Rizal Technological University

College of Education
English Department

ROMANTICISM: Literary History and Style

Estabillo, Rica Mae R.

Flores, Ihna Joy H.
Guibao, Mikaeilla T.
Indicio, Diane F.
Lontoc, Maynard A.
Mabuan, Christine B.
Redulla, Leizel P.
INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1: ROMANTICISM

1.1 Defining the Subject:

 In many respects, these are the terms in literary history and criticism which are the
most controversial and difficult to define with any precision
 To describe literature, German poet Friedrich Schlegel defined romantic as "literature
depicting emotional matter in an imaginative form."
 According to Liliana Sikorska (2002) “Romanticism is the time of individualism”.
 According to the fifth edition of The Oxford Companion to English Literature, where
Romanticism is described as a literary movement, and profound shift in sensibility,
which took place in Britain and throughout Europe roughly between 1770 and 1848.
 Some of the prominent poets of English are William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats. American has Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Henry David Thoreau,
Herman Melville, Walt Whitman
 The Romantic period was an era in which a literary revolution took place alongside
social and economic revolutions. In some histories of literature, the Romantic period
is called the ‘Age of Revolutions’
 The American Scholar A.O. Lovejoy once observed that the word 'romantic' has come
to mean so many things that, by itself, it means nothing at all...The variety of its
actual and possible meanings and connotations reflect the complexity and multiplicity
of European romanticism. In the Decline and Fall of the Romantic Ideal (1948) F.L.
Lucas counted 11,396 definitions of 'romanticism'. In Classic, Romantic and
Modern (1961) Barzun cites examples of synonymous usage for romantic which show
that it is perhaps the most remarkable example of a term which can mean many things
according to personal and individual needs.
 The word romantic (ism) has a complex and interesting history. In the Middle Ages
'romance' denoted the new vernacular languages derived from Latin - in
contradistinction to Latin itself, which was the language of
learning. Enromancier, romancar, romanz meant to compose or translate books in the
vernacular. The work produced was then
called romanz, roman, romanzo and romance. A roman or romant came to be known
as an imaginative work and a 'courtly romance'. The terms also signified a 'popular
book'. There are early suggestions that it was something new, different, divergent. By
the 17th c. in Britain and France, 'romance' has acquired the derogatory connotations
of fanciful, bizarre, exaggerated, chimerical. In France a distinction was made
between romanesque (also derogatory) and romantique (which meant 'tender', 'gentle',
'sentimental' and 'sad'). It was used in the English form in these latter senses in the
18th c. In Germany the word romantisch was used in the 17th c. in the French sense
of romanesque, and then, increasingly from the middle of the 18 th c., in the English
sense of 'gentle', 'melancholy'.
 Many hold to the theory that it was in Britain that the romantic movement really
started. At any rate, quite early in the 18th c. one can discern a definite shift in
sensibility and feeling, particularly in relation to the natural order and Nature. This, of
course, is hindsight. When we read Keats, Coleridge and Wordsworth, for instance,
 we gradually become aware that many of their sentiments and responses are
foreshadowed by what has been described as a 'pre-romantic sensibility'.

1.2 Development and History:

 It is one of the curiosities of literary history that the strongholds of the Romantic
Movement were England and Germany, not the countries of the romance languages
themselves. Thus it is from the historians of English and German literature that we
inherit the convenient set of terminal dates for the Romantic period, beginning in
1798, the year of the first edition of Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge
and of the composition of Hymns to the Night by Novalis, and ending in 1832, the
year which marked the deaths of both Sir Walter Scott and Goethe. However, as an
international movement affecting all the arts, Romanticism begins at least in the
1770's and continues into the second half of the nineteenth century, later for
American literature than for European, and later in some of the arts, like music and
painting, than in literature. This extended chronological spectrum (1770-1870) also
permits recognition as Romantic the poetry of Robert Burns and William Blake in
England, the early writings of Goethe and Schiller in Germany, and the great period
of influence for Rousseau's writings throughout Europe.
 The early Romantic period thus coincides with what is often called the "age of
revolutions"--including, of course, the American (1776) and the French (1789)
revolutions--an age of upheavals in political, economic, and social traditions, the age
which witnessed the initial transformations of the Industrial Revolution. A
revolutionary energy was also at the core of Romanticism, which quite consciously
set out to transform not only the theory and practice of poetry (and all art), but the
very way we perceive the world. Some of its major precepts have survived into the
twentieth century and still affect our contemporary period.

DISCUSSION

1.3 Romanticism in Literature:

Popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Romanticism was a literary movement that
emphasized nature and the importance of emotion and artistic freedom. In many ways,
writers of this era were rebelling against the attempt to explain the world and human nature
through science and the lens of the Industrial Revolution. In Romanticism, emotion is much
more powerful than rational thought.
1.3.1 Characteristics/ Common Concepts:
 Love of (reverence for) nature.
Nature, in all its unbound glory, plays a huge role in Romantic literature. Nature, sometimes
seen as the opposite of the rational, is a powerful symbol in work from this era. Romantic
poets and writers give personal, deep descriptions of nature and its wild and powerful
qualities.
Natural elements also work as symbols for the unfettered emotions of the poet or writer, as in
the final stanza of “To Autumn” by John Keats. Keats was aware that he was dying of
consumption throughout much of his short life and career, and his celebration of autumn
symbolizes the beauty in the ephemeral.
“Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?
 Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.”

