The Romantic Movement. The Lake Poets

№1232,г. Москва

more than fifty years, was caused by great social and

economic changes.

The Industrial Revolution, which had begun in the middle of the 18th century, was not a sudden change from home manufacturing to large-scale factory production. Enclosing common land had begun in the 16th century, but in the second half of the 18th century it became rapid and spread all over Britain.
The peasants, deprived of their lands, were forced to go to work in factories.

Towns sprang up. But mechanization did not improve the life

of the common people.

Social evils were clearly seen by the people: the diseases of industrial towns, the misery of child labour, the crowds of underpaid workers… Human beings had turned into parts of machines, they were desperate at the loss of personal freedom.

the first strikes, and workers took to destroying machines.

Workers, who called themselves Luddites after Ned Ludd who in a fit of fury broke two textile frames, naively believed that machines were the chief cause of their sufferings.

plotted a rebellion against English landlords.
It broke

out in1798 but was cruelly drowned in blood. The British government took the lead in the counter- revolutionary wars against France.
The belief of progressive-minded people in the ideal nature of the bourgeois system was broken.

changes a new humanist movement sprang up at the end

of the 18th century.

Romanticism was a movement against the progress of bourgeois civilization, which had driven thousands of people to poverty and enslaved their personal freedom.
Writers longed to depict strong individuals, who possessed grand and even demonic passions.
The romanticists made emotion, and not reason, the chief force of their works.
This emotion found its expression chiefly in poetry.

and revolutionary romanticism.
The passive romanticists had an irresistible

desire to get away from the present, to call back “the good old days”, when people worked on England’s green and pleasant” land”. They spoke for the English farmers and Scottish peasants who were ruined by the Industrial Revolution. They idealized the patriarchal way of life during the Middle Ages. Their motto was “Close to Nature and from Nature to God”, because they believed that religion put man at peace with the world.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

and
Robert Southey belonged to that group.
They were also called the Lake Poets after the Lake District in the north-west of England where they lived.

yet invaded this part of the country.
These poets

had similar tastes in art and politics, they formed a literary circle – Lake School.
Its influence was felt on some other writers of that time.

a poem, “Guilt and Sorrow”. It is about a homeless

sailor who was driven to crime, and a lonely woman who had lost her husband and three children in the war; all suffer from the cruelty of the law, but the comfort Wordsworth offers is religion.

so many of their poems praise nature.
Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

the sparkling leaves in glee; A poet could not be but

gay, In such a jocund company! I gazed—and gazed—but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.
 

My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the

sky: So was it when my life began, So is it now I am a man, So be it when I shall grow old Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man: And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.

a domestic republic in America, where people could enjoy a

free life. Want of money prevented this Utopian scheme.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
(1772 -1834)

ROBERT SOUTHEY
(1774 – 1843)

seems at work. Slugs leave their lair - The bees

are stirring -birds are on the wing - And Winter slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring! And I the while, the sole unbusy thing, Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing. Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow, Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow. Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may, For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away! With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll: And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul? Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve, And Hope without an object cannot live.

My days among the Dead are passed; Around me I behold, Where'er

these casual eyes are cast, The mighty minds of old: My never-failing friends are they, With whom I converse day by day. With them I take delight in weal, And seek relief in woe; And while I understand and feel How much to them I owe, My cheeks have often been bedewed With tears of thoughtful gratitude.

My thoughts are with the Dead; with them I live in long-past years, Their virtues love, their faults condemn, Partake their hopes and fears; And from their lessons seek and find Instruction with an humble mind. My hopes are with the Dead; anon My place with them will be, And I with them shall travel on Through all Futurity; Yet leaving here a name, I trust, That will not perish in the dust.

Poets, but he did not give his talent full development

because of the lack of self-discipline. That’s why his most beautiful poems “Christabel” and “Kubla Khan” were left unfinished.
He stopped writing poetry in his early thirties and devoted himself to criticism.

words and constructions of everyday speech. They brought sound and

colour into verse. They appreciated folklore art and insisted that poetry should be linked with folk traditions of a nation. All of them were humanists.

English Literature”М., изд-во МГУ,1997г.
Иллюстрации:
http://banzaiek.info/industrial-revolution-child-labor-england& page=3,page=2
http://www.agitka.net/ovp3uosia2rapic.html
http://www.irishdrinkingsongs.info/history/1798-irishrebellion.html
http://www.learncolumbia.edu/dbcourses/publicportfolio.cgi?view=1431
http://www.cottages-to-rent/co.uk/North-England.html
http://www.outdoorsmagic.com/outdoor-features/photo-of-the-month-winner/4160.html
http://itrex.ru/konkurs/?&ptcPage=tr&id=356
http://mainisingh.com/a-host-of-golden-daffodils
http://www.bowwowshop.org.uk/page30.html
http://pag3e.divo.ru/lukas/perevod/Southey-pic.html
http://www.sheilaharrington.org/eachday/?cat=64&paged=5
http://www.blossomswap.com/picture/amaranth.html
http://www.orgs.muohio.edu/anthologies/bijou/sooheim/interpretation.htm
http://www.fotosa.ru/ru/stock.asp.srch2=“o213@11111@-1@-1@@3