The Romantic Age (25 фев 1780 г. – 2 окт 1830 г.)

Описание:

Romantics were affected by the French revolution, reacting to it first with enthusiam, then desillusion after the Terror.

literature engaged with all the social issues of the time
-slavery: Hannah More's 'Slavery: a Poem' (1788)
-the rights of women: Mary Wollstonecraft
-reform of working conditions: Robert Owen's 'A New View of Society' (1813)
-for a fairer society: Thomas Holcroft, Robert Bage, William Godwin

period of profound change: industrialization (Blake's 'dark Satanic mills')
One possible response was to leave the city for nature, which could help man fulfil himself and find truth in hos own imagination and feelings.
Reaction against Augustan neo-classicism, with its rational, scientific approches and instead a celebration of emotions and intuition. Rejecting Locke's ideas, the romantic believed that the creative powers of imationation could change and regenerate the social order. Such a reaction explains their interest in forms of rebellion or in escape from contemporary society: the irrational and the supernatural; the figures of rebels and outcast (Manfred, Prometheus); children (innocent and still capable of change); travelling and wandering: exoticism.

Turner's work: man seems dwarfed by the elements