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Defining Romanticism
The categories which it has become customary to use in
distinguishing and classifying movements in literature or
philosophy and in describing the nature of the significant
transitions which have taken place in taste and in opinion,
are far too rough, crude, undiscriminating -- and none of
them so hopelessly as the category Romantic.
Arthur O. Lovejoy (1924)

Romanticism is a difficult and often contentious term to try and

define. As one of the most complex ‘isms’ of literary style, it is
not a genre, ideology or clearly delineated style. It is
underpinned by a paradigm shift in thinking, spawned in part
by pressures for social, economic and political change.
 Enormous Social Change: The Impact of
Industrialization

Workers in a Tobacco Factory

Poverty, social marginalisation

Mechanisation resulted
in dangerous and
dehumanizing working
conditions and low
wages
Revolution – Liberty and Social Justice
‘Neither a revolt nor a reaction, Romanticism was a
revolutionary fulfilment.’ Professor Eugene Vinaver

American War of Independence 1776

Revolutionary and Napoleonic period in France, 1789-1815
French uprisings 1830 – overthrow of Bourbon monarchy
 NATURE
Neo-Classical Romantic
• Universal • Particular
• Subject to human control • Beyond human control
• Gardens • Mountains, oceans,
• Source of peace and forests
tranquillity • Source of inspiration
• Untamed nature: and spirituality
dangerous/evil • Untamed nature:
exhilarating/sublime
Yet having felt the power of nature, by the gentle agency of
natural objects, led me on to feel the passions that were not my
own. (Wordsworth)
 Major beliefs and ideas 
There is no single commonly accepted definition of
Romanticism, but it has some features upon which there is
general agreement. Encyclopaedia Britannica

•diversity and originality over uniformity and rigid

forms or patterns
•equality and egalitarian freedom over constraint and
repression
•sensibility over reason
•individuality over conformity
•imagination over intellectualism
•nature over technology
•exotic and mysterious over the mundane and known
Romanticism -Rejection of the precepts of order, calm,
harmony, balance, idealization and rationality (Classicism)
Reaction against the Enlightenment and physical materialism
Emphasis on the: Valued:
• Individual • Sublime power of nature
• Subjective • Emotion over reason
• Irrational • Senses over intellect
• Imaginative • Individuality and
• Personal eccentricity
• Emotional • Genius
• Visionary • Solitude
• Transcendental • The Common man and
rural lifestyle
 Individualism
I must create my own system or be enslaved by another man’s.
(William Blake)

Romanticism:
• Emphasized the special qualities of each
individual’s mind
• Valued the exploration and evaluation of the
inner self
• Valorized individuality and the innate dignity of
the common man and the ‘noble savage’
 Imagination
Man is all imagination’(William Blake)

Friedrich Schlegel echoed similar ideas in describing

Romanticist literature as, ‘depicting emotional matter in
an imaginative form. Introspection and reflection could
liberate the thinker into a heightened spiritual state,
allowing reason to be suppressed.’

Contemporary critic R.A. Foakes affirms the value

Romantics placed on the power of the imagination as
well individualism and resistance to the dictates of
authority, arguing; ‘Rules of any kind, including literary
rules, were viewed as contrivance and not as art.’
 Idealism
Ralph Emerson (1803-1882) championed humanity’s innate
goodness and limitless potential by questioning ‘Who can set
bounds to the possibilities of man?’

• Romanticism was philosophically rooted in idealism.

