Modernity Class Notes

Sarah Bacon - Modernity
Week 15: The Romantic Poets and Their Principles

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” -John Keats

Vocab:
American exceptionalism - the myth that de Tocqueville wove into his book.
sovereignty - the status, dominion, power, or authority of a sovereign; royalty.
delegates - a person designated to act for or represent another or others
jurisdiction - the right, power, or authority to administer justice by hearing and determining controversies.
jurisdictionalism - the right, power, or authority to administer justice by hearing and determining controversies
relegated - to send or consign to an inferior position, place, or condition
electoral - pertaining to electors or election.
magistratal - a civil officer charged with the administration of the law
interposition - the act or fact of interposing or the condition of being interposed.
chads - a term used in the ‘08 election
bedevil - to torment or harass maliciously or diabolically, as with doubts, distractions, or worries.
relegate - to send or consign to an inferior position, place, or condition


Revolution Vs Reformation:
Quick, Hasty Results vs. Long Obedience in the Same Direction
Loud Publicity vs. Quiet Reputation
Unrelenting Science  vs. Gentle Persuasions
Programs and Policies vs. Covenant and Callings
Charts, Graphs, Stats vs. Faith, Hope, Love
Gargantuan Purposes vs. Small Beginnings
Undeterred by Facts vs. Undeterred by Obstacles
Never Fails to Disappoint vs. Never Fails

Reformation moves slowly as is slower to change. It is not bothered by incremented results. Revolution wants BAM! Results. Revolution will fit reality to form new reality while Reformation will take time to form man to fit God’s reality.

Romantic poets were named that because they wrote romantic things of man. The true meaning of romance writers came from the romance languages. The romance languages were French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish. These came from Latin and that was spoken by the Romans. So really it was all a movement to get back to antiquity and Rome. Human relationships and the release of emotions.

Theology is ideas externalized. The ideas come from a small percentage of people and those get translated into the general public’s life. The “little people” don’t think about the ideas driving their lives. The reshaping of the soul and minds of men come from the language that a culture uses and how the ideas are distributed throughout the communities.

Man is a passionate being. Revolutionaries seek to change man and his culture from the outside in, but the Romantics they come to know the passions and emotions of man and seek any change from the inside out.

Precursors to the Romantics
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was one who sought to release passion from reason through his essay On Passion versus Reason. A professing believer with strong convictions, but you can still do other contradictions. Music is one great way you can do this. This was a push of Rousseau...emotion apart from reason. Music enters and it’s very powerful and can enter your head and alter who you are even if you don’t consciously realize it.

Johann Goethe (1749-1832) wrote Sturm und Drang. Passion and impulse released from the objective realities. Poetry was created to remove a person temporarily from his natural state to feel something. Movies are this way today...they mold your emotions to get attached to something or someone...to scare you...to anger you...to make you cry, to make you love, to make you laugh.

Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805) used folk tales from the past to create a nationalistic connection. Ballad of William Tell was used for this purpose so that people would begin to look for larger-than-life heroes with all their passion and leaving their reason behind.

Robert Burns (1759-1796) retouched the whole idea of the noble savage into the common man. He appealed to the common man to appear as normal and general as anyone else. The noble savage is seen as good. People in their primitive state is the best way to have a person. It is put into a new setting to rephrase it all and introduce it to a new audience where it will appeal to them. You speak the language of common man to connect with them.

William Blake (1757-1827) who wrote Songs of Innocence and was deemed insane for his whole adult life. It was a reflection on returning to man’s first and truest nature. Man before the idea of the fall. Man is inherently good and without evil...all innocent. He believed that man is really good and was made that way but the idea of evil was introduced and man believed it. Now he has to remember and return to being educated that he is really all good. It is the perfect unhinging of passion from reason.

William Cowper (1731-1800) with his Olney Hymns was a devout Christian in his sane moments but then hide away in bouts of deep depression. Whether it was related to medical or religious depression we don’t know. But whatever he wrote was very influential in the laying of the groundwork for Romanticism.

Walter Scott (1771-1832) began his career by translating other previous German romantics like Goethe and Schiller into English and so he got that background. He loved the idea of German nationalism and he was Scottish and attempted to use the German style to achieve his own end. In a sense he was a conservative revolutionary. He used the tactics of the Romantics for his own purpose. But the more we look at it the more we realize that there is not much difference between the left or right parties. It is more a matter of speed, not goal...they have the same goal in mind but can work at different speeds...slower for the left and faster for the right. This came out with his The Lady of the Lake.

Philip Freneau (1752-1832) focused on nature. Man is in a sense attempting to return to nature and his noble savage. But nature for nature’s sake. What is the pleasure coming from the physical world? He began talking about Mother Nature as Mother Nature as opposed to it being a figment of our nature. The Wild Honeysuckle portrayed this. He separates nature entirely from God and it being His creation even if it isn’t rational.

George Crabbe (1754-1832) focused on the rural life and being politically correct and loving all things agrarian and rural.

The Great Romantic Poets
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) - Rime of the Ancient Mariner
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) - Upon Westminster Bridge
Lord Byron (1788-1824) - Don Juan
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) - Prometheus Unbound
John Keats (1795-1821) - Ode on a Grecian Urn
George Darley (1795-1846) - Mermaid’s Vesper Hymn

They have the ability to take ugly things of the world and make it something beautiful and attractive to anyone. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but many beholders are crazy or ugly themselves. Unleashing passion however you want, it doesn’t matter how as long as you do. They take the most abstract things and focus so intently on it. Everything they write is in the context of their “Christian worldview” but they use it to tear the true Christian worldview down. They clothe it in Christianity and cloak it in Biblical theology...but it’s stripped of the real truth and is portrayed in order to tear down true Christianity. All their agenda was pushed as was to separate entirely the what people thought and knew to be true and what people felt to be true. But this is really impossible because what you feel is directly based off of what you think. This idea of feelings has been introduced to the modern church and now we have gotten away from thinking solidly to thinking due to emotion and feeling.

Heirs of the Romantics
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) - Ode to Beauty
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) - On Walden Pond
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) - Ichabod
Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849) - The Raven
John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) - On Religion and Society
James Montgomery (1771-1854) - The Christian Poet
Richard Mant (1776-1848) - The Happiness of the Blessed Dead
John Keble (1792-1866) - Tracts for the Times
John Henry Newman (1801-1890) - The Prophetical Office

They wanted to get in touch with their feelings...examine what they really thought and felt beneath the surface. This is the excuse they used to explore passion and romance. The eyes are turned inwards and thoughts focus on the self. Focus on man is pushed. It is a more democratic, humanistic, pantheistic, and spiritual movement. You separate how you think from what you feel and act which creates ultimately a whole new world. A world without ration.

When Revolution ultimately failed, those who held to the Revolutionary mindset attempted to bring about the Revolution by other means. They realized they would have to reshape the very soul of man. Thus Romantic Poets laid out this remarkable set of ideals that changed the way we think and feel, laying the foundation for a modern nihilism. So the things that matter most, we don’t feel anymore. And the things that matter least, we feel intensely.