Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's lesson.

My name's Ms. Keller and I'm so glad you could join me.

In this session, we are going to be exploring the Romantics.

Now, by that I don't mean we are going to be exploring love and relationships.

We are going to be exploring Romanticism and looking at some important Romantic poets from this movement.

Okay, so by the end of today's lesson, we will be able to discuss the wider context of Romanticism in relation to the four Romantic anthology poems. So really important clue there, you will need your copy of the poetry anthology.

So do pause the video here and grab your copy if you haven't done so already.

So let's explore today's keywords.

We have a critique, Romanticism, conventions, sublime, and institutional power.

Now, at this point, there are just two words that I want to zoom in on and the rest of the words we will discuss in more depth when we encounter them in the lesson.

But do feel free at this point to pause the video and go through these definitions in a bit more detail if you'd like to.

So the two words that I want to zoom in on at this point in the lesson then, first of all, that one down the bottom there, institutional power.

So this refers to the type of power that is not necessarily held by one individual, but instead it's the authority or control exerted by organisations or systems within society.

And the second term that I want to zoom in on at this point is conventions.

And these are established norms or traditions within a particular form or genre of literature.

So essentially, they're what we might expect to see if we read a certain type of literature.

So for example, if we were reading a horror story, we might expect to see creepy locations, such as a haunted house or a graveyard, for example.

This would be a convention of the horror genre, is using an eerie or spooky setting.

So how is today's lesson going to look? Well, we're going to start off by exploring Romanticism itself, so thinking about those conventions and thinking about the wider context of how it came about.

And then in the second half of today's lesson, we're going to be zooming in on those four Romantic poems in the anthology and looking at them in a bit more detail.

So I'd like to start off by having a think about anything we might already know about the Romantic period.

And don't worry if this is completely new to you because we are gonna go through it in lots of detail, but it's important to think about what we might already know about this period in history.

So some of our Oak students are discussing the Romantic period, and my first challenge to you in today's lesson is which of their statements are accurate? So here is what they had to say.

So take a moment to read through each of their statements carefully and decide which ones you think are accurate.

Now, don't worry if you don't know for sure.

Perhaps just start thinking about which ones seem like they could be likely or which ones, perhaps using other things you know about history or know about literature, which ones seem like they might be accurate to you.

So pause the video here while you have a think and make some notes if you're working on your own or perhaps discuss it with the people around you, and when you're ready to continue, click play and we'll carry on.

Okay, welcome back.

Some really fantastic discussions there.

So I can reveal that the statements that were accurate were Laura and Lucas'.

So Laura said that Romanticism was influenced by big societal changes, such as the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.

And Lucas said it emphasised the beauty of nature.

So these two things are accurate, which means that Izzy, Sam, and Sofia weren't quite as accurate as they should be.

However, they did only need to change a few words in order to make their statements accurate.

So my second challenge to you is this, can you help Izzy, Sam, and Sofia to redraft their responses? And remember, they just need to change one word or a couple of words in what they've already said.

So pause the video here and take some time to discuss these three statements and see if you can help our students improve them, and click play when you're ready to continue.

Okay, welcome back.

So let's start with Izzy's statement.

So originally she said that the Romantic period occurred during the 16' to 1700s.

So how could she have redrafted this response so it was accurate? Well, well done if you said that she needed to change that date to the 17' to 1800s.

So Romanticism occurred during this period, the 17' to 1800s, or the 18th to 19th century, depending on how you want to phrase it.

So let's have a look at Sofia's then.

So Sofia originally said that Romanticism focused on shared experiences, but what she should have said was that it focused on individual experiences.

And we are gonna talk about this in a bit more detail later on, but it's a really important convention of Romanticism, is this focus on individual experience.

So the last one then, Sam said it often praised society at the time, whereas she should have said it often critiqued society at the time.

And we've got another one of our keywords from today's lesson there, critiqued, which means to look at something in detail and comment on perhaps flaws or shortcomings, think about what's wrong with something, it's to be critical.

And if we see, we've got that same beginning of the word there, critical and critiqued.

So here are five really important pieces of information that we need to remember about the Romantic movement.

So let's explore it in a bit more detail.

So what I've done on the left there is just summarise those ideas from our Oak students.

So starting with those first two bullet points then.

So during the 1700s and the 1800s, and really with Romanticism we are talking about the late 1700s and the early 1800s, we saw really big societal changes, that society as the people knew it was very, very different.

And this happened because of lots of different things that were occurring at this point in history.

