HISTORY 5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Noble Savage
I. Intro
● Rom = counter-enlightenmt
○ challenged ideal that reason was fundamental tool of human emancip; insist that
emotion is at heart of humanity
○ also challenges Enl notion of autonomy, that indivs can emancip themselves; Rom =
corporate project
○ rejects universalizing project of SciRev, which threatens to overwhelm the diffs tw things
that make them great
● counter-industrialization - ironic, b/c romantics themselves members of bourg
○ hearkened back to mythical middle age, ppl more in touch w/ nature
○ argued that technology would make monsters not miracles
● as a cultural movemt, Rom dies out, but will spawn a movemt that remains potent today:
nationalism
II. Romanticism: Counter-Enlightenment and Counter-Industrializatn
Origins of Romanticism
● first stirrings found ~1750s, response to Enl emphasis on rationality
○ for many writers, focus on reason seems to rob ppl of sense of aw
○ the sublime: the overpwring, majestic exp beyond human comprehension
■ classic example: looking down from a mtn; Friedrich’s painting “Wanderer abv
the sea of fog” - view from above surpasses what you’re capable of rationalizing,
realize how small you are
○ Enl had a version of the sublime; Kant wrote an impt essay on it, but it’s about order, how
the world imprints itself on ur mind by reflecting mind’s own internal symmetry
■ Romantic: sublime/beauty isn’t just about harmony, but uncontainable disorder
● another precursor in Goethe’s Sorrows of the Young Werther (1774)
○ young sensitv artist falls in love w/ married woman; suffers from guilt, kills himself
○ point isn’t the plot, but its philosophical baggage - passionate temperament of title chara,
living in constant state of emotional turmoil makes u truly human
○ super influential/popular book, everyone in Ger reads it; leads to late 18c fad in Ger of
men weeping as they walk down the street LOL
Limits of reason
● Rom emerges in aftermath of FrRev - for some observers, FrRev shows dark underbelly/failure of
reason/Enlightenment
● Romantics stress the ideal of the genius - someone who transcends order/reason, embodies
brilliance of their society…
○ origin of our idea now that artists somehow feel things more deeply etc
○ 1st great exemplar: John Keats, Eng Rom poet; dies at 26, one of his last requests is to
put on his tombstone “Here lies one whose name was writ in water”
Humanity and nature
● reject notion of nature as tidy machine; Romantics saw it as something in constant state of
un/becoming, and its untidiness makes it beautiful
○ re-enchantmt of natural world, which ppl can access thru dreams/songs rather than
analytic parsing
○ JMW Turner’s painting “Hannibal and his army” (1812) - beauty of painting comes from
capturing wildness of nature, rather than containing it
○ William Blake: “Nature has no outline”
● Rousseau’s a great hero of Romanticism, b/c of notion of noble savage
○ civilization corrupts us w/ artificial duty; man’s lost natural liberties
○ nature = source of inspiration b/c a space of freedom, leave human soc behind
Romanticism and spirituality
● Enl stripped away a lot of Eur’s spirituality; Roms wanted to reassert, but not w/ theology
○ idea of authentic soul, something transcendent
○ faith > knowledge; religion of the heart, “mankind turning his heart to infinity”
○ very out of step w/ 18c rationalist Christianity
● Cath areas: return to ceremony/ritual, emotional exp of religion (not just relig of the Word)
● Prot places might abandon Christianity for nature worship or cultism
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● re-enchantment of the world (Enl took away the invisible realm, but w/o that we’re impoverished)
● William Blake (poet, painter, printer, radical)
○ represents spiritual aside of Romanticism
○ despised orthodox religion/Xianity as much as he despised the Enl (twin evils that
insisted on rational grid of the mind)
○ has mystical dreams/visions in his life; work combines Biblical imagery w/ Norse myths
and Greek gods and stuff he makes up - believes in his own mythology
○ all religions are one, just relig of the heart
Neo-medievalism
● (most Romantics are the bourg - ppl w/ time to sigh and paint - a sense of guilt and expiation)
● neo-medievalism: return in theory to era before modernity alienated humanity from nature
○ “the romance” - medieval genre
○ pre-Raphaelite art movement rejects Enl + Ren, wants to return to medieval purity
● Lothebourg’s “Coalbrookdale at Night” - hellish fire of industry
Environmentalism
Romantic lit: Frankenstein
● probably greatest novel of Eng Romanticism
● plot = Romantic allegory
○ Frankenstein = Enlightenment modernity, rationality, tryna conquer death thru science
○ but monster teaches him how little he understands abt humanity
● monster
○ allegory for Industrial Revolution
○ conseqs of technology run amok in the world; problems mankind creates but can’t solve
○ also an allegory for the other kind of new human being - industrial proletariat
● book also filled w/ examples of sublime
○ begins/ends in wasteland of Arctic; failure of humanity b4 nature’s awesome pwr
● Mary Shelley personally reacts against Enl
○ child of the Enl - father William Godwin = Eng Jacobin polit philosopher; mother Mary
Wollstonecraft, author of Vindicatn of Rights of Women
○ easy to see autobiographical elements - child of Enl rejecting her parents; puts herself in
the monster’s space
Romantic Art: Gericault’s “Raft of the Medusa”
● Beethoven’s grt example of Romanticism - pounding emotional register of later symphonies
○ all Western music obsessed w/ order; but Beethoven produces impression of order thru
enormous contrasts tw diff parts of music, no given moment is an orderly whole
● classic Enlightenment painting: Jacques-Louis David’s “Oath of the Horatii” 1784
○ FrRev painter, subject matter is about reason - 3 bros agree to fight on behalf of country,
sacrifice for greater good
○ symmetry, classical lines, geometric shapes
● Caspar Friedrich’s “Monk by the sea” 1810
○ not that long after, but huge diff - human beings are tiny, disappearing into pwr of nature
● John Martin’s “Destruxn of Sodom and Gomorrah” (1852) - humans cower b4 God/nature
● “Raft of the Medusa” 1819 - the masterpiece of Fr Romanticism
○ aftermath of notorious shipwreck from 3 yrs ago; some sailors survived w/ makeshift raft
○ self-consc effort to portray the unportrayable; utterly realistic, but not a rational sense
■ uses rational idioms to try capture a sublime, incomprehensible subject
○ Gericault was obsessed w/ “realism,” make horrors as lifelike as possible
■ spent weeks in Paris morgues making sketches of bodies, taking body parts
home to his studio to get the color/texture just right…
■ worked closely w/ ship’s carpenter who had built the raft
○ when it was time to paint: shaved his head, locked himself in studio, starved himself for
weeks to really feel what the exp had been like
○ enormous - 23ft long - walk into the room and it overwhelms u with its pwr
○ waves washing over the raft - can’t see where culture ends and nature begins
○ living/dead mixed promiscuously together
■ death is everywhere in Rom - transcendent moment when reason fails
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com