introduction to the romantic period

Romanticism (literature), a movement in the literature of virtually every country of Europe, the United States, and Latin America that lasted from about 1750 to about 1870, characterized by reliance on the imagination and subjectivity of approach, freedom of thought and expression, and an idealization of nature. The term romantic first appeared in 18th-century English and originally meant "romancelike"—that is, resembling the fanciful character of medieval romances.

Romanticism can be seen as a rejection of the precepts of order, calm, harmony, balance, idealization, and rationality that typified Classicism in general and late 18th-century Neoclassicism in particular. It was also to some extent a reaction against the Enlightenment and against 18th-century rationalism.

Romanticism emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental.

a general exaltation of emotion over reason and of the senses over intellect;

a turning in upon the self and a heightened examination of human personality and its moods and mental potentialities;

a preoccupation with the genius, the hero, and the exceptional figure in general, and a focus on his passions and inner struggles;

an emphasis upon imagination as a gateway to transcendent experience and spiritual truth;

an obsessive interest in folk culture, national and ethnic cultural origins, and the medieval era;

King Arthur

and a predilection for the exotic, the remote, the mysterious, the weird, the occult, the monstrous, the diseased, and even the satanic.

Rousseau

• Rousseau, Jean Jacques• (1712-1778), French philosopher, social

and political theorist, musician, botanist, and one of the most eloquent writers of the Age of Enlightenment.

William Blake

Keats

• Although his life ended at age 25, only four years after the 1817 publication of his first book, English poet John Keats is remembered for his melodious, rich verse, and is considered one of the greatest English poets.

Shelley

• Influenced by the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century, English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley championed liberal thought and rebelled against the restrictions of English politics and religion. Shelley wrote enthusiastic, impulsive poems noted for their lyricism and romanticism. Critics consider Shelley one of the greatest poets of the English language. He died in a sailing accident in 1822 shortly before his 30th birthday.

• William Wordsworth, considered one of the foremost English romantic poets, composed flowing blank verse on the spirituality of nature and the wonders of human imagination. In "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" (1807), Wordsworth considers the Platonic notion that humans forget all their knowledge at birth and spend the remainder of their lives recollecting, rather than learning. Wordsworth celebrates the child, who can enjoy an ecstatic communion with nature, and hopes that in adulthood people can eventually recover this ecstasy by heeding intuition.

• English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote verse highly representative of the Victorian era of 19th-century England. A great fan of the changes brought about by the early industrial revolution in England, Tennyson celebrated the era's innovations and political stability.

• English poet Robert Browning is considered one of the most important poets of the Victorian era (1837–1901). Part of the romantic movement in literature, his usually optimistic poems praise action and condemn passivity. In Browning's characteristic writing style, known as dramatic monologue, he assumed the voice of historical or imaginary characters, usually at some crucial moment in their lives.

This famous excerpt, read by an actor, comes from English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning's collection Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850). Browning based the sonnets on her love for her husband, the poet Robert Browning, and presented the collection to him as a gift. Elizabeth Browning wrote poems that reflected on humanitarian themes, love, religion, and Italy.

Nineteenth-century writer Aleksandr Pushkin was one of the first important literary figures in Russia. A versatile writer, Pushkin wrote poetry, short stories, novels, and plays. His most famous works include the drama Boris Godunov (1825) and the epic poem Eugene Onegin (1823-1831). Pushkin helped establish a strong Russian literary tradition, and his work influenced many of the writers who followed him.

Liberty leading the People Painted on 28 July 1830, to commemorate the July Revolution that had just brought Louis-Philippe to the French throne

• Early-19th-century German writer and poet Heinrich Heine is best known for his beautiful, delicate, and at times bitterly satiric poems. Heine's work reveals the frustration that stemmed from the conflicts in his life, including an unrequited love for his cousin, a conversion from Judaism to Christianity because of anti-Semitism in Germany, and his love for a country in which he could no longer live. Heine moved to Paris in 1831 to escape political oppression and literary suppression in Germany.

Quality of Poetry

• emotion, introspection, passion, sublimity, beauty, spontaneity, irregularity, picturesque

Subjects• humankind generally, nature & the soul, spiritual

identity; a-political (or radical) human value, perception and wholeness, often evoked through and deeply connected to the natural world, inclusion of the elderly, women, children, the rural and the unlettered

Setting

• Rural• the city is seen as the locus of

corruption, greed and power

Allusion and History

• the mythic• the mediaeval• the gothic• Irrational• remote

La Ghirlandata Rossetti, Dante

Gabriel

Genres

• Lyric• ode (enthusiasm, union with

nature,inspiration, emotion, meditation)

Idea of 'Nature'

• 'Nature' refers firstly to the external world in its beauty and power, and then as that nature is an expression of the power of Being which flows through and unites all things, including humankind. This force is creative and moral, and is embodied in humans in the Imagination -- as opposed to the Reason in the neo-classical view. Therefore poetry is marked by emotion, beauty, inspiration, feeling, mystery. Its sense of the moral is the fully experiencing, passionate person, in harmony with the natural world and the higher forces -- as opposed to the civic order and right reason of the neoclassical sense of the moral.