It was a time of big global change, political change, technological change, and here we've just got a few of the really big things that happened to society during this time.

So we have first of all the Enlightenment period, which came before Romanticism, but was a similar idea in that it was a cultural movement that affected art, literature, lots of different aspects of society, and it was a shift in the way that people began to think about the world.

And during this time, people began to question things that for many years before that nobody ever really questioned, perhaps big things like religion or the way that society is run, so politics for example.

So the Enlightenment is a real time of questioning where people began to think, is this the right way for us to live? And we also had big changes such as the rise of the British Empire, which during this period in history, the British Empire expanded to include quite a lot of the globe.

So many different parts of other continents were part of the British Empire.

So Britain had a real global reputation at this point.

And then also changes such as the Industrial Revolution, which was the invention of machines and factories.

So mechanised manufacturing, so making things using technology.

And this had a massive change on society because it affected the jobs people did and where they lived, and also other environmental factors perhaps, such as the pollution that these factories caused.

So these big changes had a real impact on people's attitudes and beliefs.

Society was changing and the way people thought about their society, naturally it was changing as well.

And this leads us quite nicely onto the next bit where it often critiqued society at the time.

So many people disagreed with society's direction of progress.

And then these last two points, it focused on individual experience and it emphasised the beauty of nature.

And a lot of people's disagreements came out of this idea that they believed that technology and globalisation hindered individual human experience and engaging with the natural world.

There was this idea that perhaps the inventions of machines and technology and this focus on global expansion was taking the people away from enjoying what it meant to be human and almost enjoying these simple, natural, organic experiences with the natural world.

So at its core, Romanticism was a shift in the way people began to think about the world, and this influenced many forms of art and culture across Europe.

So we have examples that we can see in art, such as the "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog" by Caspar David Friedrich, and we are gonna have a little look at that painting later on in today's lesson.

We also have "The Hay Wain" by John Constable.

Some of you may have heard of Constable.

We have lots of examples in literature, but two that may stand out to you, first of all, "Songs of Innocence and Experience" by William Blake, which is a collection of poetry, and actually one of your anthology poems, "A Poison Tree" by William Blake, is featured in that collection.

So a bit of a clue there that he's going to be one of the Romantic poets we're going to be exploring later on.

And also a really famous piece of literature that most of you will have heard of, the novel "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley.

And then also in music we have "Nocturnes" by Frederic Chopin and we also have "Symphony No.

9 in D minor" by Ludwig van Beethoven.

So do take some time to check out some of these paintings or listen to some of these music or even better, read some Romantic literature if you get a chance.

So as I said earlier, we are going to have a look at this painting, "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog," in a bit more detail.

So here is that painting, and I want to use this painting to explore some of the conventions of Romantic art and literature.

And remember, that word conventions links to this idea of what we might expect to see in a piece of Romantic art or Romantic literature.

So our first common convention then is that Romantic art and literature prioritises imagination and self-expression over regulation and institutional power.

So we're linking back to that idea we were talking about earlier of individual human experiences.

It focuses on the individual rather than these larger groups, in terms of societal groups perhaps being regulated by these institutional powers.

It focuses on that individual experience.

Another common convention then is that Romantic art and literature loves or worships the natural world.

The natural world is very important to these ideas of Romanticism, because it is engagement with that natural world that a lot of Romantic poets or authors or artists believe is key to that human experience, engaging with the natural world.

Also, Romanticism seeks to break conventions, in particular rejection of traditional religious beliefs.

So following on from this Enlightenment period where people began to question these aspects of society that they hadn't before, religion being one of the important questions that people began to ask.

Romanticism continued this idea, continued perhaps challenging and breaking these conventions.

And it's important to remember, in the late 1700s and early 1800s, religion was a really fundamental part of daily life.

Most people were religious, so it would've been seen as quite controversial at the time to reject traditional religious beliefs.

It's also important to remember here that this doesn't mean that Romantic artists and authors weren't religious themselves.

Many of them were, they just rejected perhaps the traditional approaches to religion.

Also, dramatic and passionate emotions are something we see quite a lot in Romantic art and literature.

And finally, it draws on ideas of philosophy, spirituality, and the sublime.

So we're still thinking about these really big ideas and questions, perhaps about how the world came to be.

So now it's time to hand over to you for a quick discussion.

So have a look at this picture and see if in groups or the people around you, or if you're working on your own, that's okay, but see if you can identify any of these Romantic conventions.

Pause the video here while you have a think and click play when you're ready to feed-back together.