 Awareness and Acceptance of Emotions

A focus on emotion is a key characteristic of nearly all writing from the Romantic period.
When you read work of this period, you’ll see feelings described in all forms, including
romantic and filial love, fear, sorrow, loneliness, and more. This focus on emotion offered a
counterpoint to the rational, and it also made Romantic poetry and prose extremely readable
and relatable.
Mary Shelley's  Frankenstein offers a perfect example of this characteristic of Romanticism.
Here, Frankenstein’s monster shows great self-awareness of his feelings and offers a vivid
emotional description full of anger and sadness.
“I continued for the remainder of the day in my hovel in a state of utter and stupid
despair. My protectors had departed and had broken the only link that held me to
the world. For the first time the feelings of revenge and hatred filled my bosom,
and I did not strive to control them, but allowing myself to be borne away by the
stream, I bent my mind towards injury and death. When I thought of my friends, of
the mild voice of De Lacey, the gentle eyes of Agatha, and the exquisite beauty of
the Arabian, these thoughts vanished and a gush of tears somewhat soothed me.
But again when I reflected that they had spurned and deserted me, anger returned, a
rage of anger, and unable to injure anything human, I turned my fury towards
inanimate objects. As night advanced I placed a variety of combustibles around the
cottage, and after having destroyed every vestige of cultivation in the garden, I
waited with forced impatience until the moon had sunk to commence my
operations.”

 Celebration of Artistic Creativity and Imagination

In contrast to the previous generations’ focus on reason, imagination replaced reason as the
supreme faculty of the mind. Writers of the Romantic movement explored the importance of
imagination and the creative impulse. Romantic poets and prose writers celebrated the power
of imagination and the creative process, as well as the artistic viewpoint. They believed that
artists and writers looked at the world differently, and they celebrated that vision in their
work.
William Wordsworth’s poem, “The Prelude" is a great example for this characteristic.
“Imagination—here the Power so called
Through sad incompetence of human speech,
That awful Power rose from the mind’s abyss
Like an unfathered vapor that enwraps,
At once, some lonely traveller. I was lost;
Halted without an effort to break through;
But to my conscious soul I now can say—
“I recognise thy glory:” in such strength
Of usurpation, when the light of sense
Goes out, but with a flash that has revealed
The invisible world….”

 Emphasis on Aesthetic Beauty

Romantic literature also explores the theme of aesthetic beauty, not just of nature but of
people as well. This was especially true with descriptions of female beauty. Writers praised
women of the Romantic era for their natural loveliness, rather than anything artificial or
constrained.
A classic example of this characteristic is George Gordon, or Lord Byron’s, poem “She
Walks in Beauty."
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

 Themes of Solitude
Writers of the Romantic era believed that creative inspiration came from solitary exploration.
They celebrated the feeling of being alone, whether that meant loneliness or a much-needed
quiet space to think and create.
You’ll see solitary themes in many literary works from this period, including in this excerpt
from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Frost at Midnight."
 “The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry
Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruse musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully …”

 Focus on Exoticism and History

Romantic-era literature often has a distinct focus on exotic locations and events or items from
history. Poems and prose touch on antiques and the gifts of ancient cultures around the world,
and far-away locations provide the setting for some literary works of this era.
One great example is Percy Byssche Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias."
“I met a traveler from an antique land,
Who said— “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . .. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read”

 Spiritual and Supernatural Elements

The writers of the Romantic era did not turn away from the darker side of emotion and the
mysteries of the supernatural. They explored the contrast between life and death. Many
pieces have Gothic motifs, such as manor houses in disrepair, dark and stormy nights, and
more.
Some of the supernatural elements serve as symbols for emotions of guilt, depression, and
other darker feelings, as you can see in this excerpt from The Fall of the House of Usher
by Edgar Allan Poe.
“I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints,
another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain
superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and
whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth --in regard to an influence
whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-
stated --an influence which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of
his family mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his
spirit-an effect which the physique of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim
tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon the
morale of his existence.”
  Vivid Sensory Descriptions
Another essential characteristic of nearly all Romantic-era literature is vivid sensory
descriptions. The poems and prose of this period include examples of simile and metaphor, as
well as visual imagery and other sensory details. Poets and other writers went beyond simply
telling about things and instead gave the information readers need to feel and taste and touch
the objects and surroundings in Romantic-era writing.
Wordsworth uses vivid descriptions, including similes and metaphors, in his famous poem, “I
Wandered Lonely as a Cloud."
“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze …”

 Use of Personification
Romantic poets and prose writers also used personification in their work. You can
see examples of personification of everything from birds and animals to natural events or
aspects. These works even personify feelings like love or states like death.
You can see Romantic personification in the work of the famous naturalist and writer, Karl
von Martius. Here is an excerpt about the trees of the Amazon from his book Flora
Brasiliense’s.
“I am impelled by some inner urge to tell you, gentle reader, these thoughts of my
mind, since I am presenting to your eyes a picture of those most ancient trees
which I once saw beside the Amazon River. Even today, after many years have
gone by, I feel myself struck by the appearance of those giants of great age, in the
same way as by the face of some giant human being. Even today those trees speak
to me and fill my spirit with a certain pious fear, even today they excite in my
breast that silent wonder with which my spirit was held at that time. This wonder
is like a broad and deep river; the thoughts of the human mind are its waves; not
all feelings of the heart are to be expressed with words....”

 Individualism
Many works of Romantic-era literature are deeply personal, and they often explore the self of
the writer. You’ll see autobiographical influences in poems and prose of the period. One
characteristic of this movement was the importance placed on feelings and creativity, and the
source of much of this emotional and artistic work was the background and real-life
surroundings of the writer. This self-focus preceded confessional poetry of the mid-1900s,
but you can see its profound influence on that movement.
One key example of Romantic autobiography is Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions. In this
work, he endeavored to create an unvarnished look at his own upbringing and life.
“I have begun on a work which is without precedent, whose accomplishment will
have no imitator. I propose to set before my fellow-mortals a man in all the truth
of nature; and this man shall be myself.
I have studied mankind and know my heart; I am not made like any one I have
been acquainted with, perhaps like no one in existence; if not better, I at least
claim originality, and whether Nature has acted rightly or wrongly in destroying
the mold in which she cast me, can only be decided after I have been read.”

