Characteristics of the Romantic period in English Literature (1789-1837)

Introduction:

Extending from about 1789 until 1837, the romantic age stressed emotion over reason. Beginning of the century, enthused by ideas of personal and political liberty and of the spontaneity and sublimity of the natural world, artists and intellectuals tried to break the bonds of 18th-century convention. English literature in the Romantic Period was influenced by three great Historical Events. The Industrial Revolution in 1769, The American war of Independence in 1776 which, influenced England from a political and economic point of view; and the French Revolution which Influenced the ideology of the British.

One of the three greatest movements in modern history, the French Revolution exercised a profound influence on English thought and literature. One objective of the French Revolution (1789-1799) was to destroy an older tradition that had come to seem artificial, and to assert the freedom and spirit, of the human race. The feelings caused by these three events found an expression in the Romantic period. These became the creative outputs of the idealist mind . Sympathy for political movements empowered the lower classes--This showed itself in the support for the French Revolution.  Although the works of French writers Jean Jacques Rousseau and William Godwin had great influence, the French Revolution and its aftermath had the strongest impact of all in England. Initial support for the Revolution was primarily idealist, and when the French failed to live up to expectations, most English intellectuals renounced the Revolution. However, the romantic vision had taken deep root and the cause became other than political.

Outline of the Romantic period:

Let us have a look at the causes of French revolution as it had profound effect on English literature. During the two centuries while England had been steadily progressing towards constitutional government, France had been regressing under the control of a corrupt and cruel aristocracy. Radical French philosophers had been opposing, the actual misery of the peasants, who had the right to liberty, life, and happiness. At last in 1789 the people, joined hands with lawyers and thinkers of the middle class, to fight against their oppressors, and after three years established a republic. The outbreak of the Revolution was welcomed by English liberals as an era of social justice; but as it grew in violence and was aimed at all monarchy and of religion, their attitude changed. In 1793 the French king and queen were executed and a Reign of Terror was unleashed. This united all, except the radicals, in support of the war against France, in which England joined with the other European countries The last great prose-writer of the eighteenth century, Edmund Burke, saw  French Revolution as a breaking down of stable system, of what he held to be the secure foundations of society--established government, law, social distinctions, and religion.  Moreover, the activity of the English supporters of the French revolutionists, seriously threatened, an outbreak of anarchy in England also. Burke, therefore, began to oppose the whole movement, with all the eloquence of his writing .His 'Reflections on the Revolution in France,' published in 1790, though very one-sided, is a most powerful model of reason and brilliant eloquence. It had a wide influence and had the great majority of his countrymen agreeing with his viewpoint. During the twenty years of struggle that followed, Napoleon soon appeared in France, and to oppose and finally to suppress him was a task jointly taken up by all Englishmen devoted to their country and to humanity.

Etymology: Romanticism comes from the adjective “Romantic” used in the 17th century to indicate unrealistic things. In the 18th century it acquired a meaning of reason and rational, connected to, knowledge of supernatural.. The main themes of this period are: Individual relation between Man and Nature, a return to 'natural' nature, sympathy for and idealization of the humble life, sympathy for the rural life and pastoral settings. It was to use Imagination, as a way to escape, from the real world, symbolism and mysticism as the qualities of Romanticism, a sentimental contemplation for life and for relationships. The poet is looked at as an artist, as an original creator. The Romantic poets wrote poetry, that expresses a feeling of sadness and longing for remembered things of the past. The poet looks at the experiences, through introspection and sadness. They feel that, a natural genius would be, free from any neo-classical rules So, the romantic age in English literature, was characterized by, the subordination of reason, to intuition and passion. They believed in the supremacy of nature, the importance of the individual will over social norms of behavior, the preference for the illusion of immediate experience, as opposed to generalized and typical experience, and the interest in what is distant in time and place.

The periods We usually divided the Romantic poets in three different generations: The Early Romantic poets were: Thomas Chatterton (1752 - 1770) Robert Burns (1759 - 1796) William Blake (1757 - 1827) The First generation They are: William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850) Samuel T. Coleridge (1772 - 1834) The second generation poets  were: Lord Byron (1788 - 1824) Percy B. Shelley (1792 - 1822) John Keats (1795 - 1821) Important events were: In 1798 Wordsworth and Coleridge published “The Lyrical Ballads”, (1798 and 1800), 

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850).