So let's just pick up on a few ideas that I overheard.

First of all then, the setting was really important, and lots of people were picking up on this idea that it was a natural setting, which links to that convention that Romanticism loves and worships the natural world.

And I also heard people linking to that idea of dramatic and passionate emotions here.

Because if we look at this particular natural setting, it is rugged.

There is this mysterious fog.

It's presented in a very dramatic way.

And also, a lot of people picking up on this idea of prioritising imagination and self-expression, this individual experience, because the key focal point of this painting is that lone figure stood on the rock.

So we're almost, because we're stood behind him in the perspective we have of this painting, we're almost seeing the view that he sees.

We're seeing it through the eyes of the individual that is experiencing it.

So now I would like to zoom in on just one of these conventions or part of one of the conventions, and I'd like to focus on this word down the bottom here, sublime.

Now, I can appreciate that perhaps lots of you have never heard this word before, because it's quite a high-level concept when we come to thinking about literature.

So let's explore it in a bit more detail and hopefully you'll be able to use it in your analysis of these Romantic texts.

So what is the sublime? It refers to an experience or the emotions that we feel during a certain experience.

And this experience is encountering something that is awe-inspiring, but so awe-inspiring that it's almost beyond human comprehension.

So something that is so awe-inspiring that we struggle to process it.

I don't know if you perhaps have ever felt this feeling before, but I certainly have.

When I was younger, we went away on holiday to Mexico and there was a temple and we went to visit a Mayan temple, and we were actually fortunate enough to be able to go to the top of this temple.

And I was lucky enough to be able to stand on the top of it, and as I looked out, for the first time in my whole life, all I could see were trees and forest and vegetation.

And for somebody that grew up in a very urban place, this was beyond my human comprehension.

I couldn't imagine a world without roads, without cars, without a busy city.

So very much just like this man in the painting, I was stood on top of this temple absolutely blown away by what I could see.

And what's really important about this feeling of the sublime is that it can be very emotionally intense and overwhelming, and actually sometimes quite troubling for people to think about.

It's not necessarily a positive emotion.

Just because something is awe-inspiring doesn't necessarily mean that it is an amazing and positive experience.

And actually a really important part about the sublime is that the vastness or the power of the thing that you're witnessing that causes you to have this experience is sometimes so overwhelming that it makes you feel very small by comparison.

Often the feeling of the sublime is linked to this idea that it forces us to realise quite how small and insignificant one individual person is in relation to the whole world that exists around us.

And actually, when we see it in literature, it's often contrasted with beauty, which evokes feelings of pleasure and harmony.

So it actually is contrasted with this positive idea of perhaps looking at something, a piece of nature, and feeling those positive feelings.

This can be troubling, can be intense, and can be overwhelming, so that's worth remembering.

So let's look back at this painting then.

And my question to you is this, how might this painting draw on ideas of the sublime? So have a think and take some time to discuss this with the people around you, and when you're ready to discuss it together, click play and we'll continue.

Okay, welcome back.

Some really interesting discussions there, and I was so impressed with how many of you were really grappling with this new idea of the sublime and thinking about how we could start to apply it to art and literature.

So well done there.

So how could this painting draw on ideas of the sublime? Well, we've definitely got this idea that the enormity of the landscape around the lone figure really emphasises his insignificance.

So that feeling of being small, such a small part of such a large world.

So we could really see how the experience of standing here and looking out that view could cause somebody to feel this intense experience, emotional experience.

So let's pause here and check our understanding of Romanticism so far.

So which of the following are conventions of Romantic art and literature? So just take a moment to have a look at those options and make your mind up, and when you're ready for me to reveal the correct answer, click play.

Okay, welcome back, and well done to those of you who said A and C.

The conventions in that list were the sublime and love of the natural world.

Just to check in on the other two then, how could we amend the other two answers so they're also correct? So just pause the video while you have a think and click play when you're ready for me to reveal the correct answer.

Okay, welcome back, and well done to those of you who said that we would need to change these words.

So we will be critiquing society's progress if we were thinking about conventions of Romantic art and literature, and there's also that focus on breaking and challenging social conventions.

So now it's time for our first practise task of today's lesson, and what I would like you to do is to write a summary of Romanticism in 50 words or less, and that is not very many words once you get going.

So things I would like you to include in this summary then, contextual information about the movement, so how it came about, things you know about the period of history, key Romantic ideas, conventions of Romantic art and literature.

So pause the video here while you take some time to write your summary, and when you're ready to go through it together, click play and we'll carry on.

