An Introduction to

Romanticism

Dr Siddhartha Singh
Associate Professor
Department of English
Sri JNMPG College, Lucknow COPYRIGHT SIDDHARTHA SINGH SJNMPG LUCKNOW 1
 Periodization of The Romantic Age
(Literary periodization is often the unnaturally settled point of passionate arguments about the
issues involved because ideas and trends are not historical events which can be fixed with a
certain date and time. Rather they take shape in a longer time and they never die, however they
may be overpowered by new ideas and trends with the passing of time.)

• Loosely the period inclusive of work between 1770 to the Decadent movement at the
end of the 19th century in France and England. Blake and Burns are Fountain head of
the English romanticism which later takes proper shape in the hands the first and the
second generation of poets and continues till Swinburne, Symons, Oscar Wilde etc. in
late 19th C.

• “Officially” starts with the publication of Lyrical Ballads (a collection of poems written
by Wordsworth and Coleridge) in 1798 and ends in 1832 around the time of Sir Walter
Scott’s and Goethe’s death.
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 Defining Romanticism
“… the classic temper studies the past, the romantic temper neglects it; …
it leads us forward and creates new precedents”.- Schelling, Felix E. “Ben Jonson
and the Classical School”, PMLA Vol. 13, No. 2 (1898), P 222.

Romanticism cannot be homogenized and the term has come to mean so many things that it means
nothing in particular.

- A term loosely applied to a movement in European literature (and often arts) during the last quarter
of the 18th century. It was marked by a rejection of ideals and rules of classical and neoclassicism and
by an affirmation of the need for a freer, more subjective expression of pathos and personal feelings.

-In the most abstract terms, Romanticism may be regarded as the triumph of the values of
imaginative spontaneity, visionary originality, wonder, and emotional self-expression over the
classical standards of balance, order, restraint, proportion, and objectivity.

- It is on the basis of individualism of Romantic writers and their marked difference from the writers
of early period that any generalization about them can be deducted.
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 Major Differences between Neo-Classicism and Romanticism
Sr. Characteristics Neo -Classicism Romanticism
no

1 Major Influence Classical Greek, Roman and French rationalism Romantic and exotic Greek and Italian/medieval
and inspiration and baroque/ middle and far east especially Indian
(The translation of Gita had a great influence)
2 Major Historical Restoration of Monarchy American Independence, French Revolution
events and Industrial revolution
influence
3 Social and False appearances in both political and the Idea of liberty, equality and fraternity as
ideological public domains/ rise of nouveau riche middle- influenced by Rousseau’s idea of noble savage/
Influence class reading public which turned systems of rise of labor class and gradual fall of agrarian
patronage into commercial publishing. society /the idea of the independent creative
writer, the autonomous genius, was becoming a
kind of rule.

4 Values Order/Balance/social/rationality/middle class Emotional/Imagination/individual/spirituality/

emphasis on emphasis on gentrifying with
refined clothing and manners and polished way
of living/intellectual
5 Tone Objective, Didactive, ironical
primitivism and wilder and cruder way of
living/sense and sensuality
4
Subjective, nonconformist and spontaneous
 Major Differences between Neo-Classicism and Romanticism (continued)
Sr. Characteristics Neo -Classicism Romanticism
no

6 Genre Satire, Heroic tragedy, mock-epic Narratives of heroic struggle, landscapes, wild
animal, ballads, folklores, gothic

7 Nature Methodized, an object, well decorated gardens, Symbol of freedom, a work of art created by divine
restricted growth with cutting and pruning imagination, organic, mystical and supernatural, a
subject, a living entity, an image bank,

8 Form/Style/theme Used classical forms/ Characterized by balanced
composition, following contour lines, noble
gestures and expression/Poet’s skill and
adherence to classical formal rules and
procedures
9 Versification Heroic couplet
Creative and aesthetic/ focused on emotion,
feelings and moods/Self-interrogative/Interest in
the medieval, the Exotic, the mysterious, the
occult and the remote
Free verse/ Odes/ Lyrics