Wordsworth is the chief representative of the Romantic Movement; He belongs among the five or six greatest English poets. W.. Wordsworth  was born in Cocker mouth, near Lake District, and in the peace and the beauty of this country, he found inspiration for his poetry. In the preface to the lyrical ballads Wordsworth described Romanticism as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings which takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility” He asserted that poetry should express, in genuine language, experience as filtered through personal emotion and imagination; the truest experience was to be found in nature.

He chooses themes of nature .He looks upon nature as friend, philosopher and guide. First of all he is the profoundest interpreter of Nature in all poetry. For him Nature is a direct manifestation of the Divine Power, which seems to him to be everywhere and invisibly present in nature. He feels communion with her. The communion, into which he enters, as he walks and meditates, among the mountains and moors, is to him communion with God. To Wordsworth Nature is man's one great and sufficient teacher. The concept of the Sublime would make man turn towards nature, because in wild countryside, the power of the sublime could be felt most immediately. Through his supreme poetic expression, some of the greatest spiritual ideals of his mind are expressed.

He describes poet as a man with lively sensibility, enthusiasm, knowledge of human nature, passions and sympathy, speaking to men. He says the best language to describe and the theme to be used was, to choose incidents and situations from common life, in language really used by men and add colouring of imagination. Low and rustic life was generally chosen, because in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a suitable language.

The variety of Wordsworth's poetry deserves special mention. In addition to his short lyric and narrative poems of Nature and the spiritual life, several kinds of poems stand out distinctly. A very few poems, the noble 'Ode to Duty,' 'Laodamia,' and 'Dion,' are classical in inspiration and show the classic style. His works are: “The Prelude”; “Poems in two volumes”; “The excursion”. . Wordsworth's romanticism is probably most fully realized in his great autobiographical poem, “The Prelude” (1805–50).  Among his many hundreds of sonnets is a very notable group inspired by the struggle of England against Napoleon. Nature and religion in 'Lines composed above Tintern Abbey' are the noblest expressions in literature. Wordsworth was the first English poet after Milton, who used the sonnet powerfully and he proves himself a worthy successor of Milton. The great bulk of his work, finally, is made up of his long poems in blank-verse. 'The Prelude,' written during the years 1799-1805, though not published until after his death, is the record of the development of his poet's mind .It is not an outwardly stirring poem, but a unique and invaluable piece of spiritual autobiography 

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

The poets Wordsworth and Coleridge are of special interest not only from the primary fact that they are among the greatest of English authors, but also of their close personal association, which contrasts the supporting qualities of Romantic Movement. They exhibited contrasting qualities such as the delight in wonder and mystery (Coleridge) and the belief in the simple and quiet forces, both of human life and of Nature (Wordsworth),

Coleridge, who was slightly the younger of the two, possesses high genius but largely restrained by circumstances and weakness of will.  Coleridge's genius suddenly expanded into short-lived and wonderful activity and he wrote most of his few great poems, 'The Ancient Mariner,' 'Kubla Khan,' and the First Part of 'Christabel.' 'The Ancient Mariner' was planned by Coleridge and Wordsworth on one of their frequent rambles mingle with them and there followed the memorable year of intellectual and emotional stimulus, Wordsworth found his manner so different from that of Coleridge that he withdrew altogether from the undertaking. The final result of the incident, however, was the publication in 1798 of 'Lyrical Ballads,' which included of Coleridge's work only this one poem, but of Wordsworth's several of his most characteristic ones. Coleridge afterwards explained that the plan of the volume contemplated two complementary sorts of poems. He was to present supernatural or romantic characters, yet investing them with human interest and resemblance to truth; while Wordsworth was to add the charm of novelty to everyday things and to suggest their relationship to the supernatural, awaking readers, from their accustomed blindness, to the loveliness and wonders of the world around us. No better description could be given of the poetic spirit and the whole poetic work of the two men. Like some other epoch-marking books, 'Lyrical Ballads' attracted little attention.

In ‘Lyrical ballads’, a landmark in literary history, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge presented and released a liberating force in poetry. Writing in search of these sublime moments, other romantic poets wrote about the marvelous and supernatural, the exotic, and the medieval. But they also found beauty, in the lives of simple rural people and aspects of the everyday world.