Okay, welcome back.

How did you find that task? It can actually be quite tricky to use less words instead of more words.

So interesting to see which ideas you would necessarily have had to prioritise there, because 50 words was nowhere near enough for us to include all of the information that we've covered so far.

So here's just an example of how you could have summarised Romanticism in 50 words or less.

Romanticism emerged in the 17' to 1800s amid societal upheavals like the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution.

Critiquing society's direction, it prioritised individual experiences and nature's beauty, fearing technology's impact.

Romantic art and literature valued imagination, emotion, and defied conventions, drawing on the sublime, an awe-inspiring, overwhelming experience contrasting beauty.

So lots of really important ideas in there, but there was an element where I had to prioritise some ideas over others.

And you might not have chosen to prioritise the same ideas, and that was why this task was really important.

So I do have one final challenge for you and that is that your new word count is 60 words.

So think really carefully about what you perhaps had to prioritise over other things and what you'd now like to include because you have those extra words.

So pause the video here while you have a think and add in your extra 10 words, and when you're ready to continue, click play and we'll carry on.

Okay, so we've made it to the halfway point of today's lesson and we've covered some very, very big and complex ideas so far, so well done.

You should be really pleased with what you've achieved.

So in this half of the lesson, we're going to focus on the Romantic poets in the anthology.

So here is a list of all of your anthology poems. And my first challenge to you is there are four Romantic poems in the anthology and I would like you to have a think about which ones.

So I did actually already mention one of them in the first half of the lesson, os first of all see if you can remember which one that was, but also use what you know about the Romantic movement to see if you can make some educated guesses if you're not sure about the others.

So pause the video here, and when you've selected your four, then click play and we'll go through it together.

Okay, welcome back.

I could hear lots of people able to remember the one that I'd mentioned earlier there, that first one, "A Poison Tree," but the other three here as well.

So we've got "The Destruction of Sennacherib" by Lord Byron, "Extract from the Prelude" by William Wordsworth, and "The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

And we did have that all-important clue there, because we knew that the Romantic period occurred in the late 1700s and early 1800s, and if we look at all four of these poems, they occurred within that timeframe.

So there we go.

Just to summarise those four poems then.

So this anthology is entitled "Conflict." So I'd like to just have a think about these four poems and the idea of Romanticism and how that might link to conflict.

So my question to you is how could Romantic ideas and the conventions that we discussed earlier link to the idea of conflict? So pause the video while you take some time to discuss this or make some notes, and when you're ready to continue, click play and we'll carry on.

Okay, welcome back.

Some really interesting discussions taking place there.

So I just want to pick up on a few of the really great responses that I have heard, because as I'm sure you've discovered in your discussions, there are actually quite a lot of links between Romantic ideas and perhaps the ideas that we would see in writing about conflict.

So first of all, Romantic literature often critiqued the direction of society's progress and this is something commonly found in war poetry or writing about other societal conflicts.

We've got that really important first link there, in that Romantic literature perhaps critiqued that institutional power, and it's usually the institutional powers that are responsible perhaps for these decisions to go to war or perhaps responsible for big historical societal conflicts.

We also had another important link when we think about the idea of inner conflict.

So inner conflict is often explored in this anthology, which links to the Romantic ideas of individual experience and self-expression.

Another fantastic response I overheard linked to the natural world.

So many war poems focus on the effect of the conflict on the natural world, which could link to Romantic ideas about natural beauty.

So there is that conflict between humans and nature which could link to Romantic ideas.

And finally, many poems focused on war and conflict consider the power of the individual against an overwhelming force, so this could be enemy soldiers or nature, which could link to this idea of the sublime and that realisation that you are a small and perhaps insignificant part of a much larger world or a much larger group.

So let's have a look at an example of a Romantic poem from the anthology.

So we're going to look at "Poison Tree" by William Blake.

So here is the poem.

I'll quickly just read through it and then we're going to look in detail at Blake's use of Romantic conventions.

Don't worry if you don't know the poem that well.

We're not necessarily gonna cover it in lots of depth today, and there are lots of other places where you can find an analysis of this poem in greater depth, including elsewhere in this unit.

So, "I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water'd it in fears, night and morning with my tears; and I sunned it with smiles, and with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night, till it bore and apple bright; and my foe beheld it shine, and he knew that it was mine.

