MEG-1 Block 6 - Romanticism and the Romantics (Poets, Salient features of Romanticism and definition)

MEG-1 Block 6: The Romantic Poets: Blake, Wordsworth & Coleridge

Unit 27 - Introduction to Romantic Poets-

https://egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/22190/1/Unit-27.pdf

This unit introduces you to the Romantic Movement in England. It deals with the political, social, literary and other factors which brought about this movement;

1798 to 1832 as the Romantic period.

The Reform Bill which extended the right to vote to the middle class and labourers was passed by Parliament in 1832. During this period, England moved from a primarily agricultural to a modem industrialized society. Thus the balance of power passed on from the land-owning aristocracy to the owners of industrial units which employed large numbers of people.

Impact of French revolution

The Reform Bill which extended the right to vote to the middle class and labourers was passed by Parliament in 1832. During this period, England moved from a primarily agricultural to a modem industrialized society. Thus the balance of power passed on from the land-owning aristocracy to the owners of industrial units which employed large numbers of people. With the introduction of more machinery into industry, there was more unemployment. The soldiers demobilised after the French wars aggravated the labour market. There was an economic depression in 18 15 caused by the fall in 'wartime demand for manufactured goods,

Capt. James Cook circumnavigated the globe (1768-71) and discovered Australia and the Sandwich Islands.

The pamphlet became a powerful means for debating controversial issues. For instance,

The debate on the French Revolution was conducted through pamphlets.

The idea of revolution informed the Romantic Movement from the beginning. Many major writers of this period were aware that great changes were taking place around thein and that these changes would inevitably find their way into literature also.

Definition of Romantic 

The term, 'Romanticism', is controversial. F.L. Lucas, in his book, The Decline and

Fall of the Romantic Ideal (1948), counted as many as 11,396 definitions. The term

comes from the name, 'Rome'. In the seventh and eighth centuries there were three

main languages in Europe;

• (l) lingua Latina which was the language of the scholars,
• (2) lingua barbara which was the language of Germanic tribes, and 
• (3) lingua romana rustica which was a group of vulgar Latin dialects from which the Romance languages, namely, French, Italian, 'Spanish, Portuguese and Rumanian are derived, The term, 'Romantic', is related to the Romance languages, the peripheral tradition, rather than Latin, the main tradition.

The term, 'romantic', was first used in the late seventeenth century to describe paintings with certain bizarre qualities. When Le Tourneur referred to Shakespeare as a romantic writer, he meant that the English playwright was not a neo-classic writer. What is meant by a romantic writer is one who insists, implicitly or otherwise, on his own uniqueness. In the Age of Reason, many writers said that they

represented their age. This was not so with the Romantics. Wordsworth and Coleridge who worked together for sometime never applied the term, "romantic", to themselves. Goethe defined "classic" as good health and "romantic" as sickness.

The term implies a literary and philosophical theory which tends to see the individual at the very center of all life and all experience. The individual is placed at the center of art. Literature is therefore an expression of his unique feelings and particular attitudes.

As Thrall and his associates say, romanticism, "places a high premium upon the creative function of the imagination seeing art as a formulation of intuitive imaginative perceptions that tend to speak a nobler tilth than that of fact, logic, or the here and now." Romanticism spread through most of Western Europe in the and the nineteenth centuries. It affected literature, art, music, philosophy, religion and politics.

SALIENT FEATURES OF ROMANTICISM

Romanticism is opposed to the artificial conventions, the reigning literary tradition

and the poetic establishment.

The function of poetry, according to this view, is to instruct and to please. Art is a mirror in which we find a reflection of life. For the Romantics, the source of poetry is the poet himself. As Wordsworth puts it, poetry is a "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings". It is an inborn gift and not something acquired. Poetry is the expression of emotion. The poet's imagination creates poetry. The traditional view that poetry is a painstaking endeavour is discarded by the Romantics. Blake thought that poetry comes from inspiration, vision and prophecy. Keats said that poetry should come "as naturally as the leaves of a tree".

Supernatural themes are used by Coleridge (The Ancient Mariner) and Keats (The Eve of St. Agnes). Romantic poetry often deals with the "far away and long ago", exotic places and forgotten events

figure in Romantic Poetry.

Yet another innovation is the use of

symbolist techniques, notably, by Blake and Shelley. The latter poet's "West Wind"

and "Skylark" are good examples.