The second generation of romantic poets included John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and George Gordon, Lord Byron. In Keats's great odes, intellectual and emotional sensibility merges in language of great power and beauty. Shelley, who combined lyricism with political vision, searched and used more extreme effects and occasionally achieved them, as in his great drama Prometheus  Unbound (1820). His wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, wrote the greatest of the Gothic romances, Frankenstein (1818).

Lord Byron was the romantic hero, the envy and scandal of the age. He has been continually identified with his own characters, particularly the rebellious hero. Byron skillfully combined the romantic lyric with a rationalist irony. Minor romantic poets include Robert Southey—best-remembered today for his story “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”—Leigh Hunt, Thomas Moore, and Walter Savage Landor.

Milton was one of the Romanticists, who in poetic form, did not completely break away from the pentameter couplet but returned to many other meters. Milton was their chief master, and his example led to the revival of blank verse and of the octo-syllabic couplet. There was also inclination towards Spenserian stanza, and development of a great variety of lyric stanza forms. This characteristic appears in the minor poet of same generation such Thomas Grey.

Thomas Grey was a one of the leaders of the Romantic Movement. He was a scholar and a learned man, well versed in the literature and history of ancient and modern nations of Europe .Even though the bulk of Gray's poetry is very small, it has considerable variety. His low literary output is due to his unwillingness to write except at his best, or to publish until he had subjected his work to repeated revisions, which sometimes, as in the case of his 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,' extended over many years. His poems contain the mingling of the true classic, pseudo-classic, and romantic elements in the poems, though less in the 'Elegy,' He is the extreme type of the academic poet. His work shows, however, considerable variety, including real appreciation for Nature, as in the 'Ode on the Spring,' delightful quiet humor, as in the 'Ode on a Favorite Cat,' rather conventional moralizing, as in the 'Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,' magnificent expression of the fundamental human emotions, as in the 'Elegy,' and warlike vigor in the 'Norse Ode' translated from the 'Poetic Edda'

There is Oliver Goldsmith, who is more romantic in his works. In, 1764 was published Goldsmith's descriptive poem, 'The Traveler,' based on his own experiences in Europe. Six years later it was followed by 'The Deserted Village,' which was well received. Satire. In the choice of the rimed couplet for 'The Traveler' and 'The Deserted Village' the influence of pseudo-classicism and of Johnson appears; but Goldsmith's treatment of the form, with his variety in pauses and his simple but passionate  eloquence, make it a very different thing from the rimed couplet of either Johnson or Pope.

William Cowper is clearly a transition poet and not a thoroughbred romantic poet. He shares some of the main romantic impulses but in his thought and expression, to a great extent, he is pseudo-classical. He can be credited with praise for producing with John Newton, their joint collection of 'Olney Hymns,' many of which deservedly remain among the most popular in our church song-books.. The bulk of his work consists of long moralizing poems,. Some of them are in the rimed couplet and others in blank verse. His blank-verse translation of Homer, published in 1791, is more notable, and 'Alexander Selkirk' and the humorous doggerel 'John Gilpin' are famous; but his most significant poems are a few lyrics and descriptive pieces in which he speaks out his deepest feelings sadness. His poems 'On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture' and 'To Mary') which displays his deepest expression of sadness, is unsurpassed and 'The Castaway' is a song of religious despair.

William Blake (1757-1827) was one of the extreme romanticists. For him the material world was as real as his real world The bulk of his writing consists of a series of 'prophetic books' in verse and prose, works, in part, of genius, but of unbalanced genius, and virtually unintelligible. His lyric poems, some of them composed when he was no more than thirteen years old, are of high quality... One of their commonest quality is the mysterious joy and beauty of the world, a delight sometimes touched, it is true, as in 'The Tiger,' with a mature consciousness of the wonderful and terrible power behind all the beauty. Blake did not like the shutting up of children in school away from the happy life of out-of-doors. These are the chief sentiments of 'Songs of Innocence.' In 'Songs of Experience' he talks about the necessary situations that have to be endured in the world.

Robert Burns is by nature is deeply romantic. He does not belong to any group. He led a life of hardship. 'His genius, however, like his exuberant spirit, could not be crushed out. His mother had familiarized him from the beginning with the songs and ballads of which the country was full, and though he is said at first to have had so little ear for music that he could scarcely distinguish one tune from another, he soon began to compose songs (words) of his own as he followed the plough.. He is only the last of a long succession of rural Scottish song-writers; he composed his own songs to accompany popular airs; and many of them are directly based on fragments of earlier songs. None the less his work rises immeasurably above all that had gone before it.

