Literature Course- prof. C.

Nechifor

ROMANTICISM - A REALM OF ALL POSSIBILITIES

By the turn of the 18th century the movement away from the aesthetic and critical doctrines of
neo-classicism which had gathered momentum after 1760s had resulted in the full establishment of
Romanticism as a prevailing trend in literature and arts.The joint publication of “ The Lyrical Ballads”
by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1798), marked the final break with the neo-
classical tradition in poetry. In the preface of this collection of ballads the two authors,just returned from
a trip in Germany, where they had got influenced by the German groups( Coleridge was essentially
influenced by the metaphysical poets ), they asserted the preference for REVERIE, INTROSPECTION,
CONTEMPLATION OF NATURE , RURAL RETREAT, and a strong taste for the STRANGE, OUT-
OF-THE -ORDINARY and also a humanitarian compassion for suffering humanity.
Romanticism, however, was not merely the outcome of these literary developments. Underlying it
were also deep social and political causes connected with the brutal consequences of industrialism and
with course of the French Revolution and its slogans of LIBERTY and EQUALITY which inspired
people’s hopes of social justice greater freedom in their own country too, soon rendering the
atmosphere in England explosive. The young writers who had enthusiastically welcomed the French
Revolution saw its practical achievement fall short of their expectations and were overwhelmed by
gloom and despair. It was from this crisis of English and European conscience confronted with a glaring
disparity between ideals and reality that Romanticism stemmed.
The Romantic age was predominantly an age of poetry. The romantics proclaimed the
unrestrained freedom of imagination, which could not be tied by laws of reason and nature. In contrast
with the rationalism and detachment of neo-classical poetry, the romantic poets laid emphasis on a
highly imaginative and emotionally-coloured perception of life and treatment of their themes in their
works. They minutely recorded their own experiences and responses and explored man’s inner world of
yearnings, passions , hopes and frustrations. Hence the inward-looking and subjective character of much
of romantic poetry , which was also intensely lyrical, as any emotional surcharge tends to find relief in
lyrical outburst. They reject the mechanistic world-picture of the Enlightenment and developed a more
articulate philosophy of nature. Nature was seen in perpetual motion and change and so was society.
Nature was no longer a conventional setting or pretext for moral reflections, but a living presence with
which they held close communion, feeling strongly attracted by wild and picturesque, often exotic
scenery. Disappointed and dissatisfied some of them turn to the past , mediaeval or ancient, for a source
of inspiration ,as a state of purity , innocence and happiness. Besides considerably expanding the sphere
of artistic investigation, the romantics also enriched the language of poetry , which they moulded into a
more delicate and subtler medium for poetic expression.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and T.S. Coleridge(1772- 1834)the major representatives of
the first generation of romantic poets , are often referred to as “the Lake School” , owing to their
association with the Lake District (Scotland). The first statement of the aesthetic and literary doctrine of
the new movement was contained in their “ Preface “ to the “ Lyrical Ballads “ which rejected the
“poetic diction” of the decaying neo-classic tradition and advocated a poetry inspired from “ humble and
rustic life” and written in a “language really used by men”. Wordsworth’s greatest artistic achievement is
to be found in his poetry of nature( “Ode To The Daffodils”, “To The Cuckoo”, ”The Solitary Reaper”).
S.T.Coleridge took a different course in his poetry. A strange blend of dreams, visions, symbols
and vivid realistic details , his poems are , undoubtedly , the product of a superior imagination. In “The
Ancient Mariner” and “Christabel”, which are written in ballad form, Coleridge made ample use of
alliteration, interior rhyme, and suggestive repetitions, characteristic to the popular ballad, obtaining a
remarkable musical effect.
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Literature Course- prof. C.Nechifor
“The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free;
We were the first that ever burst
Into the silent sea.”

The younger generation of Romantic poets began their literary careers in the early nineteenth century,
when the socio-historical circumstances in England and on the Continent were considerably altered.
Amid this general turmoil and effervescence, poets such as Byron and Shelly became actively involved
in the fight for freedom and progress, and their poetry assumed a militant character.
Byron, who , upon the death of his great-uncle had succeeded to the title of Lord in 1798, studied at
Cambridge and published his first collection of verse while still an undergraduate there(“Hours Of
Idleness”). The volume was followed by “English Bards And Scotch Reviewers”, in which he criticised
the conservative tendencies in the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge. In 1812 ,at his return from a
European tour, he published “Child Harold’s Pilgrimage” , which made him famous over night. Child
Harold is his first embodiment of a Byronic hero, and his un-definable feeling of weariness and
dissatisfaction with life was a typical symptom of the Romantic WELTSCHMERTZ.

