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Major English Writers 2

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The Romantic Period (1785-1830)

Major Historical / Political / Literary Events

• The French Revolution (1789-1802)
• The Industrial Revolution (mainly 1750-1850)
• Publication of Lyrical Ballads, by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1798) (so important that 1798 sometimes is given as the year that the Romantic Period begins)

General Characteristics of Romantic Literature (Neoclassic Characteristics in Parentheses)

1. Spirit of Revolution, heroic aspiration and defiance (view of human beings as limited)
   --a breaking away from the limitations of humanity commonly accepted in the Neoclassical Age
   --the Romantic hero often faces extreme odds for success
   --Satan and Prometheus become popular heroes
   --the Byronic hero = greater than others, in his passions, experiences, sins, pain, and suffering
   
   
2. Reverence for the imagination, feelings and emotions (reverence for rules and reason, distrust of the imagination)
   --imagination becomes a way of knowing
   --reason may inhibit our ability to know the truth
   --imagination, feelings, and emotions help shape reality 



3. Emphasis on the individual (emphasis on groups)
   --revolutionary theorists proclaimed the "rights of man" 
   --lyric poetry becomes popular and important



4. Belief in the Ideal or the Sublime (belief in Deism)
   --the sublime is most often suggested through Nature
   --truth can be perceived through imagination and emotion



5. Organicism (symmetry, unity, harmony, classical poetic forms)
   --a work of literature "grows" like a seed
   --the content of a poem determines its form, not vice versa
   --blank verse becomes popular 



6. Emphasis on Nature, primitivism, and the rural life (emphasis on the polite, urbane, and witty)
   --people are naturally good; society corrupts
   --children and those living close to nature are closer to truth
   --the "noble savage" becomes a popular figure



7. Supernaturalism: the Gothic and the Mystical, the Strange and Exotic
   --exploring new ways of knowing, new ways to discover truth
   --another way to reject reason
   --gothic novels become popular

Poetry and the Poet

• The poet goes from being a craftsperson to being an inspired poet-prophet.
• Remember the metaphors of "the mirror and the lamp." Earlier, poetry was regarded primarily as "a mirror held up to nature." During the Romantic Period, poetry and the poet becomes a "lamp," shining with its own unique light, illuminating and shaping, not just reflecting, reality.
• A central concern of some Romantic poets is the nature of reality. Unlike the philosopher John Locke, who believed that reality is comprised of things external to the human mind and completely independent of it, some Romantic writers believed that "reality" is a construct formed from external objects and the mind of the individual.