Romanticism Literary Movement and Major Writers

ROMANTIC AGE
MA ENG LIT. 2ND
SEM
Govt. Kamla Raja Girls Autonomous PG College, Gwalior
SUBMITTED BY-AASTIKA BHATIA
Under Supervision of DR. LATA MISHRA

WHAT IS ROMANTIC AGE?
A literary, artistic, and intellectual
movement originated in Europe.
A reaction against the;
 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
(transition to new
manufacturing processes like
machines and factories)
 THE ENLIGHTENMENT
(dramatic revolutions in
science, philosophy, politics,
etc. swept away the medieval
worldview.
 Neoclassicism

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.

WHEN DID ROMANTIC AGE
START and END?
The Romantic Period began roughly
around 1798 and lasted until 1837.
The Romantic Period in English
literature is taken to begin with the
publication of Wordsworth and
Coleridge`s Lyrical Ballads and end
with the death of the novelist, Sir
Walter Scott.
1798-1837

THE 5 I’S OF ROMANTIC ERA
INTUITIO
N
INSPIRATIO
N
IDEALIS
M
IMAGINATION
INDIVIDUALIT
Y

CHARACTERISTICS
OF
ROMANTICISM

Glorification of Nature
Nature, in all its unbound glory,
plays a huge role in Romantic
literature. Romantic poets and
writers give personal, deep
descriptions of nature and its wild
and powerful qualities.
 Nature often presented as a
work of art from the
divine imagination
 Nature as a healing power
 Nature as a refuge from
civilization
 Nature viewed as organic,
(alive) rather than
mechanical
 Nature viewed as a source of
refreshment and
meditation

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.
 Greater emphasis on the
importance of intuition,
instincts, and feelings.
 Wordsworths definition of good
poetry as the
spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings was a
turning point in literary history.

Celebration of Artistic
Creativity and
Imagination
In contrast to the previous
generations’ focus on
reason, 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.

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.

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.

FEW MORE
CHRACTERSTICS OF
ROMANTIC AGE
 Focus on Exoticism and
History
 Spiritual and Supernatural
Elements
 Vivid Sensory
Descriptions
 Use of Personification
 Focus on the Self and
Autobiography

 William Blake (1757 –1827) Poet, artist, and mystic. Blake wrote Songs
of Innocence, Songs of Experience, The Four Zoas, and Jerusalem.
Blake is not considered a classical, romantic poet, but his new style of
poetry and mystical experience of nature had a significant influence on
the growth of romanticism.
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 –1834) English romantic poet and a
member of the “Lakes Poets.” Coleridge’s famous poems included The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel and Kubla Khan. Coleridge
helped to bring to England the concept of German idealism. (an
important strand of Romanticism)
 Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 –1822) English romantic poet, and friend to
John Keats. Famous works include Queen Mab, Prometheus
Unbound and Adonais – his tribute to Keats. Shelley was also an atheist
and radical political writer.
 John Keats (1795 – 1821) English Romantic poet. One of his best-
known works is Endymion: A Poetic Romance (1817). Famous poems
include; A Thing of Beauty (Endymion), Bright Star, When I Have Fears,
Ode To A Nightingale.
FAMOUS ROMANTIC
POETS

 Sir Walter Scott (1771 – 1832) Scottish historical
novelist, playwright, and poet. Scott’s novels
gained a global appeal, and he was an important
romantic novelist. Notable works
include Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, The Lady of the Lake,
and Waverley.
 Mary Shelley (1797 – 1851) English novelist,
short story writer, dramatist, essayist, and travel
writer. Shelley wrote Frankenstein (1818). Shelley
was a political radical, expressing more support
for greater social co-operation than typical of more
individualistic romantics.
FAMOUS ROMANTIC POETS

 The grouping together of
the so-called Lake poets
(Wordsworth, Coleridge,
and Southey) with Scott,
Byron, Keats, and Shelley
as the romantic poets is
late Victorian, apparently as
late as the middle 1880s.
And it should be noted that
these poets did not
recognize themselves as
"romantic," although they
were familiar with the word
and recognized that their
practice differed from that
of the eighteenth century.
SOME POINTS ABOUT THE
WRITERS

 The reaction to the standard literary
practice and critical norms of the
eighteenth century occurred in many
areas and in varying degrees. Reason
no longer held the high place it had
held in the eighteenth century; its place
was taken by imagination, emotion, and
individual sensibility. The eccentric and
the singular took the place of the
accepted conventions of the age. A
concentration on the individual and the
minute replaced the eighteenth-century
insistence on the universal and the
general. Individualism replaced
objective subject matter; probably at
no other time has the writer used
himself as the subject of his literary
works to such an extent as during the
romantic period. Writers tended to
regard themselves as the most
interesting subject for literary creation;
interest in urban life was replaced by
an interest in nature, particularly in
untamed nature and in solitude.

