The Political and Cultural Background of Romanticism (1770-1850)

radical, liberal movement fuelling the development of nationalism > the French Revolution (1789)
originating in the German Sturm und Drang movement (1760s) intuition and emotion over
rationalism; the Industrial Revolutions influence on Romanticism, which was in part an escape from
modern realities (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Paine)
Romanticism praises the achievements of heroic artists, individual imagination as a critical
authority liberated from classical notions of form in art (mimesis)
Derived words in the 1650s romancical, romancer (liar) < fable, fairy tale, dream; for August
Wilhelm von Schlegel, R = more than a modern style, a modern manner of experiencing reality
CLASSIC vs. ROMANTIC - a psychological, rather than aesthetic difference, rooted in emanations
from the unconscious mind (F.L. Lucas), Dionysian in Nietzsches language (irrational, instinctual,
spontaneous, etc.) Wordsworth and Coleridges use of the imagination as a psychological activity vs.
Blake and Keats, who sees imagination as visionary and transcendent
RADICAL CHANGE: capitalisation of POETRY as genre no longer decorative, but a picture of man

MAIN FEATURES:
1. growth and change in individuals, in society and artistic tradition
2. nature and its meanings
3. feeling & imagination and/vs. reason (the head-heart relationship)
4. subjectivism (the relationship between art and life)
The nature and value of Romantic poetry
- expressive, representational characteristic nature as a landscape of the mind
- Neoplatonism (imitation of a transcendental ideal) Plotinus: art = reflection of the beauty of the
intelligible world (Tintern Abbey, Kubla Khan, Ode to Psyche, Hymn to Intellectual Beauty)
- Contemplation as a reflexive act based on introspection, a descent into the infinite world of the psyche
- Poetry as the highest form of knowledge; THE POET as an unacknowledged legislator of the world
(Shelly, A Defence of Poetry) = the poets imaginative powers allow him to formulate socio-political
ideas, perspectives, views, etc.
The function of Romantic poetry (according to the Preface to Lyrical Ballads [1800] composed by
Wordsworth and Coleridge the Romantic manifesto)
- C18 poetry - highly didactic, engaged in the reformation of manners vs. RP = aim to delight (delectare),
to give pleasure to the reader, to make man happy, wiser, better
The principal object, then, which I proposed to myself in these Poems was to chuse incidents and situations from
common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible, in a selection of language really
used by men; and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary
things should be presented to the mind in an unusual way; and, further, and above all, to make these incidents and
situations interesting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature: chiefly, as
far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement. Low and rustic life was generally
chosen, because in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their
maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that condition of life
our elementary feelings co-exist in a state of greater simplicity, and, consequently, may be more accurately
contemplated, and more forcibly communicated [] The language, too, of these men is adopted (purified indeed
from what appear to be its real defects, from all lasting and rational causes of dislike or disgust) because such men
hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived; and because,
from their rank in society and the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse, being less under the influence
of social vanity they convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions. Accordingly,
such a language, arising out of repeated experience and regular feelings, is a more permanent, and a far more
philosophical language, than that which is frequently substituted for it by Poets, who think that they are conferring
honour upon themselves and their art, in proportion as they separate themselves from the sympathies of men, and
indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish food for fickle tastes, and fickle
appetites, of their own creation.

CONCLUSIONS

Social function of poetry (the poet speaking to every man)

Everyday, simple language
Valorisation of the insignificant in nature (flowers, birds, clouds, etc.)
autonomy of the poem in relation to life and society
poetry elevates, purifies feelings of the reader TASTE FOR ORIGINALITY
empathetic capability of the reader and poet alike (with the ideal moral perfection embodied in human
characters)
moral good attained by imagination (Shelley)
affective reception and aesthetic emotion (Wordsworths definition of poetry as a spontaneous overflow
of powerful feelings)
imagination as a conveyor of ideal justice, moral truth, hope, aspirations, beauty
the poet as a visionary and a prophet (the Neoplatonic doctrine seeing into the life of things)
knowledge gained by INTUITION/IMAGINATION (particularly Blake, Keats)