1.4 Chosen Motifs and Themes in Romantic Literature

The concept of romanticism together with general understanding of its characteristics

can be found in René Wellek who wrote in 1963:

If we examine the characteristics of the actual literature which called itself or was
called ‘romantic’ all over the continent, we find throughout Europe the same conceptions of
poetry and of the workings and nature of poetic imagination, the same conception of nature
and its relation to man; and basically, the same poetic style, with a use of imagery,
symbolism, and myth which is clearly distinct from that of eighteenth-century neoclassicism.

In all of these studies, however diverse in method and emphasis, a convincing

agreement has been reached: they all see the implication of imagination, symbol, myth, and
organic nature, and see it as part of the great endeavor to overcome the split between subject
and object, the self and the world, the conscious and the unconscious. This is the central
creed of the great romantic poets in England, Germany and France. It is a closely coherent
body of thought and feeling.

A revolutionary energy which can be ascribed to the early Romantic period while it
coincides with what is often called the ‘age of revolutions’ was also at the core of Romantic
literature, which quite consciously set out to transform not only the theory and practice of
poetry, but the very way people perceive the world. Some of its major precepts survived into
the modern times and still affect contemporary literary period.

1.4.1 Imagination

Romanticism wanted to bring imagination more fully back into art, because they
recognized it as part of lived experience. Under imagination—sometimes called "fancy"—the
Romantics included the whimsical, the fantastic, and the supernatural. The groundbreaking
Lyrical Ballads, by Romantic poets Wordsworth and Coleridge, included a number of
ballads. Ballads often recorded folk stories of the liminal and supernatural or a fantastic tale.

For the Romantics, emotion, memory, and imagination were closely intertwined. They
wanted to capture emotional states, as well as the emotions evoked by memory. They hoped
to enter imaginatively into memory, into emotion, and into the lives of simple, ordinary
people so as to better convey all of these in a positive light to the rest of the world. They
wanted to encompass more than simply logic in a world that sometimes seemed to them
motivated solely by money and facts.
 As opposed to Enlightenment philosophers who privileged logic and learning, the
Romantics felt that emotion and imagination were more vital, important and reliable than
logic. The reason they believed this is that emotion and imagination do not need to be
learned; we know how to feel and to imagine without being taught, and so, to them, it seemed
more integral to the human experience. Intense emotion, especially, was thought to be
desirable because it is so visceral, and imagination could inspire writers to produce works
that would compel this kind of very intense feeling -- like horror -- in the reader. The horror
produced in the reader from her imaginative descriptions of the creature and his monstrous
doings is just the kind of intense emotion prized by Romantics.