Burns' place among poets is perfectly clear. It is chiefly that of a song-writer, perhaps the greatest songwriter of the world. At work in the fields or in his garret or kitchen after the long day's work was done, he composed songs because he could not help it, because his emotion was irresistibly stirred by the beauty and life of the birds and flowers, the snatch of a melody which kept running through his mind, or the memory of the girl with whom he had last talked. And his feelings expressed themselves with spontaneous simplicity, genuineness, and ease. He is a thoroughly romantic poet, though wholly by the grace of nature, not at all from any conscious intention--he wrote as the inspiration moved him, not in accordance with any theory of art.

The range of his subjects and emotions is nearly on topics such as: married affection, as in 'John Anderson, My Jo'; reflective sentiment; feeling for nature; sympathy with animals; vigorous patriotism, deep tragedy and pathos; instinctive happiness; delightful humor; and  others. It should be clearly recognized, however, that this achievement, supreme as it is in its own way, does not suffice to place Burns among the greatest poets.. Burns' significant production, also, is not altogether limited to songs. 'The Cotter's Saturday Night' (in Spenser's stanza) is one of the perfect descriptive poems of lyrical sentiment; and some of Burns' meditative poems and poetical epistles to acquaintances are delightful in a free-and-easy fashion. The exuberant power in the religious satires is undeniable.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1832).

 His poetic quality was a delicate and his exquisite lyricism unsurpassed in the literature of the world. In both his life and his poetry his visionary and reforming zeal and his superb lyric instinct are in close relation. The finest of Shelley's poems, are his lyrics. 'The Skylark' and 'The Cloud' are among the most sparkling and unique of all outbursts of poetic genius. Of the 'Ode to the West Wind,' a succession of strong emotions and visions of beauty swept, as if by the wind itself, through the vast spaces of the world, The poet Swinburne exclaims: 'It is beyond and outside and above all criticism, all praise, and all thanksgiving.' The 'Lines Written among the Euganean Hills,' 'The Indian Serenade,' 'The Sensitive Plant' (a brief narrative), 'Adonais,'  and not a few others are also of the highest quality. In an elegy on Keats is the finest. Much less satisfactory but still fascinating are the longer poems, narrative or philosophical, such as the early 'Alastor,' a vague allegory of a poet's quest for the beautiful through a gorgeous and unclear succession of romantic imagination. The 'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty'; 'Julian and Maddalo,' in which Shelley and Byron (Maddalo) are portrayed; and 'Epipsychidion,' an ecstatic poem on the love which is of spiritual quality. Some of Shelley's shorter poems are purely poetic expressions of poetic emotion,

JOHN KEATS (1795-1821).

The third member of the group, John Keats’ poem is as individual and unique as the poetry of Byron and Shelley’s. It is in a wholesome way, the most conspicuous great representative in English poetry, since Chaucer of the spirit of 'Art for Art's sake.' Keats' first little volume of verse, published in 1817, when he was twenty-one,-contained some delightful poems and clearly displayed most of his chief qualities. It was followed the next year by his longest poem, 'Endymion,' where he uses, one of the vaguely beautiful Greek myths as the basis for the expression of his own delight in the glory of the world and of youthful sensations. his third and last volume, published in 1820, and including 'The Eve of St. Agnes,' 'Isabella,' 'Lamia,' the fragmentary 'Hyperion,' and his half dozen great odes, probably contains more poetry of the highest order than any other book of original verse Almost all of Keats' poems are exquisite and luxuriant in their embodiment of sensuous beauty, but 'The Eve of St. Agnes,' in Spenser's richly lingering stanza, must be especially mentioned.

Lord Byron ( 1788-1824). Byron (George Gordon Byron) expresses mainly the spirit of individual revolt, revolt against all existing institutions and standards. This was largely a matter of his own personal temperament, but the influence of the time also had a share in it, 'Childe Harold' is the best of all Byron's works, though the third and fourth cantos, published some years later, and dealing with Belgium, the battle of Waterloo, and central Europe, are superior to the first two. Its excellence consists chiefly in the fact that while it is primarily a descriptive poem, its pictures are dramatically vivid in themselves