HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

The Romantic
Age
(1798-1830)

VIDYA PATIL
Assistant Professor in English
Government First Grade College, Humnabad.
 Romantic has come to mean
basically two things:
1. The loving or potentially
loving relationships b/w men
and women.
2. A way of looking at the
world that looks beyond, or
ignores, the world as it is
and perceives a visionary
world.
Romanticism
(the Romantic
Movement),
a literary movement, and
profound shift in sensibility,
which took place in Britain and
throughout Europe from 1770-1848.
Intellectuallyit marked a
violent reaction to the
Enlightenment.

Politically
it was inspired by
the revolutions in America and
France and popular wars of
independence in Poland, Spain,
Greece, and elsewhere.
 Emotionally it
expressed an
extreme assertion
of the self and the
value of individual
experience (the 'egotistical
sublime'), together with the sense
of the infinite and transcendental.
 Socially it championed
progressive causes,
though when these
were frustrated it
often produced a bitter,
gloomy, and
despairing outlook.
The Romantic Age
began in 1798 when
William Wordsworth
and Samuel Taylor
published
Lyrical Ballads,
and ended in 1832
when Walter Scott
died.
 Definition :-
 “literature depicting emotional matter in an
imaginative form…….”

 “liberalism in literature…….“

Imagination, emotion and freedom are certainly

the focal points of romanticism.

Romanticism stresses on self-expression and

individual uniqueness.
 Romanticism saw a shift from
CLASSICAL AGE ROMANTIC AGE

 faith in reason  faith in the senses,

feelings &
imagination
 interest in urban
society  interest in the rural
and natural
 public, impersonal
poetry  subjective poetry

 concern with the

scientific and  interest in the
mundane mysterious and
infinite.
 Romanticism includes……
 Imagination is
Subjectivity and
superior to reason
an emphasis on  Love of and worship
individualism of nature
 Spontaneity  Fascination with the
 Freedom from past, especially the
rules myths and
Devotion is mysticism of the
middle ages.
superior to beauty
Solitary life
Romanticism is characterized by the 5 “I”s

Imagination
Idealism

Intuition

Inspiration

Individuality
 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE
ROMANTIC ERA
1. Common Man and Childhood over Urban
Sophistication
Romantics believed in the natural goodness of
humans, which is hindered by the urban life of
civilization. They believed that the savage is noble,
childhood is good and the emotions inspired by
both beliefs causes the heart to soar.
2. Emotions over Reason
Romantics believed that knowledge is gained
through intuition rather than deduction. This is best
summed up by Wordsworth who stated that “all
good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings.”
3. Nature over Artificial
Romantics stressed the awe of nature in art and
language and the experience of sublimity through
a connection with nature. Romantics rejected the
ideas of the industrial revolution .

4. The Individual over Society

Romantics often elevated the achievements of the
misunderstood, heroic individual outcast.

5. Imagination over Logic

Romantics legitimized the individual imagination
as a critical authority.
 COMMON FEATURES OF
ROMANTIC POETRY
 The romantics cultivated imaginative freedom;
 Used a variety of poetic forms;

 Tended to express the feelings of man in

solitude as opposed to those of man in society;
 All the poets, except Blake, described the
natural environment;
 They tended to use language with more
freedom and informality than the 18th century
poets;
 They tended to use language with more
freedom and informality than the 18th
century poets;
 They were profoundly affected by the great
historical fact of the French Revolution;
 The romantic poets were deeply interested
both in life and art;
 The most interesting poems were about
writing poetry;
ROMANTIC LITERARY
THEMES : FORMS
NATURE LYRIC,
LOVE BALLAD,
HISTORY SONNET,
HISTORICAL
NOVEL
 ROMANTIC ATTITUDES:
 SENSIBILITY
 MELANCHOLY
 INDIVIDUALISM
 REBELLIOUSNESS
 THE FIRST GENERATION
OF ROMANTIC POETS:
W. BLAKE (1757 – 1827)
W.WORDSWORTH (1770
- 1850)
S.T. COLERIDGE (1772 -
1834)
WILLIAM BLAKE
 Born : 28 November 1757
London, England
 Died : 12 August 1827
(aged 69)
London, England
 Occupation: Poet, Painter,
Printmaker
 Genres: Visionary Poetry
 Literary movement:
Romanticism
 Notable work: Songs of
Innocence and of Experience,
The Marriage of Heaven and
Hell, The Four Zoas,
Jerusalem, Milton
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
 William Wordsworth
(7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850)
was a major English Romantic poet
who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
helped to launch the Romantic Age
in English literature with the 1798
joint publication Lyrical Ballads.

 Wordsworth's magnum opus is

generally considered to be
The Prelude, a semiautobiographical
poem of his early years.

 Wordsworth was England's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his

death in 1850.
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
 Born: 21 October
1772 Ottery St. Mary,
Devon, England
 Died : 25 July 1834
(aged 61)
Highgate, England
 Occupation: Poet,
critic, philosopher
 Literary movement :
Romanticism
THE SECOND GENERATION OF
ROMANTIC POETS:

BYRON (1757 – 1827)

KEATS (1770 - 1850)

PERCY BYSSHE
SHELLEY (1792 - 1822)
 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
 Born : 4 August 1792
Field Place, Horsham,
Sussex, England
 Died : 8 July 1822

(aged 29)Lerici,
Kingdom of Sardinia(now Italy)
 Occupation : Poet, dramatist, essayist,
novelist
 Literary movement : Romanticism
JOHN KEATS
Born 31 October 1795
Moorgate, London,
England
Died 23 February 1821
(aged 25)
Rome, Papal States
Occupation Poet
Alma mater King's College,
London
Literary Romanticism
movement
 LORD BYRON
 Born : George Gordon Byron
22 January 1788
London
 Died : 19 April 1824

(aged 36)Missolonghi,
Ottoman Empire (Greece)
 Occupation : Poet, politician

 Nationality : English

 Literary movement : Romanticism

 LITERARY CRITICISM
 Literary critics
became the arbiters
of taste
 Debate over the
artistic value as well
William Hazlitt as the utilitarian value Thomas DeQuincy

of critical literature
 1802: Edinburgh
Review
 1809: Quarterly
Review

Charles Lamb Samuel Taylor Coleridge

HISTORICAL
NOVELS
 Novels that reconstruct a
past age, often when two
cultures are in conflict
 Fictional characters
interact with with
historical figures in actual
events
 Sir Walter Scott (1771-
1832) is considered the
father of the historical
novel: The Waverly
Novels (1814-1819) and
Ivanhoe (1819)
 JANE AUSTEN AND
THE NOVEL OF MANNERS
 Novels dominated by the
customs, manners,
conventional behavior and
habits of a particular social
class
 Often concerned with
courtship and marriage
 Realistic and sometimes
satiric
 Focus on domestic society
rather than the larger world
To say the word Romanticism is to say
modern art - that is, intimacy,
spirituality, color, aspiration towards
the infinite, expressed by every means
available to the arts.
 “Beauty is truth,
truth beauty,’ – that
is all ye know on
earth, and all ye need
to know. “- Keats

Poetry is the
spontaneous overflow
of powerful feelings:
it takes its origin
from emotion
recollected in
tranquility.”-
 THANK YOU

VIDYA PATIL
Assistant Professor in English