THE ROMANTIC AGE

The Romantic Age is a literary and artistic movement born between the start of the French Revolution (1789) and the Reform Act (1832). It is usually identified with idyllic nature and high social ideal. Yet it developed during a period of social, politic and economic revolutions.

*On the social plane there was a lot of reforms:

- in 1832 a reform Bill extended the right to vote to much of the male middle class. So half the middle class, nearly all the working class and women had no right to vote.

- One year later the Factory Acts forbade the employment of children under 9 and generally improved working conditions.        

- then there were the abolition of slavery and slave trade in the British colonies and the birth/foundation of a new system of national education, influenced by liberal theories.

*On the economic plane there was the rise of the philosophy of economic liberalism, which meant free trade and unrestrained economic activity summed up in the expression “laissez-faire” (let do)

*But the most important turmoil was the Industrial revolution which dramatically changed Britain’s physical shape and the organisation and conditions of work, whit human beings being gradually replaced by machines. In fact it was a process of change form an agrarian handcraft economy to one dominated by industry and machine manufacture. The application of science to industry favoured some technical innovations like:

- the use of new materials as iron and steel

- the use of new energy sources like coal, electricity and the steam engine

- the invention of new machines which increased production

- the birth of factory system, a new organisation of work centred on the division of labour and specialization of functions

All these innovations caused:

- a drastic reduction in the number of people employed

- a migration because many people had to leave their native places to look for work

- a strong exploitation of workers, which had to work in factories for up to sixteen hours a day for a bad salary, and also of women and children, paid even less then men

- illnesses because workers had to live in slums devoid of the most elementary sanitation; the death rate was high

In 1824 the Trade Unions were founded while a new word was entering the political language: Socialism

It was born as a criticism of industrialism and capitalism and proposed an abolition of class differences and a redistribution of wealth. Thanks to the Factory Acts children began to have their rights recognized and also they became the subjects of a new consideration, as was reflected in the poetry of the age.

The rediscovery of humans’ rights was one of the main feature of the Romantic Movement, which came first as a reaction against the Augustan Age so as a reaction against rationality, conventions and civilization. Romantics, in fact, proclaimed the supremacy of passion, instincts and the creative power of human beings, which imagination could shape the environment. Only through nature and simplicity humans could come closer to the primitive state and explore the passions of the heart. There was also a fascination with mystical and supernatural reflected in the new interest in Gothic which main features are darkness, night, death, the cult of ruins, terror and fantasies and an interest in medieval and northern literature.