1.4.2 Nature
Romanticism was an intellectual and artistic movement that originated in the second
half of the 18th century. It was a reactionary response against the scientific rationalization of
nature during the Enlightenment, commonly expressed in literature, music, painting and
drama. But it was not simply a response to the rationalism of the Enlightenment but also a
reaction against the material changes in society, which accompanied the emerging and
expanding industrial capitalism in the late eighteenth century. In this transition production
became centralized in the city. The factory system of mass production was centered on
processes that used and controlled natural forces such as water and wind, but also increased
power by increasingly using fossil fuels. These processes, combined with the profit motive,
“degraded and despoiled”, as some romantics saw it, the environment. Cities expanded to
unprecedented sizes, and grew into center of pollution, poverty and deprivation. They began
to symbolize the failure of laissez faire liberalism’s philosophy that permitting people to
follow their self-interest would lead to a perfect society. Population movement from the land,
and rational search for economically efficient production methods (involving division of
labor, timekeeping and mechanisation) led, according to the Romantic Movement, to spiritual
alienation of the masses from the land and nature.
This was regarded as undesirable and leading to the degradation of the humans.
According to the romantics, the solution was “back to nature” because nature was seen as
pure and a spiritual source of renewal. It was also a way out of the fumes of the growing
industrial centers for the new industrial rich. Inspired by the works of romantic authors and
poets such as Wordsworth, Keats and Shelly, they hopped on the newly developed railways
and travelled to the Lake District. This led in the end to an appreciation of the landscape,
described in terms as the “Sublime” and also “Delight” (in the landscape). Spoliation of a
pure natural landscape was regarded as undesirable and destructive. These ideas are still with
us and led the way for modern day conservation and environmentalism as well as outdoor
recreation and appreciation for natural and historical heritage.
1.5 Symbolism and Myth
Symbolism and myth were given great prominence in the Romantic conception of art.
In the Romantic view, symbols were the human aesthetic correlatives of nature's emblematic
language. They were valued too because they could simultaneously suggest many things, and
were thus thought superior to the one-to-one communications of allegory. Partly, it may have
been the desire to express the "inexpressible"--the infinite--through the available resources of
language that led to symbol at one level and myth (as symbolic narrative) at another.
Although the reign of the mythological consciousness over the rational is long gone
and was overcome by the first Greek philosophers and scientists, the mythological
consciousness model does not completely lose its influence in society. The study of
mythological methods in a scientific research (allegory, metaphor, control, manipulation) is
still seen as extremely attractive. They use archetypal stories, symbols, and allegories,
referring to the primary sense of the unity of the world, as experienced by every person in
childhood. Myth as a unified representation of society on man and the world of ancient men
has not survived. Although the method of constructing a world order in mythological
consciousness as a model of perception, experience and characterization of events lies at the
base of consciousness until now, and is especially clearly manifested in the production of
mass representations.
During the rise of Romanticism in Germany it was possible to work out and
comprehend different scientific programs based on ancient symbolic material, one of which
was ancient mythology. These programs appeared in different academic and university
groups. The borders of these approaches lay not only in the educational and curricular
specification but mostly in the logic of knowledge differentiation. The significance of the
formation of mythology as a discipline may be found in the academic search for nationhood,
through language and history as ancient mythologies. Romantic scientists analyzed this
process not from a teleological perspective but historically, in terms of its appearance at the
first stages of its development, when many potential scripts were possible. Mythology
appeared at the crossroads of these claims.
1.5.1 Mythology at the Boundary: A Guide to Infinity and A Positive Scientific
Standard
Humans tend to create an alternate world through myth. Grand theorizers of the 19th
century science had to disregard what did not square with or did not seem important to the
great explanation theory. For those studying myth and mythology it is at the same time the
starting point, the topic sentence and the conclusion, that myth, particularly classical myth, is
too varied to be understood by one approach. Romantic theories reject the idea that myths are
just inert, cultural relics. The Romantics made myth clear through the prism of the truth of
myth as containing lost and emotional truths.
Myth in its philosophical-aesthetical interpretation in German idealism, being
contiguous with Enlightenment, Romanticism and Classicism was reduced by rational
historical criticism to a bygone, outdated form of knowledge. Not many scientists referred to
the works of this period. Moreover, the roots and historical stages of the formation of myth,
mythology, and the field of related subjects as specific notions are being lost. It is due to the
state of affairs in which since the 18th-19th centuries reflection on myth has undergone
multiple transformations, and it now tends to be situated in a discourse on power. In addition,
humane studies do not presuppose to unravel the web of complicated texts of the time, which
are by no means popular and simplified.
Romanticists anticipated these findings and turning points in the history of humankind
in their ideas that Greco-Roman myths were not the only proofs of the early mythic thought
and poetry. These ideas flourished in realizing and actualizing mythology, be it ancient or
contemporary, in the mode of scientific work and even in the everyday life. The ideas of
romanticists reflect the spirit of a time, at which the traditional rational historical and
classical philological attitude to myth and mythology were revised, and when the reality and
truth of myth and mythology were discovered in the new time and space.
1.5.2 Symbolism and mythology in lectures and sketches
 One of the interesting sources for the study of the formation of mythology as a
discipline in the late 18th - early 19th centuries is the prominent work of Friedrich Creuzer
Symbolism and mythology of ancient peoples, especially the Greeks. We will consider three
German editions of Symbolism published by the author in the period from 1810 to 1842.
In the 18th -19th centuries mythology became associated not only with the Greek,
Roman or Egyptian myths, but also with myths in general. Previously unexamined collections
of myths were discovered in India, China, Persia, Scandinavia, Germany, Africa, America
and Australia. From the study of the collection of myths, writers and scientists turned to
analysis of mythological consciousness and the search for myths’ governing principles. As
myth was increasingly perceived as a way of thought and imagination, and less as a body of
knowledge about old stories, romantic writers and scholars in Germany, England, France,
America, Russia and other countries were inspired to study and interpret it. By the middle of
the 19th century the so-called romantic ideas about the myth markedly dominated religious
studies, history and philology.
Romanticism proper was preceded by several related developments from the mid-18th
century on that can be termed Pre-Romanticism. Among such trends was a new appreciation
of the medieval romance, from which the Romantic movement derives its name. The
romance was a tale or ballad of chivalric adventure whose emphasis on individual heroism
and on the exotic and the mysterious was in clear contrast to the elegant formality and
artificiality of prevailing Classical forms of literature, such as the French Neoclassical
tragedy or the English heroic couplet in poetry. This new interest in relatively unsophisticated
but overtly emotional literary expressions of the past was to be a dominant note in
Romanticism.
A notable by-product of the Romantic interest in the emotional were works dealing
with the supernatural, the weird, and the horrible, as in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and
works by Charles Robert Maturin, the Marquis de Sade, and E.T.A. Hoffmann. The second
phase of Romanticism in Germany was dominated by Achim von Arnim, Clemens Brentano,
Joseph von Görres, and Joseph von Eichendorff. By the 1820s Romanticism had broadened
to embrace the literatures of almost all of Europe. In this later, second, phase, the movement
was less universal in approach and concentrated more on exploring each nation’s historical
and cultural inheritance and on examining the passions and struggles of exceptional
individuals.
1.5.3 The Everyday and the Exotic
Romanticism influenced political ideology, inviting engagement with the cause of the
poor and oppressed and with ideals of social emancipation and progress. The individual was
prized, but it was also felt that people were under an obligation to their fellow-men: personal
commitment to the group was therefore important. Governments existed to serve the people.
There was a feeling that people were actively part of the historical process, and could
therefore contribute to social progress.
It did not supersede Enlightenment thought; rather it offered alternative outlooks and
horizons. In promoting the imagination over reason, the Romantics encouraged individuals to
experiment boldly, to question things instead of blindly accepting them. If we pause to think
for a moment about the 1960s, this was a decade in which there was a renewed emphasis on
Romanticism. The early Romantic innovative vision had clashed with classicism; in the
1960s there was again a striking opposition between tradition and counter-cultures, a desire to
‘get back to nature’, and many people were lured by Eastern mysticism. Rebelliousness and
innovation were again manifest in many spheres of activity.
 In some circumstances this was liberating and life-enhancing; however there has
always been an underlying tension in Romanticism: it has a melancholic aspect, because
Time is man’s enemy. There is a sense of the limitless potential of man, but also an
awareness that life is transitory.
The attitude of many of the Romantics to the everyday, social world around them was
complex. It is true that they advanced certain realistic techniques, such as the use of "local
color" (through down-to-earth characters, like Wordsworth's rustics, or through everyday
language, as in Emily Bronte's northern dialects or Whitman's colloquialisms, or through
popular literary forms, such as folk narratives). Yet social realism was usually subordinate to
imaginative suggestion, and what was most important were the ideals suggested by the above
examples, simplicity perhaps, or innocence. Earlier, the 18th-century cult of the noble savage
had promoted similar ideals, but now artists often turned for their symbols to domestic rather
than exotic sources--to folk legends and older, "unsophisticated" art forms, such as the ballad,
to contemporary country folk who used "the language of common men," not an artificial
"poetic diction," and to children (for the first time presented as individuals, and often
idealized as sources of greater wisdom than adults).
Simultaneously, as opposed to everyday subjects, various forms of the exotic in time
and/or place also gained favor, for the Romantics were also fascinated with realms of
existence that were, by definition, prior to or opposed to the ordered conceptions of
"objective" reason. Often, both the everyday and the exotic appeared together in paradoxical
combinations. In the Lyrical Ballads, for example, Wordsworth and Coleridge agreed to
divide their labors according to two subject areas, the natural and the supernatural:
Wordsworth would try to exhibit the novelty in what was all too familiar, while Coleridge
would try to show in the supernatural what was psychologically real, both aiming to dislodge
vision from the "lethargy of custom." The concept of the beautiful soul in an ugly body, as
characterized in Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,
is another variant of the paradoxical combination.
In another way too, the Romantics were ambivalent toward the "real" social world
around them. They were often politically and socially involved, but at the same time they
began to distance themselves from the public. As noted earlier, high Romantic artists
interpreted things through their own emotions, and these emotions included social and
political consciousness--as one would expect in a period of revolution, one that reacted so
strongly to oppression and injustice in the world. So, artists sometimes took public stands, or
wrote works with socially or politically oriented subject matter. Yet at the same time, another
trend began to emerge, as they withdrew more and more from what they saw as the confining
boundaries of bourgeois life. In their private lives, they often asserted their individuality and
differences in ways that were to the middle class a subject of intense interest, but also
sometimes of horror. ("Nothing succeeds like excess," wrote Oscar Wilde, who, as a partial
inheritor of Romantic tendencies, seemed to enjoy shocking the bourgeois, both in his literary
and life styles.) Thus, the gulf between "odd" artists and their sometimes shocked, often
uncomprehending audience began to widen. Some artists may have experienced ambivalence
about this situation--it was earlier pointed out how Emily Dickinson seemed to regret that her
"letters" to the world would go unanswered. Yet a significant Romantic theme became the
contrast between artist and middle-class "Philistine." Unfortunately, in many ways, this
distance between artist and public remains with us today.
CHAPTER 2: The First Generation of Romantic Poets