 The combination of new interests, new
attitudes, and fresh forms produced a
body of literature that was strikingly
different from the literature of the
eighteenth century, but that is not to
say that the eighteenth century had no
influence on the romantic movement.
Practically all of the seeds of the new
literary crop had been sown in the
preceding century.
 The romantic period includes the work
of two generations of writers. The first
generation was born during the thirty
and twenty years preceding 1800; the
second generation was born in the last
decade of the 1800s. The chief writers
of the first generation were
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Southey,
Blake, Lamb, and Hazlitt. The essayist
Thomas De Quincey, born in 1785, falls
between the two generations.

generation, along with Byron, who was
older than they were by a few years. All
three were influenced by the work of the
writers of the first generation and,
ironically, the careers of all three were cut
short by death so that the writers of the
first generation were still on the literary
scene after the writers of the second
generation had disappeared. The major
writers of the second romantic generation
were primarily poets; they produced little
prose, outside of their letters. Another
striking difference between the two
generations is that the writers of the first
generation, with the exception of Blake, all
gained literary reputations during their
lifetime. Of the writers of the second
generation, only Byron enjoyed fame while
he was alive, more fame than any of the
other romantic writers, with perhaps the
exception of Scott, but Keats and Shelley
had relatively few readers while they were
alive. It was not until the Victorian era that
Keats and Shelley became recognized as
major romantic poets.

THE NAPOLEONIC WARS WERE
ANOTHER BIG EVENT AT THAT
TIME
 Those were the wars led by Napoleon
Bonaparte against Europe from the end of
the 18th century until the year of The wars
ended in 1815 when Napoleon lost the battle
of Waterloo.
 In the early days, there were many admirers
of Napoleon the liberator, the embodiment
of historical change, symbol of Romantic
ideals of "titanic" achievement by the
individual and the nation.
 However, Napoleon remains an ambiguous
figure in any discussion of Romanticism. He
created an empire in the Neo-classical style,
and yet he was also the Romantic
adventurer, the "entrepreneur" of history,
the archetype of genius.
 As a young, victorious commander of the
Revolutionary Army, he carried out a coup
in 1799 which made him First Consul of
republican France. In 1804, he proclaimed
himself Emperor.

NEW WAYS OF LIVING HAD TO
BE REFLECTED IN NEW WAYS
OF THINKING
 New ways of living had to be reflected in
new ways of thinking. Romanticism, for want
of any better word, came to stand for this
new experience of the world. The true
Romantic was not an over-sensitive
dreamer, but a heroic figure facing head-on
the painful realities of his time - a figure of
genius.
 Romanticism has very little to do with
things popularly thought of as "romantic,"
although love may occasionally be the
subject of Romantic art.
 The Romantic Period in literature has very
little to do with things popularly thought of
as "romantic," although love may
occasionally be the subject of Romantic art.
Today, in literary theory and history there is
a distinction between the popular usage of
romanticism and romantic, and the scholarly
usage to name the Romantic period and
Romanticism as a literary movement.

Achievements of Romanticism
Romanticism may have
expired on the barricades of
the 1848 revolution, but its
spirit continues to haunt us.
It has become common
practice to see the
opposition of Romanticism
and Neo-classicism as a
continuing dialectical
process, with Western
culture re-enacting the ideals
and forms of each tradition
in turn.

1. No other period in English literature displays more variety in
style, theme, and content than the Romantic Movement of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Furthermore, no period
has been the topic of so much disagreement and confusion
over its defining principles and aesthetics.
2. In England, Romanticism had its greatest influence from the
end of the eighteenth century up to 1832, all the way up to
about Its primary vehicle of expression was in poetry.
3. Romanticism is a movement in art and literature in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in revolt against the
Neoclassicism of the previous centuries. The German poet
Friedrich Schlegel, who is given credit for first using the term
romantic to describe literature, defined it as "literature
depicting emotional matter in an imaginative form.“
SOME IMPORTANT POINTS

Romanticism Literary Movement and Major Writers

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