The Romantic poets displaced humanity by external nature as poetic subject-matter.

The Romantic poets also had a fascination for solitary figures, social non-conformists, outcasts and rebels such as Prometheus, Cain, Don Juan and Satan.

Another significant innovation is the use of everyday speech of ordinary people

instead of lofty poetic diction.

Rural life is idealized in Romantic poetry. The wild, the

irregular and the grotesque in Nature and art fascinated the Romantic poets. Taboo

themes like incest are used without any inhibition. Conformity to tradition and

decorum as observed by the earlier generation are no longer respected.

Classicism and Romanticism are generally considered somewhat antithetical.

Classicism is concerned with the social, the formal, the intellectual and the static

whereas Romanticism is concerned with the individual, the inforillal, the emotional

and the dynamic.

EARLY ROMANTIC POETS

James Thomsoll (1700-1748)

Mark Akenside (1721-1770)’

Joseph Warton's (1722-1800)

William Collins (1721-1759)

Thomas Gray's (1716-71)

William Cowper (1731-1800)

ROBERT BURNS (1759-1796)

There are tw0 tendencies in Burns's life:

I. the cultivated tradition of polite poetry in the eighteenth century.

2. peasant poetry about peasants among whom he lived.

Themes, forms, vocabulary, rhyme scheme and works = RFB

WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827)

He was hardly known in his lifetime, but now he has a respectable place among English poets and artists.

WILLIAM WOWSWORTW (1770-1850)

As the title suggests the Prelude is the first of a three-part poem The Recluse. The second part. 

He believed that the emotions of the rural people are simpler, purer and perhaps better than those of the city-dweller. He also thought that people living in the midst of nature have a better moral attitude, and they become part of the sense of divinity present in nature.

The second innovation is the use of "a selection of language really used by men".

According to Wordsworth metre is a kind of restraining influence. By its regularity, metre holds passion in check. Also, metre seems to give poetry a kind of unreality.

Wordsworth's Partnership with Coleridge

Wordsworth and S.T. Coleridge met in 1795. Coleridge spotted talent in Wordsworth

and praised him as "the best poet of the age".

However, serious differences developed between the two on important questions.

Coleridge did not agree with many parts of the "Preface". He objected to the ones he

considered them "erroneous". the difference between the

language of poetry and that of prose. Wordsworth thought that there was no essential

difference between the two. Coleridge thought they were different. He argued that

metre is essential for poetry which implies passion.

S. T. COLERIDGE (1772-1834)

Biogrnphia Literaria (1817), Coleridge tries to differentiate between the two key terms, 'fancy' and 'imagination' in the same book. He called imagination the "shaping and modifying" power, fancy, the "aggregative and associative" power. The former "struggles to idealize and to unify", while the latter is only "a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and

Space". Imagination itself is of two kinds, 

Primary and secondary. Primary imagination, in Coleridge's view, is the organ of common

perception through the senses, secondary imagination is poetic vision. The latter one

is the faculty that the poet ideally exercises. Fancy seems to correspond with the

eighteenth century notion of wit in poetry the faculty that enables the poet to put

together metaphors and similes.

Work - The Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan and Christabel.

THE SECOND GENERATION OF ROMANTIC POETS

They I wae all "rebellious geniuses" who were not recognized or understood in their country

and time. All of them died young before they could realize their full potential. They are the “inheritors of the unfulfilled renown”

Lord Byron (1788-1824)

The 'Byronic hero" has become a critical term to describe a youthful, daring, passionate, cynical, moody and rebellious figure. This type appeared first in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.

Work - Satire- Beppo and The Vision of Judgment. Dramas - Manfred and Cain.

P.B. Shelley (1792-1822)

Shelley had very radical ideas; he was an idealist. He believed that mankind can be

made perfect; tyranny can be abolished, freedom can flourish in all walks of life.

Work - Prometheus Unbound (1 8 18- 19), Adonais (1821) is a pastoral elegy.

John Keats (1795-1821)

Work - important poems in a period of nine months, January to September 181 9. These are: The Eve of St. Agnes, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, all the six great odes, and Lamia.

Keats published fifty-four poems in his life-time, another ninety-six works were published posthumously; his letters number about 300. This is an unmatched achievement within a short period of three years.