I. Wordsworth, Coleridge -1793-1810

Started out as supporters of the French Revolution. Later they got disappointed because their

2.1.1 William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

 Wordsworth’s poetry is in strong contrast with the
visionary and symbolic poetry of Blake. His style is
thoroughly simple, understandable, which was, however, a
conscious part of the program of Romanticism.
 Wordsworth lived up to the age of 80, but his effective
career lasted about two decades (~1790-1810). After about
1810 he wrote a lot of poetry, but the quality of it does not
even approximate his earlier writings. He started to deal
with poetry around 1785. While attending the University
of Cambridge between 1787 and ‘91, he became
acquainted with the poetry of sensibility, as reflected in his
early poems “An Evening Walk” and “Descriptive
Sketches”. These poems, however, are still part of the
general-minded poetry of the 18thcentury, he expresses no
particular and individual feelings in them.
 The turn in his career can be attributed to his travels in France (1790-1793) and his
meeting and friendship with Coleridge in 1795. The fruit of their co-operation was
Lyrical Ballads (1798), regarded as the first Romantic publication in England. Out of
the 23 poems published in this volume, 19 were produced by Wordsworth and only
four by Coleridge. In 1810, their friendship ended, and although they reconciled two
years later, they could never reach the productivity of the early years. Wordsworth
published his last work in 1842. The next year, after Robert Southey’s death, he was
appointed Poet Laureate (koszorús költő).
 Wordsworth’s main idea of poetry is based on the essential unity of the self and
Nature, expressed in the following quotation: “we are part of all that we behold”.
According to Wordsworth, the universe should be considered as an absolute unity, so
divinity can be found in nature and in human nature, too (the two are one). Man must
be united with the universe, he is placed in it and must obey its powers and participate
in its plan. The theory of the workings of poetic mind was influenced by Samuel
Hartley’s associationist philosophy / psychology, which, ultimately goes back to
Locke’s tabula rasa idea. The central notion is that all mental life is the product of
perception that generate ideas and these are connected by associations. These
theoretical starting points produce Wordsworth’s reflexive, intellectual and emotional
poetry.
 His poetic mind and main ideas on poetic creation are reflected in one of the most
important documents of European Romanticism, “Preface” to the second edition of
Lyrical Ballads(1800). The main theses of the Preface are the following:
 “New Poetry” should be based on the reformation of the language of poetry without
artificial literary forms. Poetry’s language should be closer to contemporary pattern.
As they explained it, “The principal object, then, proposed in these poems was to
choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them,
throughout, as far as possible, in a selection of language really used by men, and, at
 the same time, to throw over them a certain coloring of imagination, whereby
ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect; and further, and
above all, to make these incidents and situations really 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.”
 The subject matter of poetry should be twofold: “humble and rural life” (as opposed
to the corruption of London).
 Poetry is defined as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” and
“recollection of an overflow of feelings in tranquility”. Subjectivism, the speaker’ /
poet’s personal experience is important. The poet is a special person of superior
sensitivity who is gifted with imagination and creative power so that he can
understand the essence of all knowledge and could to communicate this to others. The
poet’s role is to be a kind of teacher, conveying the message of Nature of the
supernatural, what is beyond the senses.

