Lesson video

Hello everyone, thank you very much for joining me, my name's Mister Blackburn.

Today, we're going to be looking at the themes of romantic writing and some of the really important things that romantic writers often included in their writing.

Before we start, you'll need to make sure that you have a pen and paper, that you turned off notifications on anything which might distract you, and if you can, you'll need to find somewhere quiet to work.

When you've done all that and you're ready, let's start the lesson.

What are we going to be doing today? We're going to start off by thinking about what a theme in literature is.

Then, we're going to look at major themes in romantic writing before moving on to think about how romantics explored the theme of nature.

Finally, we'll end the lesson by testing you on what knowledge you have accrued during this lesson.

So, what is a theme? A theme is a big idea in a piece of literature.

It's often what the author wants us to think about or consider while we're reading or watching a piece of literature or we're watching a play.

For example, William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," one of the major themes is love, is the love between Romeo and Juliet, something fantastic and to be celebrated, or is it actually something destructive? In fiction, it's easy to identify theme.

You can think about what characters are made to do, what lessons characters learned from their difficulties, and once you've done that, you can put them all together and generally identify what that book is about and what you're meant to learn from it.

In nonfiction it might be slightly trickier, because instead of characters in their actions, we have to think about what that author is trying to make us realise about what they've written about.

So here's an example.

Imagine we have a poem, and the first thing we notice about it is that the poem is about the natural world.

That seems easy enough, okay, you put that.

The second thing we notice about it is that the poet is writing about how peaceful nature is.

All right, that's two themes.

Yeah, that's easy enough.

The third thing we notice is, the poem contains ideas about how nature makes people happy.

Well, there's three parts of a piece of literature that we've managed to think about, and if we put them all together, the theme must be about the power of nature's beauty.

So what major things did romantics write about? Well, I think there are five major groups of themes in romantic writing.

The first is the imagination and the importance of oneself, the importance of the individual.

The second is revolution and change.

The third major theme is criticism of oppression.

The fourth major theme is of nature, both its beauty and it's terrifying power, and the fifth major theme is youth and innocence.

So, romantics thought that imagination and the idea of oneself being important and central to the universe was one of the most important things that humans hadn't realised about themselves up until that point, active imaginations were really encouraged and romantics focused on the power of one person, an individual in society and the way that person can change and influence the world around them for good or bad.

Revolution was an important theme because while romantics were writing, lots of changes happening throughout the world.

There was an Industrial Revolution going on in Britain, there was an American Revolution and a French Revolution.

Lots of things were changing; politics, employment, the way that countries looked were fundamentally changing and romantics often wrote about that kind of revolution.

With revolution, often comes oppression where more fortunate people treat less fortunate people badly, and some forms of oppression, which romantic writers wrote about include slavery, poverty and the poor living conditions which were evident in places like London during the Industrial Revolution.

Using their writing, poetry, nonfiction writing to criticise poverty and oppression and slavery and living conditions was an important part of the individual's responsibility to change the world around them.

On top of that, romantics adored nature and the natural world.

Some poets wrote about the beauty of nature, and how nature is there to kind of centre the human soul, the beauty of places like the Lake District or the Peak District, the way that a human can go to these kinds of places and feel calm and centred.

But some romantic poets wrote about the terrifying nature of the natural world.

Because if you think about things like floods and storms and tornadoes and lightning, well, they're not calming, are they? If you went to the Lake District and there was a thunderstorm, you probably wouldn't stand there thinking, this is very relaxing.

You probably be quite worried, or struck by the storm going on around you, and that's what a lot of romantics wrote about.

The fifth theme that lots of romantics included in their writing was the idea that children were pure and angelic.

They believed that children were naturally good.

The children were innocent from the point they were born and the children were always honest, and it wasn't until these children were corrupted or made bad by the adults around them, that they stopped being this model of an angelic child.

And here is the cover of a book called "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" by Lord Byron, which was about a young man transitioning from being this kind of angelic child into becoming a heroic figure later on.

So if you've got all of these down, they are five important things of romantic writing.

Let's have a little quiz to see if you can match the statement to the theme.

Number one, the romantics believe that it was damaging for children to grow up too quickly.

Which theme might that link to? If you said youth and innocence, you were right, well done! The next statement, William Wordsworth wrote about the beauty of the Lake District, which theme might that fit with? If you said imagination, you were wrong because the theme is nature.

Well done if you got that right.

Many romantic writers were unhappy with the speed at which new factories were being built, ruining the countryside, which theme might that fit with? If you said revolution, you got it right.

That's the Industrial Revolution, isn't it? Building new factories was damaging the countryside.

The romantics often wrote about adventures that they wished to go on, but never really did.

Which theme might that fit with? If you said the theme of imagination, you are right this time, so good, well done.

"Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" by Lord Byron was an example of this, he never really went on all of the adventures in his book.

He went on lots of them, but not all of them, so we have to imagine some of them, the imagination.

And finally, some romantic writers wrote about how terrifying and awe-inspiring the natural world can be.

That of course is nature.

Good work so far everyone, let's see what you can tell me about the themes of romantic writing.

I want you to copy and complete these sentences by filling in the missing words or finishing the sentences to make sure they are grammatically correct.

Romantic thoughts that something was a powerful force.

The romantic period saw many revolutions, such as.

As a result of the romantics being so vocal about revolution, they often criticised something.

Romantics had two views of nature that it was something, or, something.

Romantic writers believe that children were something and honest.

Fill in the missing words using your notes or by looking back in the video, pause the video here and come back when you finish to check your answers.

Here are the answers; romantics thought that imagination was a powerful force.

The romantic periods saw many revolutions such as the Industrial Revolution or the French Revolution or the American Revolution.

As a result of the romantics being so vocal about revolution, they often criticised oppression.

Romantics had two views of nature; that it was beautiful or terrifying.

Romantic writers believed that children were innocent and honest.

If you didn't get any of these answers right then, do just take a second to fill in the right answer because these will be really valuable notes for you to keep looking back at.

Let's look at the theme of nature in romantic writing.

And to do this, I'm going to show you a short quotation from a poem written by a romantic poet.

I Wondered Lonely As A Cloud, by William Wordsworth, and the quotation is "the waves beside them danced; but they outdid the sparkling waves in glee." Now here, Wordsworth is talking about a group of daffodils that he's encountered next to a lake while he was out on a walk with his sister in the Lake District.

And let's look at the words he uses.

He describes the daffodils as dancing.

He describes the waves as dancing, and then he describes the waves as sparkling.

Now, Wordsworth using lots of wonderful language to make nature sing beautiful and exciting all at the same time and he ends it by using the word glee, utter happiness.

What I would suggest you do before we go any further is that you make a note of this quotation somewhere on your piece of paper, because you're going to need it for what we're about to do.

Because we're going to write about themes and poetry, and I've put together a really quick plan for how we're going to write a paragraph.

First of all, we need to think about who the poet is and what the theme is.

Well, the poet is William Wordsworth, and the theme is the beauty of nature.

I want three short quotations, which I've chosen danced, sparkling and glee, and I want to think about what these suggest and, you know, they suggest happiness.

They suggest joy, they suggest beauty.

And then I want to think about what the viewpoint of many romantic writers was.

And we know that romantics often wrote about nature because it was a stark contrast to the Industrial Revolution, which was happening at the same time as they were writing.

What we're going to do is using that quotation, we're going to write an analytical paragraph about nature.

I'm going to give you sentence starters and I want you to periodically pause the video to carry on writing the sentence.

To begin with, William Wordsworth, a romantic poet, writes about the theme of what in that quotation? As he writes that he encounters a group of what? Pause the video, write down what you can remember.

Hopefully, your sentence looks something like this, if it doesn't, you can always fix it.

William Wordsworth, a romantic poet writes about the beauty of nature as he encounters some daffodils in a field.

The next sentence starter I've given you is; the daffodils are described as having danced suggesting that they were happy and joyful, Wordsworth describes the waves as? This is the quotation you've written down so, I want you to embed your quotation and explain to me what the waves are doing.

So pause the video, and then come back.

The daffodils are described as having danced, suggesting that they are happy and joyful.

Wordsworth describes the waves as sparkling, creating an image of a calm, bright day.

Both the flowers and the waves are said to be showing glee, reinforcing the joy that is a part of nature and which Wordsworth shares.

So you see, I've used all of my one-word quotations and I've explained what they tell us and why Wordsworth might have used them.

My final sentence starter is, romantic writers would often write about the power of nature and how it can be either.

So you need to think about the two things that romantic writers would often present nature as, and tell me a little bit about that in your analytical paragraph.

Pause the video and come back when you're finished.

Romantic writers would often write it out the power of nature and how it can be either beautiful or terrifying.

Here Wordsworth expresses how beautiful he finds nature to be, perhaps this contrast with Wordsworth views of the Industrial Revolution.

Now, you don't have to worry if your work doesn't look exactly like mine, it's okay.

As long as you've tried your best, as long as you've used some quotations, as long as you've told me what romantics wrote about then you've done the right thing.

The model on this screen is just showing you how you could be structuring your writing.

So if you'd like to, take a minute to improve your answers using my model answer on the screen.

Well done for all of your hard work today everyone, you've worked really hard and learned all about the themes of romantic writing and you've also produced an analytical paragraph analyting one of the most famous romantic poems. Excellent work, don't forget to complete the quiz just so you can show off how much you've learned.

Well done, goodbye.