we regard as Romanticism really, because Sturm und Drang only ever took off in Germany, maybe you could put Byron's works like Child Harold Pilgrimage etc. in there, but he's about the only poet that could qualify I think) calms down a lot and highlights people's feelings, but not as a main subject. In English lit it's society and morality mainly, in France it's the changes that society went through and the money economy,

[MorpheusSandman]

kiki, I think you undersell the "detour" the characters make in Emma. Yes, it more or less ends well, but the meat of the book is Emma being a major victim of the Dunning-Kruger Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect) where she massively over-estimates her abilities in matchmaking and can't see the harm she's doing in the process, or how her fantasies and imagination are coloring her judgments and perceptions of what's really going on. Many consider Emma Austen's supreme masterpiece for just how much she buries the satire and reality underneath the surface of Emma's perceptions. We are, essentially, "locked in" to Emma's perspective, and we tend to glimpse the reality of the situation less than in her other novels. A cinematic equivalent would be David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, where the entire film is structured around the protagonist's dreams (where she symbolically rearranges her life), and then her waking memories and distortions of her own life. It because difficult to separate what's real from what the protagonist is (mis)perceiving. Austen makes it similarly difficult for us (readers) in Emma.

Byron's Child Harold would, I think, be one of the best, early, English representations of Sturm und Drang, but I also feel Byron tempered it somewhat in the later volumes. It became more of a meditative piece on culture and history and less a bildungsroman that it initially started out as. It's probably no accident that both Byron and Goethe were mutual admirers. Byron's Manfred is nearly a remake of the first part of Goethe's Faust, and both are masterpieces of Romanticism's Supernatural/Gothic genre. Byron's Cain could also be seen as a Supernatural/Gothic version of Paradise Lost. For all of Byron's imitations of the past, I tend to think he's at his best (outside Don Juan) in those works.

[kiki1982]

Oh, no, no, I am aware that Emma deludes herself and others massively, but merely speaking about feelings and disillusions in that respect, Emma is her only novel where people essentially don't really get disappointed in the object of their love. Emma doesn't know she loves Knightley and he doesn't know he loves her until it is almost too late, but essentially, all those pairs' feelings are honoured by a match in the end. That is not the case in any other novel (apart from P&P maybe). Maybe Fanny Price is one who came close to disillusion in that respect (her object wasn't interested because she was too obvious), but in every novel there is at least one pair that gets not to be for various reasons. Callousness, avariciousness, unworthiness, other characters' actions or whatever. The point is that none of that happens in Emma, although she tries her hardest and she does cause much pain with it. Of course that is not the main theme and that's why it is such a great novel. One of her best, indeed.