Outstanding poems:
 “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbeyon Revisiting the Banks of the
Wye During a Tour, 13 July 1798” (often abbreviated to “Tintern Abbey”) (1798)

“Five years have passed; five summers, with the length

Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur. Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and
Connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky...”

 Prelude, or the Growth of a Poet’s Mind (1799-1805) - 14 books, autobiography in

verse, but not conventional
The purpose is to explore the psychology of a poet (what forces shaped him to become a
poet) 3 stages:
1) Initial paradise of Nature (Childhood)
2) Paradise lost: turns to revolutionary France but gets disillusioned
3) Paradise regained: decision to turn back to Nature, finding happiness
 “The Recluse” (1800)
 “Resolution and Independence” (1802)
 “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” (1802/04):
conveys the feeling that the poem foresees the decrease of his creative powers
 Shorter poems: “I wandered lonely...”, “Composed upon Westminster Bridge”, “The
Solitary Reaper”
2.2.1 Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

 Like Wordsworth, Coleridge also belonged to the first

generation of Romantic poets. His work and
personality, however, seems to be less even and perhaps
more complicated than that of his friend. One of the
reasons why Wordsworth became alienated from him is
that Coleridge took to opium partly because of his lack
of will, partly due to his unhappy marriage. Coleridge
went to Cambridge but left without a degree.
 He became not only a poet but a significant literary
critic and theorist as well. He was thoroughly interested
in politics, religion, philosophy, (and especially
German) metaphysics. After 1803 wrote no significant
work, and felt his whole career a failure.
2.1.3 His poetry
 He began writing poetry at the age of 15, and published his first volume in 1796. His
first poems were born within the mode of the then-popular poetry of sensibility, and
these early poems show that, like many of his contemporaries, he was also
enthusiastic about the French Revolution. Typical works from this period: “Imitated
from Ossian”; “Lines in the Manner of Spenser”.
 The first poems that show something of the Romantic spirit are centered around the
themes of imagination and childhood (“The Aeolian Harp”, “Reflections on Having
Left a Place of Retirement”, “Frost at Midnight”). The common feature of these
poems is that the line of thought in them is circular: they start from the observation of
the specific scene, then go on to distant places and times, and finally return to the
starting point. The deeper meaning of this structure is that the surroundings are
reflections of the consciousness, the two cannot be separated from each other (in other
words, the beholder does not only record the scene, but creates it actively).
 Another section of the early poems deal with contemporary events and show an
increasing dissatisfaction with them: “Destruction of the Bastille”; “The Fall of
Robespierre”; “France: An Ode”; “Fears in Solitude”.
 The two most important poems in this period are “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
(1797/98, final form: 1817 ) and “Kubla Khan”(1798).
 “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is the most valuable English art ballad in this
period. The source of the poem is the medieval legend of the Jewish tradesman who
taunted Jesus Christ on his way to the Crucifixion; as a punishment, he was
condemned to wander all around the globe and tell his story until Christ’s Second
Coming (“the wandering Jew”). Here, the focus is on the Ancient Mariner’s soul. The
mariner committed an offense against Nature’s law, shot a helpless albatross for no
reason. Now he has to suffer. The Albatross is of course a manifold symbol –stands
for the soul, Nature’s sacred law, creative powers (in which case the Mariner is the
allegory of a poet who kills his own abilities, like Coleridge).
  “Dejection –An Ode” from 1802 is similar to Wordsworth’s “Ode...” –both poems
report the significant decrease of creative powers. Coleridge’s main work of literary
criticism is Biographia Literaria, or, Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life and
Opinions. This piece contains often unstructured thoughts about the evolution of
English Romanticism and Coleridge’s own development as a poet. The most cogent
part of the work is Chapter 14, which is similar to the above-mentioned “Preface” to
Lyrical Ballads. In this Chapter, Coleridge introduces the concepts of “fancy” and
“imagination”.
 According to Coleridge, a poem is similar to a prose composition in that it uses the
same elements, so the difference between the two consists in the different
combination of these elements, so not in the content but in the form: “A poem is that
species of composition which is opposed to works of science by proposing for its
immediate object pleasure, not truth”. Thus, a distinction between the function and
role of science and art. Poetry’s main aim / function is to give pleasure.
 This pleasure should derive from the whole of the work, not from different
components (rhyme, decoration, theme, rhythm), conceived of as decorations, as the
neo-Classics would have liked it. Coleridge here sheds light on the organic nature of
the poem and its totality: its parts mutually support and explain each other. As
opposed to a poem, in science not the whole gives pleasure but only parts. Poetry,
according to Coleridge, is another way of getting to know the world besides science.
The latter analyses and pulls the world into pieces, discrete segments, while poetry
(and art in general) aims at getting to know the world synthetically, organically,
supposing a union with the subject and the perceived world.
 The way to achieve this union, the poet must be an artist of supreme sensibility.
Coleridge introduces another key term, “the willing suspension of disbelief”. “... It
was agreed, that my endeavors should be directed to persons and characters
supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a
human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of
imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes
poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth on the other hand was to propose to himself as his
object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling
analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of
custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us ...”
 Another important theme of this chapter is the scrutiny of different types and levels of
the poetic mind. Coleridge argues that the lowest form of this is remembering. He also
distinguishes two other, more creative, types: imagination and fancy. He means by
imagination the kind that mingles different sensations, by “fancy” the other kind that
creatively transforms sensory experiences according to its own laws. True poetry
should be the combination of fancy and imagination. The role of imagination is that it
puts things together, whereas science’s main aim is analysis, taking things apart
Imagination and fancy (e.g. use of metaphor) contribute to a better understanding of
the world, by the force of combination.
 Thus, Coleridge rehabilitates the terms “fancy” and “imagination” for poetry. We can
understand the importance of this act if we know that in the previous centuries these
words had a rather negative connotation (see Ben Jonson, Locke). Fancy was taken to
mean useless and even harmful conjectures.
 Coleridge, however, never managed to work out a complete theory of poetry, most of
his work was left in fragments.