“ But soon he knew himself the most unfit

Of men to herd with Man ; with whom he held
Nothing in common ;”
( “Child Harold”- Canto III)

As his enemies made his life in England unbearable for him , Byron left the country in 1816
never to return. In Switzerland, where he spent the summer of 1816, he met Shelley and the two of them
became good friends. Outstanding among the poems written in that summer are two other embodiments
of the Byronic hero “ The Prisoner Of Chillon”,a tribute paid to Bonivar who had been imprisoned for
having fought for the cause of freedom and the republic of Geneva, and the first two parts of “
Manfred” , completed in 1817. “ Manfred” is Byron’s best poetic drama in which the Byronic hero rises
to the stature of a Faust. It is the story of a great mind , unable to put up with the evils of the world seeks
answers in the solitude of the Alps. By the great powers he has acquired by knowledge , Manfred has
subdued the forces of darkness , but dies in a mortal clash with them. From Switzerland Byron moves
to Italy where he lived until 1823, supporting the revolutionary movement of the Carbonari . All the
poems written in this period bear the stamp of militant revolutionarism (“The Lament Of Tasso”, “The
Prophecy Of Dante”, “The Two Foscary”a.s.o). He also wrote sixteen cantos of “Don Juan” his lyrical-
epic masterpiece, which re-mained unfinished , as he went to Greece in1823 and died of fever at
Missolonghi in 1824.
If Byron championed the cause of enslaved people in Europe , his friend Percy Bysshe Shelley
devoted his entire life and work to the fight for man’s emancipation from all forms of tyranny and
oppression. A ”prophet of genius” , he predicted that a day would come when social equality and justice
would be established on earth and man would become:

“ Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man

Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless ….
The king over himself.”

Shelley’s first major poem “ Queen Mab”(1813), was written under the influence of William
Godwin, who had described an Utopian society to be arrived at through a natural process of
Enlightenment and moral perfection. Shelley eloped with Godwin’s daughter, Mary ( due to which his
first wife committed suicide ). Mary Shelley would be the author of “Frankenstein” . From 1818 to 1822
(when he untimely died in the Golf of Spenzia) Shelley lived in Italy together with Mary and Byron.
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Literature Course- prof. C.Nechifor
Although far from his country, he followed the course of events there with keen interest, and he
denounced the policy of savage repression pursued by the Castlereagh Administration (“The Mask Of
Anarchy” “ Song To The Men Of England” ,”A New National Anthem”).
“The Mask Of Anarchy” was inspired by the ruthless suppression of a workers’ demonstration on
St. Peter’s Field near Manchester in August 1819. The poem was written as an allegorical vision , a
procession of masks- Murder, Fraud, Hypocrisy, headed by Anarchy and closely resembling various
members of Parliament . In their progress through the country they destroy everything leaving behind a
sea of blood. A wonderful “ Shape”, Liberty, ask the toiling people of England what Freedom is but the
only thing they can speak about is “Slavery”:

“Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number ,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep has fallen on you
You are many - they are few.
What is Freedom?- you can tell
That which Slavery is, too well
For its very name has grown
To an echo of your own.”

It was, as Shelley believed, a poet’s duty to sustain the hopes and aspirations of men in their
movement of advance . Although he had considered Wordsworth his master in his early youth, later what
struck him was Wordsworth’s defection from those faiths and hopes and charities which sustain a poet’s
genius in its onwards fight.
Each poet in English Romanticism represents an independent type :
Wordsworth- a poet of nature,
Coleridge- the dream poet,
Byron - the pessimist,
Shelley- the revolutionary one,
Tennyson -the religious poet,
Browning and Keats -preoccupied by the Greek mythology and beauty.

Due to the great freedom of imagination and expression it promoted, Romanticism represents a true
realm of all possibilities, and there are romantic elements that can be discovered in each literary trend to
come.