Ch 17: The Romantic EraSee Course Outline for reading assignment.

You should print the slides for any paintings that are not shown in your book.

Terms

Romanticism

nocturne

opera

ode (in literature)

iambic pentameter

Other important worksCompositions by BeethovenChopin’s nocturnesOperas by Verdi and Wagner that we discuss

Featured Works

All of the Romantic paintings shown in this slide presentation or referred to in the chapter.

Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”

Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

Overview of Romanticism

What are the four characteristics of Romanticism described early in the chapter?(add information on Romanticism and

the cultural background from class lecture to your notes)

Instrumental Music• Ludwig van Beethoven: Know about

his life (pp. 450-51). In what ways does the Pathetique express the Romantic spirit?

• http://music.barnesandnoble.com/Beethoven-The-Piano-Sonatas-Vol-2/Andr-s-Schiff/e/028947631002

• Frederic Chopin: Be able to define the term nocturne and explain how it is “romantic.”

Opera Music

• Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner: How did opera “begin to move in a different direction” through these composers?– In what ways does Verdi’s La Traviata exhibit

Romantic characteristics?– How did Wagner’s opera fulfill his goal of creating the

“complete artwork”?– What are Romantic characteristics of The Ring of the

Nibelung and Tristan and Isolde?

Art

Be able to describe the Romantic elements in the following paintings.

Goya: Saturn Devouring One of His Sons

Friedrich: Cloister Graveyard in the Snow

Constable: Dedham Lock and Mill

Delacroix: Liberty Leading the People

Heade: Two Fighting Hummingbirds with Two Orchids

Cole: The Clove, Catskill Mountains

Eakins: Cowboy Singing

Eakins: Swimming Hole

Literature

Because we lack the time to read and consider many of the great Romantic writers, we will focus on Percy Byshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”. Read these poems on the following slides.

Other writers of the Romantic period include Goethe, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, Hugo, Tolstoy, Dickens, and Thoreau.

Ode to the West WindPercy Bysshe Shelley

I

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves deadAre driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingéd seeds, where they lie cold and low,Each like a corpse within its grave, untilThine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)With living hues and odors plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

IIThou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,

Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spreadOn the blue surface of thine aery surge,Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim vergeOf the horizon to the zenith's height,The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing nightWill be the dome of a vast sepulchre,Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphereBlack rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!

IIIThou who didst waken from his summer dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,And saw in sleep old palaces and towersQuivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowersSo sweet, the sense faints picturing them! ThouFor whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far belowThe sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wearThe sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!

IVIf I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less freeThan thou, O uncontrollable! If evenI were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speedScarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowedOne too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

VMake me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own!The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universeLike withered leaves to quicken a new birth!And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearthAshes and sparks, my words among mankind!Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

excerpts from Song of MyselfWalt Whitman

 1I celebrate myself, and sing myself,And what I assume you shall assume,For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their    parents the same,I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,Nature without check with original energy.

. . .

  2Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with    perfumes,I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the    distillation, it is odorless,It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,I am mad for it to be in contact with me.. . .Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much?Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of    all poems,You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions    of suns left,)You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through    the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

52The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab    and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,I sound my barbaric yaws over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,Missing me one place search another,I stop somewhere waiting for you.