CHAPTER 3: The Second Generation of Romantic Poets

II. Byron, Shelley -1810-1824
Remained supporters of the idea of the French Revolution Up to the end of their lives they
had not given up their ideas.

The first generation of Romantic poets became rather disillusioned with the French
Revolution and their career stopped around 1805-1810. The members of the second
generation were born around 1790, around the time when the revolution broke out.
Consequently, they seemed to be more enthusiastic and less disillusioned by these ideas.

3.1 Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824)

 The most flamboyant and notorious of the major

English Romantic poets, George Gordon, Lord
Byron, was likewise the most fashionable poet of the
early 1800s. He created an immensely popular
Romantic hero—defiant, melancholy, haunted by
secret guilt—for which, to many, he seemed the
model. In his dynamism, sexuality, self-revelation,
and demands for freedom for oppressed people
everywhere, Byron captivated the Western mind and
heart as few writers have, stamping upon 19th-
century letters, arts, politics, even clothing styles, his
image and name as the embodiment of Romanticism.

3.1.2 His Career

 Lord Byron is considered one of the most controversial, yet leading figures of the
Romantic Movement in Europe. He started writing at an early age but did not publish
his pieces. However, in 1806, he started gathering his poems and published the first
volume of his collection privately which got poor reception. Later, in 1807 he
published “Hours of Idleness” followed by English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers. These publications brought him into the limelight and he became known
among the literary circle of that time.
 Moreover, his friendship with John Cam Hobhouse further accelerated his literary
career. Together they flew to Greece, Turkey, Malta, Albania, and Portugal. It was
during that time he started working on his epic poem, ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’
which hit the shelves in 1811. Later in 1816, he traveled to Geneva and Switzerland
with Shelley and Mary Godwin. Also, he completed the third canto of his poem,
“Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” during this time. Besides poetry, he edited the
Carbonari newspaper, The Liberal.

3.1.3 His poetry

 One of the notable contributions Byron made to poetry and literature in general, is
what is often referred to as the Byronic Hero. In short, the Byronic Hero was someone
who, in spite of possessing greatness, was also quite flawed. Many say that this ‘hero’
character was in many ways, a self-description. Byron often saw himself as one had
some rather extensive qualifications, yet fell short because of such personal flaws as
his deformed foot.
  Common traits: intelligent, cunning, ruthless, arrogant, violent, emotionally and
intellectually tortured etc.
 The Byronic hero first appears in Byron's semi-autobiographical epic narrative poem
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–1818), and was described by the historian and
critic Lord Macaulay as “a man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow,
and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of
deep and strong affection”.
 A description of one of these Byronic Heros is found in his poem, The Corsair
(1814).

3.1.4 His Style

 His specific ideas about life and nature benefitted the world of literature. Marked by
Hudibrastic verse, blank verse, allusive imagery, heroic couplets, and complex
structures, his diverse literary pieces won global acclaim. However, his early
work, Fugitive Pieces, brought him to the center of criticism, but his later works
made inroads into the literary world. He successfully used blank verse and satire in
his pieces to explore the ideas of love and nature. Although he is known as a romantic
poet, his poems, “The Prisoner of Chillon” and “Darkness” where attempts to discuss
reality as it is without adding fictional elements. The recurring themes in most of his
pieces are nature, the folly of love, realism in literature, liberty and the power of art.

3.1.5 Lord Byron’s Famous Works 

 Best Poems: Lord Byron is a great English poet, some his popular poems include:
“She Walks in Beauty”, “Darkness”, “There Be None of Beauty’s Daughter”, “The
Eve of Waterloo”, “When We Two Parted” and “And Thou Art Dead, As Young and
Fair.”
 Other Works: Besides poetry, he tried his hands on the tragedy in verse form. Some
of them include The Two Foscari: A Historical Tragedy, Sardanapalus, Marino
Faliero and The Prophecy of Dante.

3.2 Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

 Percy Bysshe Shelley is one of the most popular

English Romantic poets, and is regarded as a
great lyrical poet in English language. He was
born on 4th of August 1792 in England. Shelly
harbored highly radical social, political
views setting him against the existing social
norms. Therefore, he did not become popular
during his lifetime. However, the poetry of
Shelley gained better recognition following his
death.
 Shelley’s poetry was influenced by radical
political and religious ideas. He identified
himself with the enlightened and anarchistic
theories of William Godwin (An Enquiry into
Political Justice, 1793) –the effect of these ideas
 can be felt on his being a co-author of a pamphlet entitled “The Necessity of
Atheism” (1811) (the other author was Thomas Jefferson Hogg). For this writing he
was expelled from University College, Oxford. His explicit political views appear
later in his poems “Song to the Men of England” (1819) and “The Masque of
Anarchy” (1819).