And into my garden stole when the night had veil'd the pole: in the morning glad I see my foe outstretch'd beneath a tree." So my question to you is this, how could we interpret this as a Romantic poem? So how can we identify any of those Romantic conventions going on in this poem? So pause the video here and take some time to have a really good read through of the text yourself and see if you can identify any of those Romantic conventions.

Discuss it with the people around you or make some notes on your paper, or even better, on the copy of your poem in the anthology.

So pause the video here and click play when you're ready for us to continue.

Okay, welcome back.

I hope you gave yourself enough time there to really go over that poem in depth.

And I could overhear lots of people draw in some fantastic examples of Romantic conventions in the poem.

So let's just explore some important examples then.

So first of all then, we've got a focus on individual experience.

And a really key way to spot that in this poem is the amount of first-person pronouns, I, my, mine.

We can see that this poem is entirely focused around the thoughts of one person and we are seeing that experience through their eyes and we're hearing what they think about it, similarly to that painting and how he was seeing that view perhaps through the eyes of the man stood on the rock.

We also had lots of examples of natural imagery and we also have the use of extended metaphor comparing the speaker's wrath to a tree.

So this gives that really strong link there to the natural world.

We could also argue that in a way this poem perhaps challenges or breaks societal convention, because it challenges the Christian value of forbearance, which means to show self-control or perhaps tolerance or restraint when maybe dealing with the negative actions of somebody else.

So here we've got this idea that the speaker did not deal with the wrath, perhaps did not deal with it and therefore it grew.

It grew and became something quite out of control.

So we've got this idea that our speaker here is not necessarily showing that restraint and showing that forbearance.

We've also got dramatic, passionate emotions, and quite a lot of them, quite a lot of examples of emotive language.

Words such as wrath, which we see repeated quite a lot, fears, tears, smiles, deceitful wiles.

We've got lots of links there to these dramatic, overblown emotions, which we know we associate with Romantic literature.

So we can identify lots of different Romantic conventions in this text.

Now it's time for us to check our understanding.

So which of these anthology poems are examples of Romantic literature? So take a look, remember what you know about Romantic literature and that list that I showed you earlier, and see if you can remember which poems are Romantic.

So pause the video here while you make your mind up and click play when you're ready for me to continue.

Okay, welcome back, and well done to those of you who said B and C.

We've got "A Poison Tree," which was the poem that we just looked at together, and "Extract from the Prelude" by William Wordsworth.

And remember, we were looking for those poems that were either from the late 1700s into roughly the first half of the 1800s there.

So definitely not "What Were They Like?" by Denise Levertov, which was published in 1967.

So now it's time for the final practise task of today's lesson.

And I'd like to hand over to you to explore another one of those Romantic poems. So choose one of the other poems from that list, we did "A Poison Tree" together, so the other three are there, and I'd like you to explore how it uses Romantic conventions.

So I'd like you to make notes on which conventions you've identified in the poem and then support your ideas with evidence from the poem, and even better, analysis perhaps of the poet's use of language.

So take as much time as you need to give this a really good go and really get to grips with the language of that poem and explore how the poet is using those Romantic conventions.

So pause the video here and click play when you're ready for us to feed-back together.

Okay, welcome back.

I could see lots of you hard at work there really going over those poems with a fine-tooth comb, so well done.

So let's just take some time to review our responses or review our approach to the task.

So I'd like you to ask yourself the following question: which of the following Romantic conventions did you identify in your chosen poem? And here is a reminder of those Romantic conventions that we were discussing earlier.

So take some time to have a look through those conventions and see if you managed to identify any in those texts.

And then I would like you to ask yourself the following questions: did you identify evidence from the poem? Did you consider the poet's influences and intentions? And did you consider the wider context of the poem in your interpretation? So just take some time to have a look back over what you've written, and if you can spot anywhere that you could perhaps redraft, develop your answer a little bit further, then do take some time to do that.

So pause the video for as much time as you need to self-assess your work, and when you're ready to continue, click play.

Okay, we've made it to the end of today's lesson, and a really big well done for all your hard work today.

So let's just summarise what we've covered in today's lesson.

The Romantic period prioritises imagination and self-expression over regulation and institutional power.

Many Romantic poets loved and worshipped the natural world.

Many Romantic-era writers rejected traditional religious beliefs.

The sublime, a feeling of overwhelming awe, is often used in Romantic poetry.

And there are four Romantic poets in the Edexcel "Conflict" Anthology: Wordsworth, Byron, Blake, and Tennyson.

So thank you very much for joining me in today's lesson, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Have a fantastic day and I look forward to seeing you again soon.