• Belief that the ideal world (that of the mind) was “more
real” than the real, material world
• Romanticism tended to be optimistic in its outlook on
life.
• Philosophers such as Rousseau, Kant and Schelling
argued that humanity could live according to higher
principles, such as the beliefs in social equality,
freedom, and human rights.
• The Romantic era was a time of reappraisal and
reassessment; of intellectual, scientific and artistic
exploration; a search for meaning and truth
 Contextual Impact on texts?
• ‘Politically, Romanticism has been associated with every view
from liberalism to extreme authoritarianism.’ Carl Slevin
• A second wave of Romanticists, including Keats, argued that
economic progress came at the cost of increasing poverty,
urban over-crowding and dehumanised working conditions.
• Impetus of change fostered sweeping changes across the arts
• New emphasis on use of everyday language and experience.
• ‘All over Europe, people were becoming more conscious of their
history and destiny, their national character, and their artistic
heritage. Musicians made use of myth, legend, folk songs,
nationalistic themes and symbols in their compositions while
writers and poets used chivalric themes and settings.’ H.Kerman
Enlightenment rationalism, decorum, order and emotional control
was replaced by a new commitment to innovation, diversity,
imaginative and emotional expression.
Idealisation of the past H. Fairchild argues that the
‘Romantics viewed the
Medieval past nostalgically,
as a time lived before
science had chilled and
mechanized the mind. They
also celebrated illusion,
fancy, passion, and the
variety and spontaneity of
life, viewing the literature of
that period as stimulus
material for realizing the
ideal and idealizing the real.’
Poets, artists and authors such as Sir Walter Scott,
dramatically reinvented the medieval period.
‘Ruins were sentimentalized as iconic of the action of Nature on
the works of man, and mythic and legendary material which would
previously have been seen as low culture became a common
basis for works of high art and literature. The subject matter as
well as the way in which it was treated underwent a change.’
N. Ingwersen
Eighteenth century philosopher, Edmund Burke,
claimed that ‘while small, smooth and ordered
things could be beautiful, sublime objects found
in Nature by contrast, were vast, magnificent
and awe-inspiring.’
Poets and artists often used nature as allegorical comments on
spiritual, moral, historical or philosophical issues.
Exotic scenery and imaginary landscapes provide a way to reality,
not an escape from it. Edwin M. Eigner
Professor John Lye describes the
Gothic Romance style as one that,
‘specialized in symbolic
exploration of the unconscious
through the strange, the haunting,
and irrational.’
The Gothic Novel -Conventions, motifs and
themes
The Castle of Otranto
 ‘THE CASTLE OF
OTRANTO’ -1765
Triggered the English
Gothic novel.
Walpole’s use of fear,
suspence, errie
locations and other
genre tropes
spawned a series of
‘horrible’ novels that
were parodied by
Jane Austen in
‘Northanger Abbey’
Gothicism versus Romanticism?
The conventions of gothic literature include wild and
desolate landscapes, ancient buildings such as ruined
castles or monasteries, apparitions, demons and
monsters set within a menacing atmosphere of gloom
that evokes horror, disgust or terror.

J. McGann stresses, ‘Given its

interest in attacking received ideas of
uniformity, standardization, and
universality, Romanticism put a very
high value on the unique, the peculiar,
the local; what Schlegel called the
abnormal species of literature . . .
even the eccentric and monstrous.’
Dreams/Visions:
Terrible truths are often revealed to characters through
dreams or visions. The hidden knowledge of the
universe and of human nature emerges through dreams
because, when the person sleeps, reason sleeps, and
the supernatural, unreasonable world can break
through. Dreams in
Gothic literature
express the dark,
unconscious depths of
the psyche that are
repressed by reason—
truths that are too
terrible to be
comprehended by the
conscious mind.
Northanger Abbey -Jane Austen
• Considered a Gothic parody but
also representing a hybridized
mixture of neo-classicist, comedy
of manners and romantic literary
elements.
• In Austen’s time, novels were
often denigrated
• Coleridge maintained, “where the
reading of novels prevails as a
habit, it occasions in time the
entire destruction of the powers
of the mind.”
• Most novel readers were women
 Northanger Abbey Criticism
Reflects the commercialization of literature during
the late 18th century
– 18th century brings more public circulation of libraries
– commercialization of literature and textual skimming,
changes the way people read stories
– Novel offers a critical lens on social flaws such as
materialism and reading habits
– Literature: for self-improvement or social standard?
Benedict, Barbara.

Catherine is ‘frequently duped by the harsh world” Northanger

Abbey conveys Austen’s theme of “the importance of the
education of judgment’ Nicola Cummins
SatiricClassicism
Style - Austen Style
• Her style is focused on the realistic representation of HER
society - highlights the flaws and foibles through wit and
humour. This aspect of her work also enables her to fit into
the ‘comedy of manners’ mould.
• concerned with studying the human character and social
conventions of her time
• Strong focus on social etiquette and manners
• Austen’s unique style cannot be easily classified into
romanticism or classicism - foregrounds control, sense,
decorum, politeness
Great diversity of subjects
and style.Innovative use of
form, colour and medium.
 Romantic
Artist
• Loner
• Unconventional
• Interested in the
“noble savage”
• Amoral
• Genius
• Prophet
George Gordon Lord Byron
 Romanticism in France
Gericault, The Raft of the Medusa,
1818
• Government ship bound for
Senegal wrecked in 1816
• Life boats accommodated the
wealthy, 149 other passengers
were deserted by the captain,
placed in a raft 65 by 35 and cut
loose in the Atlantic
• Only 15 survived
• Géricault made scale model of
raft in his studio, interviewed and
painted survivors
• Concentration on moment of
rescue
• Use of foreshortening
• Pyramid structure
• Heroic musculature
• Delacroix upside-down in foreground
• Monochromatic
• Concentric zones: outer margin of
green water and blue sky frames the
brown mass of raft which, in turn,
holds the grayish figures
• Appears in twilight, warm diffuse glow
of the morning sun
• Foreground: weight of corpses and
massive mourners
• Middle ground: figures lifting and
holding
• Ascent: climax of the painting at the
intersection of the diagonals
• Painting dips down into our own space
• References to Michelangelo
English
Romanticist
Romanticist
Poets
Poets
• WILLIAM •WILLIAM •SAMUEL T.
BLAKE WORDSWORTH COLERIDGE