10 Poetic View Imitation of human nature in general or ideal or Expression of poet’s imagination and that the
deliberately synthesized or universalized sense relationship of the poem to the poet is more
significant that its relation to audience.
11 Object Pleasure and instruction Heroic Quest of the self
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 Some General Points to Remember
1. Romantic poets were alienated from polite society. Each poet is a Creator (therefore visionary or prophetic) and each poem
must create its own world and present it persuasively to the reader.
2. The idea of the independent creative writer, the autonomous genius, was becoming a kind of rule.
3. Reacting against ‘prose and common sense’, Literature of the period was becoming synonymous with the poetic and
imaginative. “What oft was thought” was replaced by “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings … emotion recollected into
tranquility”.
4. Literature has become a whole alternative ideology and the “imagination” itself, as with Blake and Shelley, becomes a political
force. Emphasis on creative imagination was also an alternative construction of human motive and energy to the assumptions
of the prevailing political economy.
5. Most of the poets were political activists.
6. The period witnesses rise of modern ‘aesthetics’ or philosophy of art. A theory of the “superior reality” of art, as the seat of
imaginative truth, was receiving increased emphasis.
7. Art became a symbolic abstraction for a whole range of human experience, a creative sensibility, an exalted special
temperament, in contrast to merely “skill” or “practice.”
8. The poets are aware of the tragic contradictions of the visionary hope and dynamic energies released by the revolutions and
the harsh realities of the new bourgeois regime and capitalism.
9. Nature is always written with capital N because here the treatment of Nature is not the same as in Shakespeare's comedies.
Nature is an alternative ideology; presenting an organic whole with divine presence, a living entity which a poet observes,
describes and feels, is impressed, seeks guidance, strength and refuge and tries to be one with it. He firmly believes that what is
true to his “use” of Nature is true to others.
10. Nature is also considered as an outward manifestation of the inward nature of man, from which it follows that natural laws
operate upon human beings in the same way that they work upon nature, therefore they should not be reduced as poets nature.
Theory of poetry is theory of life for them.
11. Humanism in extreme. The focus is on the common man, the language is chosen from them and then sublimated. 6
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 The Visionary Company (major romantic poets)
William Blake, (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827): English engraver, artist, poet, and visionary, author of
exquisitivelyrics in Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794) and profound and difficult “prophecies,” such
as Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), The First Book Of Urizen (1794), Milton (1804[–?11]), and Jerusalem (1804[–
?20]). These works he etched, printed, coloured, stitched, and sold, with the assistance of his devoted wife, Catherine. Among
his best known lyrics today are “The Lamb,” “The Tyger,” “London,” and the “Jerusalem” lyric from Milton, which has
become a kind of second national anthem in Britain. In the early 21st century, Blake was regarded as the earliest and most
original of the Romantic poets, but in his lifetime he was generally neglected or (unjustly) dismissed as mad.
Source-(https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Blake)

William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850, Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death): Most important English
poet whose Lyrical Ballads (1798), written with Samuel Taylor Coleridge , helped launch the English Romantic movement.
He is remembered as a poet of spiritual and epistemological speculation, a poet concerned with the human relationship to
nature and a fierce advocate of using the vocabulary and speech patterns of common people in poetry. The son of John and
Ann Cookson Wordsworth, William Wordworth was born on April 7, 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, located in the
Lake District of England: an area that would become closely associated with Wordsworth for over two centuries after his
death. He began writing poetry as a young boy in grammar school, and before graduating from college he went on a walking
tour of Europe, which deepened his love for nature and his sympathy for the common man: both major themes in his poetry.
Wordsworth is best known for Lyrical Ballads and The Prelude, a Romantic epic poem chronicling the “growth of a poet’s
mind.”
Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-wordsworth

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 The Visionary Company

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher and
theologian anda founder of the Romantic movement. in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He also shared
volumes and collaborated with Charles Lamb, Robert Southey, and Charles Lloyd. He wrote the poems The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria. His critical work, especially on
William Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking
culture. Coleridge coined many familiar words and phrases, including suspension of disblief. He had a major influence
on Ralph Waldo Emerson and American transcendentalism.
Source- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Taylor_Coleridge

Percy Bysshe Shelley ( 4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was one of the major English romantic poet , widely regarded as
one of the greatest lyric and philosophical poets in the English language. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political
and social views, Shelley did not see fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew
steadily following his death. Shelley became a key member of a close circle of visionary poets and writers that included
Byron, Keats, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Love Peacockand his own second wife, Mary Shelly (the author of Frakenstein).
Shelley is best known for classic poems such as "Ozymandias", "Ode to the West Wind", "To a Skylark", "Music, When
Soft Voices Die", "The Cloud" and The Masque of Anarchy. His other major works include a ground-breaking verse
drama, The Cenci (1819), and long, visionary, philosophical poems such as Queen Mab (later reworked as The Daemon
of the World), Alastor, The Revolt of Islam, Adonais, Prometheus Unbound (1820)—widely considered his
masterpiece, Hellas: A Lyrical Drama (1821) and his final, unfinished work, The Triumph of Life (1822).
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley

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 The Visionary Company
Lord Byron, in full George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, (born January 22, 1788, London, England—died April
19, 1824, Missolonghi, Greece), British Romantic poet, peer, politician, a debauch and satirist who became a
revolutionary in the Greek War of Independence (and died of disease leading a campaign during that war, for which
Greeks revere him as a national hero) and whose poetry and personality captured the imagination of Europe. Renowned
as the “gloomy egoist” of his autobiographical poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–18) in the 19th century, he is
now more generally esteemed for the satiric realism of Don Juan (1819–24).
‘Mad, bad and dangerous to know’. That is how Lady Caroline Lamb described her lover George Gordon Noel, sixth
Baron Byron. Born with a club foot, this extremely handsome poet had many affairs with both men and women,
notably with Annabella Milbanke, Lady Caroline Lamb, Lady Oxford, Lady Frances Webster, Claire Clairmont,
Marianna Segati, his landlord’s (in Italy) wife and Margarita Cogni, wife of a Venetian baker, also, very probably, with
his married half-sister, Augusta Leigh and Teresa Guiccioli, his last wife.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lord-Byron-poet, Wikipedia & https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Lord-
Byron/
John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was s one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic
poets, along with Lord Byron and P. B. Shelley despite his works having been in publication for only four years before
his death from tuberculosis at the age of 25. During his life time he was never considered as a great poet and he had to
face severe criticism. The generally conservative reviewers of the day attacked his work as mawkish and bad-
mannered, as the work of an upstart “vulgar Cockney poetaster” (John Gibson Lockhart), and as consisting of “the
most incongruous ideas in the most uncouth language” (John Wilson Croker). he generally conservative reviewers of
the day attacked his work as mawkish and bad-mannered, as the work of an upstart “vulgar Cockney poetaster” (John
Gibson Lockhart), and as consisting of “the most incongruous ideas in the most uncouth language” (John Wilson
Croker).
Keats wrote sonnets, odes, and epics. All his greatest poetry was written in a single year, 1819: “Lamia,” “The Eve of
St. Agnes,” the great odes (“On Indolence,” “On a Grecian Urn,” “To Psyche,” “To a Nightingale,” “On Melancholy,”
and “To Autumn”), a long poem Endymion and the two unfinished versions of an epic on Hyperion.
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 COPYRIGHT SIDDHARTHA SINGH SJNMPG LUCKNOW
Victorian Age: An extension of Romanticism
Influences: The romantic poets had considerable influence on the poets of the Victorian age in general aw well as in particular.
This influence even continued till the end of century. Even W. B. Yeats, a major modern poet, is called as the last romantic.
Wordsworth- Mathew Arnold
Wordsworth’s poetry and doctrines of poetic diction and Man and Nature shaped Arnold’s doctrine of Poetry as
criticism of life. He also wrote as poem on Wordsworth. The influence of Wordsworth, both in ideas and in diction,
is unmistakable in Arnold’s best poetry.
Shelley- Robert Browning
Browning was influenced by Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose radicalism urged a rethinking of modern society. In his
youth Browning had a great enthusiasm for Shelley, an enthusiasm clearly apparent in Pauline and Paracelsus.
He was influenced particularly by Shelley's lengthier dramatic poems such as Prometheus Unbound, which
inspired him to the dramatic poetry which would ultimately cement his own reputation.
Keats- Tennyson, Pre- raphaelites (Keats begot Tennyson and Tennyson begot all the rest)
Tennyson was massively influenced by the work of his Romantic predecessor, and he
was known to have been a big reader of Keats' poetry. Even in some of the earliest
reviews of Tennyson's poetry, for example, the link was made between Keats and
Tennyson.
Keats was an inspiration to the Pre-Raphaelites. His poem “The Eve of St.
Agnes” was the topic of paintings by Sir John Everett Millais and William Holman
Hunt. Keats was the most notable influence on the major pre- raphaelite poets
like William Morris, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and others. William Holman Hunt, The Eve
of St. Agnes 10
 Last But not the Least

Lethal attack on the Romantics by the early 20th century critics sent them in oblivion for a while,
but the post 1950 critics (like M. H. Abrams, Northrop Frye, Geoffrey Hartman, Harold Bloom, J
Hillis Miller etc.) felt the strong influence and the Romantic study was revised. Romanticism
reconsidered was a kind movement initiated by these critics. Even Marxist critics like Raymond
Williams dismissed the critical view that the Romantics were escapists. There was a host of neo-
Romantic critics, who discussed at length the romantic ideology in art, literature, criticism,
culture, politics and religion. The Romantics are still relevant with their message of love to nature
and man, with their emphasis on secularism and constant need to reform society.

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