3.2.1 His poetry

 Shelley seems to unite three personalities in himself: that of the radical reformer, the
lyrical poet and the idealist in philosophy. His being a philosopher poet did not mean,
however, that he was lost in abstract theories: on the contrary, he was obsessed with doing
something significant for people in general (as opposed to Keats, for instance, whose ideal
was l’art pour l’art, art for art’s sake and did not care too much about the world around him).
He was also the great master of verse, renewed the ode, the sonnet and ballad form. Shelley’s
figure became synonymous with “the” suffering, self-torturing Romantic poet. As Matthew
Arnold put it in the Victorian age, Shelley seemed to be a “beautiful and ineffectual angel
beating in the wind his luminous wings in vain”.

3.2.2 Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Style and Popular Poems

 Shelley was a famous English romantic poet whose poetry reflects passion, beauty,
imagination, love, creativity, political liberty and nature. Being very sensitive and
possessing distinctive qualities of hope, love, joy and imagination, Shelley strongly
believed in realization of human happiness.
 “Ozymandias” was one of his major contributions to the English Romantic poetry,
published in 1818. Shelly often faced criticism due to his outspoken challenges to
religion, oppression and conventional politics, “The Masque of Anarchy” is one of
them. In 1821, Shelley wrote an elegy, “Adonais” inspired by Keats’ death. Other
popular poems of Shelly are: “A Bridal Song”, “A Hate Song”, “A Dialogue”, “A
Lament”, “A Serpent Face”, “A Fragment: To Music”, “A Dirge”, “ A New
National Anthem” and “Alas! This is not What I thought Life Was”.
CHAPTER 4: Sample Stylistic Material and Analysis
4.1
“The Daffodils” or “I Wandered lonely as a Cloud”

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

4.2 Analysis
This part of the written report provides an analysis and interpretation of William
Wordsworth ‘The Daffodils or I wandered lonely’. Several aspects were applied by the
presenters to appreciate the poem.
Looking through the overall structure of the poem it is divided into four stanzas,
having six lines each. It uses punctuation marks such commas, colons, semicolons, dashes,
apostrophe, hyphen, and full stops are all properly place in which aids the readers for
understanding ideas in the poem.
As the personal pronouns were commonly used, it is in first person narration. From its
title “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” which starts with the personal pronoun “I” it clearly
gives us hint that the poem is going to be a subjective account or the experience of the poet.
In the poem the poet expresses his feelings of that time when he saw the vast field of
daffodils.
The rhyming scheme of the poem is read as ababcc, dedeff, egeghh, ijijbb, where the
last syllable of first and third lines, the second and the fourth lines and the fifth and
the sixth lines are the same in all the four paragraph of the poem. The poem use repetition to
create sounds and set the mood within a poem. The observable use of assonance where
repeated vowel sound of “I” is clearly seen in this line “float on high o‟er” and “Which is
the bliss of solitude”. As well as repetition of consonant sounds in “as stars that shine”.
Lastly the alliteration in this line “beside the lake, beneath the trees” and “stars that shines”.
Going through its lexical level, it is noticeable how nouns that describes the nature is
link to some action words. Words that describe the nature daffodils, vales, hills, trees, waves,
cloud, and lake are related to the action verbs such as floats, fluttering dancing etc. We can
conclude that it is a type of personification since the attribution of human characteristics are
given to something nonhuman. Metaphors that compare two different things that have some
characteristics in common were use in some lines like “I saw a crowd “and “A host of
golden daffodils”. And simile in these lines “I wandered lonely as a cloud” and “Continuous
as a star that shine” gives a more aesthetic quality to the poem.
The poem use demonstrative (this and that) to appear in these following lines “that
floats on high o‟er vales” and “hills” and “continuous as the stars that shine/ And twinkle
on the Milky Way”. Coordinators (and, or) join or link words, phrases, or clauses. While
subordinators (which and when) provide additional complementary or relative information.
Such these functions to help the reader understand the context through quality of
cohesiveness.

Just like the other poets in romanticism whose work often characterize by personal,
deep descriptions of nature and its wild and powerful qualities, it is also recognizable in
Wordsworth’s work. In this poem he describes the daffodils as the stars that shine. How these
flowers were stretched in a never-ending line along the margin beside a bay, shaping a very
attractive sight.

Conclusion
To sum up everything, romanticism was a literary movement that emphasized nature
and the importance of emotion and artistic freedom. In many ways, writers of this era were
rebelling against the attempt to explain the world and human nature through science and the
lens of the Industrial Revolution. It was a time of discovery and wonder. Poets use the
concepts of love of nature, awareness and acceptance of emotions, celebration of artistic
creativity and imagination, emphasis on aesthetic beauty, themes of solitude, focus on
exoticism and history, spiritual and supernatural elements, vivid sensory descriptions, use of
personification, and individualism which are very observable in their literary pieces.
Romanticism era has been divided in two generations, the first one started out as supporters
of French Revolution but turn their back later because of disappointment
(Wordsworth,Coleridge -1793-1810) and the other generation are those who remained
supporters of the idea of the French Revolution up to the end (Byron, Shelley- 1810-1824).
The romantic era was one of the strongest political movements of the time it was push.
Although a lot of things happened, still the era was a time of great influence that help to form
the world to how it is today.
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Ed. London: Penguin Books, 1991.
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literature.html
 Introduction to Romanticism. 2009. Retrieved from
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/rom.html
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 Duncan Wu, 2005, Romanticism: an Anthology. Retrieved from https://crossref-
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 The first generation of Romantic poets. (n.d). Studylib. Retrieved from
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