Romantic Poets
Coleridge’s poetry often
deals with the
misterious, the
supernatural and the
extraordinary. While
Wordsworth looked for
the spiritual in everyday
subjects, Coleridge
wanted to give the
supernatural a colouring
of everyday reality.
 Mystery Poems
In 1816, Coleridge described
imagination as a ‘reconciling
and mediatory power.’ His
mystery poems show how it
can heighten consciousness
through fusing vision, memory
and intuition. Louis Cazamian
says that, ‘Coleridge’s art lies
in his faculty of evoking the
mystery of things’. His dream
states can be positive or
negative. ‘The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner’ graphically
represents a nightmarish
existence.
Conversation Poems
Descriptive and meditative in style with blank verse used
to mimic the rhythms and tones of spoken language. An
expositional context orientates reader to situation,
location and characters. Readers are invited to listen to
what the poet says, followed by an imaginative recount
of experience before returning to the initial situation.
Cyclical structure as in ‘The Lime-Tree Bower’ prompts
self-awareness and reflection on the issues that have
been raised.
• GEORGE • PERCY BYSSHE • JOHN
BYRON SHELLEY KEATS

Romantic Poets
 John Keats (1795 –1821) was one of the
principal poets of the English Romantic John Keats
movement. During his short life, his work
received constant critical attacks from the
periodicals of the day. Elaborate word choice
and sensual imagery characterize Keats's
poetry, including a series of odes that were
his masterpieces and which remain among
the most popular poems in English literature.
The main theme of his poetry is: the
conflict betwenn the real world of
suffering, death and decay and the
ideal world of beauty, imagination
and eternal youth.
 Ode on a Grecian Urn
• The Ode describes an ancient greek
urn decorated with classical motifs:
A Dionysian festival with music and
ecstatic dances, a piper under the
trees in a pastoral setting, a young
man in love pursuing a girl and
almost reaching her, a procession of
townspeople and priest leading a
cow to the sacrifice.
Keats is fascinated by the fact that
art is able to present an ideal world
because it can freeze actions and
emotions: the lover depicted on the
urn will never actually reach the girl
he is following, the pipers will never
end their song, the streets of the
little town will always be desert and
silent. The beauty of the girl, the
ardent passion of her lover, the
pleasure of the music and the
boughs in bloom will never fade.
 William Blake
Famous Romantic Poets
William Blake was born in London, where he spent most
of his life. His father was a successful London hosier and
attracted by the doctrines of Emmanuel Swedenborg.
Blake was first educated at home, chiefly by his mother.
His parents encouraged him to collect prints of the Italian
masters, and in 1767 sent him to Henry Pars' drawing
school. From his early years, he experienced visions of
angels and ghostly monks, he saw and conversed with the
angel Gabriel, the Virgin Mary, and various historical
figures. Independent through his life, Blake left no debts
at his death on August 12, 1827. He was buried in an
unmarked grave at the public cemetery of Bunhill Fields.
 William Wordsworth’s
poetry emphasies the
value of childhood
experience an the
celebration of nature.
He glorifies the spirit of
man, living in armony
with his natural
environment, far from
the spiritually bankrupt
city. Him being
pantheistic identified
the nature with god.
Wordsworth
--- poetry is spontaneous
--- nature inspires poetry
--- common subjects can be poetic (the world of simple,
natural things, in the countryside or among the people)
Coleridge
--- the strange, the exotic, the mysterious
--- the combination of the natural with the supernatural,
the ordinary with the extraordinary
Keats
--- a response to sensuous impressions
--- love of nature and art, a compassion for humanity
Individual Power and Revolutionary Fervor in Music
Beethoven
Tchaikovsky
Verdi
Wagner