Contextualization (S.T.C) Copy

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834)

HISTORY

  • Continuous development of the British Empire;
  • The War with France (1778-1783): dominion over world markets and trade routes.
  • The French Revolution (1789-1799).

ECONOMY AND SOCIETY

Three social classes:

  • Landowners and aristocracy;
  • Businessmen and industrialists;
  • Masses.

The Agricultural and Industrial revolutions transform Britain into a highly industrialized urban society;

The colonies became a source of cheap raw materials;

Most people lived and worked in dreadful conditions. The idyllic world of nature and fantasy, depicted in literature, became an antidote to the reality of life in the city.

IDEOLOGY AND CULTURE:

Romanticism is regarded as a reaction against the scientific and rational Age of the Enlightenment;

Triumph against classicism:

RomanticismClassicism
Imagination
Spontaneity
Originality
Emotional self-expression		Order
Restraint
Objectivity

Announced by the Pre-Romanticism of the 18th century:

  • The Gothic novel (exploration of the irrational);
  • J.J Rousseau (philosopher): questions reason and exalts man’s emotions and imagination;
  • Kant (philosopher): questions the validity of science;
  • “Sturm und Drang”- German literary movement which revolted against literary conventions, believed in the cult of the genius and regarded nature as man’s spiritual environment.

The manifesto of British Romanticism was the preface to “Lyrical Ballads” by William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge, which stated that:

  • The language of poetry should be simple “the real language used by men”;
  • The subject of poetry should be “incidents and situations from common life”;
  • The poet’s imagination can reveal the inner truth of common things;
  • Poetry is considered: “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility” (W. Wordsworth).

Literary themes:

  • Nature;
  • Imagination;
  • Love;
  • Childhood;
  • The past.

THE AUTHOR AND HIS WORK

  • Poet, critic, philosopher of Romanticism, and theologian;
  • Part of the 1st generation of Romantic poets;
  • Political Radical during the French Revolution.

Notable works:

“Lyrical Ballads” (1798) in collaboration with Wordsworth

Poems:

  • “Kubla Khan” (opium-vision poem, inspired by a dream);
  • “Christabel”;
  • “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”.

Poetic criticism – “Biographia Literaria”

Înapoi