THE CITY AS FIGURE OF DARKNESS, STRESS, SADNESS…(from Georgians to Post-Modernism)

 

1.INTRODUCTIONŕ Carmina Peiró Doménech

 

2.ROMANTICISM

 

‘Romantic’ is a term that covers the most distinctive writers who flourished in the last years of the 18th century and the first decades of the 19th c, ‘Romantic’ is indispensable but also a little misleading: there was no self-styled ‘Romantic movement’ at the time, and the great writers of the period did not call themselves Romantics. www.britannica.com/eb/topic-508675/Romanticism

 

The publication, in 1798, by the poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coloridge of a volume entitled Lyrical Ballads is a significant event in English literary history.  This volume, a watershed in literary history, presented a liberating aesthetic: poetry should express, in genuine language, experience as filtered through personal emotion and imagination. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyrical_Ballads

 

2.1  Romantic characteristics

Resulting in part from the libertarian and egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution, the romantic movements had in common only a revolt against the prescribed rules of classicism. The basic aims of romanticism were various: a return to nature and to belief in the goodness of humanity; the rediscovery of the artist as a supremely individual creator; the development of nationalistic pride; and the exaltation of the senses and emotions over reason and intellect. In addition, romanticism was a philosophical revolt against rationalism. http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/ent/A0860797.html

 

2.2 Romantic poetry

Romantic poetry displays a return to nature by man, which is strongly seen in the works of Wordsworth. Further, the Romantic poets were frustrated by the limitations placed on knowledge and the human condition by the Enlightenment's valorization of reason over emotion. As a result, the Romantics often praised imagination as a means of furthering systems of knowledge they believed were truncated by embracing reason soley. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romantic_poetry

 

3. DARK ROMANTICISMŕ Horte Pla Blasco

5.ANALYSIS FROM  WWI POETRY UNTIL POST-MODERNISM POETRY

5.1. GEORGIANS VS ROMANTICIMSŕ Carmen Bernabeu Sanvictorino

5.2 WWI POETRY VS ROMANTICISM

World War I has inspired great novels, drama and poetry. During the war itself, it has been estimated that thousands of poems were written every day by combatants and their relatives. After the war, many participants published their memoirs and diaries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature_of_World_War_I

A common subject for fiction in the 1920s and 1930s was the effect of the war, including shell-shock and the huge social changes caused by the war. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature_of_World_War_I

Shell-shock, is a term used to categorize the long-term results of stress in war conditions during World War I and World War II. The most common symptom is fatigue: slower reaction times, indecision, disconnection from one's surroundings, and inability to prioritize. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_shock

One of the themes that we have to analize is the darkness, sadness, stress…in the city. Romantics reject the idea of living in a city, they thought that the city brought that three aspects. Romantic believed in the senses and passions instead of the reason.

Poetry of the WWI is characterised by the use of feelings, they wanted to recreate the situation with a great use of adjectives and descriptive words. All WWI poets wanted to express the horrors of the war, because of it they used a perfect vocabulary to recreate this atmosphere. But, did the WWI poets want to show the darkness, sadness, stress? I think that they use that language in order to affect our sensitivity, so they showed the darkness of the war, the sadness…

Most of the WWI poems showed the cites, dark cities where we can feel the horror, the sadness. Poets used to describe alone people, so, here the poets transmit the loneliness. We can find poems where they talked about the combats, with a fluid language we can feel the stress of the soldiers.

So, the purpose of the romantics is to show the sadness of the city, the WWI poets wants to make feel to the reader the consequences of the war, when they arrived to the city, they found a dark city tainted by the war and the sad people.

 

5.3.MODERNISM vs ROMANTICISMŕ Horte Pla Blasco

5.4POST-MODERNISM vs ROMANTICISMŕ Xavi Moreno Estruch

6. CONCLUSIONŕ Carmina Peiró Doménech