Romanticism and AestheticismMaking the connection

Romanticism

• Reaction to Enlightenment (reason was the source of legitimacy and authority)

• Poetry emphasized intuition over reason• Most of the writing took place from 1789-1824• Response to political repression from war with

France (Napoleonic Wars 1803-1815)• Romantic poetry emphasized intuition over

reason and pastoral over urban• Translating emotive responses into poetry• “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”

Romantic Poets

• William Blake

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• Lord Byron

• William Wordsworth

• John Keats

• Percy Shelley

• *You should look up biographical information about each author

Victorian Aestheticism

• Emphasized aesthetic values over moral and social themes

• Occurred between 1868-1901

• Walter Pater – life needed to be lived intensely, following the ideal of beauty

• Science was inferior to intuition

• Influences included Oscar Wilde and Algernon Charles Swinburne

Putting it all together

• What connections can be drawn between Romanticism and Aestheticism?

• What discrepancies exist between the two movements?