HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

-THE LAST QUATER OF THE 18TH-CENTURY: revolutionary at any level. The French Revolution (1789, the Fall of the Bastille: National Assembly, rights of man, erasure of Ancient Regime’s feudal rights, democracy, people’s justice and freedom).

- The French Revolution in England: hopes of freedom & justice in Whig aristocrats and intellectual radicals (William Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1792: universal suffrage, people’s sovereignty, free universal education, government subsidies for maternity, child-care & old-age pensions, against propertied Church) versus conservative Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution (1790).

- Prosperity and national confidence under the younger Pitt (1783-1800). Reform and restoration of public revenues after loss of colonies, East India Company and rebuilt fleet.

- Industrial, demographic and social revolutions in England.

- Relocation of population, enriched middle-classes and great industrialists supersede aristocrats. Depressed working-classes.

- The professional, independent artist: mostly middle-class, conforming a definite literary class with own interests and social/artistic pleas.

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Grado Iconos Culturales y Literarios de Inglaterra Notiz am English Romanticism (Authors), erstellt von s b am 09/01/2014.

English Romanticism (Authors)