38. The Romantic Age. The meaning of the term "romantic” in the Romantic Age.

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." This is as accurate a general definition as can be
accomplished, although Victor Hugo's phrase "liberalism in literature" is also apt. Imagination,
emotion, and freedom are certainly the focal points of romanticism. Any list of particular
characteristics of the literature of romanticism includes subjectivity and an emphasis on
individualism; spontaneity; freedom from rules; solitary life rather than life in society; the beliefs
that imagination is superior to reason and devotion to beauty; love of and worship of nature; and
fascination with the past, especially the myths and mysticism of the middle ages.

English poets: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe
Shelley, and John Keats

American poets: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Henry David
Thoreau, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman
 
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 18th 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'.
39. Poetry in the Romantic Age. National tradition in Robert Burns’ poetry.

Romantic poetry is the poetry of the Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual
movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. It involved a reaction
against prevailing Enlightenment ideas of the 18th century,and lasted approximately from 1800
to 1850.

One of the most important concepts in Romantic poetry. The sublime in literature refers to use of
language and description that excites thoughts and emotions beyond ordinary experience.
Though often associated with grandeur, the sublime may also refer to the grotesque or other
extraordinary experiences that "take us beyond ourselves.”

The literary concept of the sublime became important in the eighteenth century. It is associated
with the 1757 treatise by Edmund Burke, though it has earlier roots. The idea of the sublime was
taken up by Immanuel Kant and the Romantic poets including especially William Wordsworth.
Another characteristic of romantic poetry is power and passion. The writer feels the poem when
he writes it. He tries to imagine in it. And also he uses strong words to show power.

Romantic poetry contrasts with Neoclassical poetry, which was the product of intellect and
reason, while Romantic poetry is more the product of emotion. Romantic poetry at the beginning
of the nineteenth century was a reaction against the set standards, conventions of eighteenth-
century poetry. According to William J. Long, "[T]he Romantic movement was marked, and is
always marked, by a strong reaction and protest against the bondage of rule and custom which in
science and theology as well as literature, generally tend to fetter the free human spirit.

Belief in the importance of the imagination is a distinctive feature of romantic poets such as John
Keats, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and P. B. Shelley, unlike the neoclassical poets. Keats said, “I
am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination-
What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.” For Wordsworth and William Blake, as
well as Victor Hugo and Alessandro Manzoni, the imagination is a spiritual force, is related to
morality, and they believed that literature, especially poetry, could improve the world.

Love for nature is another important feature of Romantic poetry, as a source of inspiration. This
poetry involves a relationship with external nature and places, and a belief in pantheism.
However, the Romantic poets differed in their views about nature. Wordsworth recognized nature
as a living thing, teacher, god and everything. 

Melancholy occupies a prominent place in romantic poetry, and is an important source of

inspiration for the Romantic poets.

Burns is an important and complex literary personage for several reasons: his place in the
Scottish literary tradition, his pre-Romantic proclivities, his position as a human being from the
less-privileged classes imaging a better world. To these may be added his particular artistry,
especially his ability to create encapsulating and synthesizing lines, phrases, and stanzas which
continue to speak to and sum up the human condition.

Burns’s affection for traditional culture is amply illustrated. In a well-known autobiographical

letter to Dr. John Moore (August 2, 1787) he pays tribute to its early influence when he says, “In
my infant and boyish days too, I owed much to an old Maid of my Mother’s, remarkable for her
ignorance, credulity and superstition.—She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the county of
tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies,
elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, inchanted towers, dragons and
other trumpery.—This cultivated the latent seeds of Poesy.”

Burns’s first and last works were songs, reflecting his deep connection with oral ballad and song.
The world of custom and belief is most particularly described in “Halloween,” an ethnographic
poem with footnotes elucidating rural customs. Many forms of prognostication are possible on
this evening when this world and the other world or worlds hold converse, a time when unusual
things are deemed possible—especially foretelling one’s future mate and status. Burns’s notes
and prefatory material have often been used as evidence of his distance from and perhaps disdain
for such practices. Yet the poem itself is peopled with a sympathetic cast of youths, chaperoned
by an old woman, joined together for fun and fellowship. The youthful players try several
prognosticatory rites in attempting to anticipate their future love relationships. In one stanza
Burns alludes to a particular practice—“pou their stalks o’ corn”—and explains in his note that
“they go to the barn-yard, and pull each, at three several times, a stalk of Oats. If the third stalk
wants the top-pickle, that is, the grain at the top of the stalk, the party in question will come to
the marriage-bed any thing but a Maid.” Burns concludes the stanza by saying that one Nelly
almost lost her top-pickle that very night. Some of the activities in what is essentially a
preliminary courtship ritual are frightening, requiring collective daring. Burns describes the
antics, anticipation, and anxieties of the participants as they enjoy the communal event, which is
concluded with food and drink:

Wi’ merry sangs, an’ friendly cracks,

I wat they did na weary;
And unco tales, an’ funnie jokes,
Their sports were cheap an’ cheary:
Till buttr’d So’ns, wi’ fragrant lunt,
Set a’ their gabs a steerin;
Syne, wi’ a social glass o’ strunt,
They parted aff careerin
Fu’ blythe that night.
40. Poetry in the Romantic Age. Symbols in William Blake’s poetry.

The poetry as well as the whole art of William Blake is abundant with symbols. There is hardly
any poem in the "Songs of Innocence and Experience" which does not possess symbols. A
symbol is an object which stands for something else as Shelley's wind symbolizes inspiration,
Ted Hughes's Hawk symbolizes terrible destructiveness at the heart of nature and S.T.
Coleridge's Albatross represents a psychological burden that feels like a curse. Most symbols are
not like code signals, like traffic lights, where red means stop and green means go, but part of a
complex language in which green can mean jealously or fertility, or even both, depending on
context. The major symbols in Blake's poetry are; lamb, rose, children, tiger, garden, stars, forest,
looms and net.
1. Lamb
     William Blake loves lambs. They connect religion with both human and natural world.
Traditionally, the lamb is a symbol of renewal, victory of life upon death, gentleness, tenderness
and innocence. White colour of the lamb stands for purity. In the Christian Gospels, Jesus Christ
is compared to a lamb because he goes meekly to be sacrificed on behalf of humanity. Moreover,
lambs, as baby sheep, are connected to the theme of childhood that runs through the "Songs of
Innocence". By contrast, "Songs of Experience" contains only one reference to a lamb. The
Speaker of "The Tyger" asks, 
"Did he who made the lamb make thee"? 
2. Rose
     Sunflower, lily and rose are the common flowers that appear in Blake's poetry as symbols.
Sunflower represents a man who is bound to earth, but is pinning for eternity. Lily is a symbol of
love which is without any self-reference, neither defending itself nor causing any pain and
destruction. Rose, as a symbol, has a rich and ancient history. In the ancient Rome, roses were
grown in the funerary gardens to symbolize resurrection. According to medieval tradition, they
represent chastity or virginity and thus are associated with young girls. In Christianity, the rose is
a frequent symbol for the Virgin Mary, who is called a "rose without thorns". The rose garden is
a symbol of paradise. However, the rose of William Blake symbolizes beauty, virginity,
innocence and London. 
3. Children
     On account of their playfulness and freshness, Blake sees children as symbols of imagination
and artistic creativity. He also uses them as an image of innocence. The child motif emphasizes
the suggestions of simplicity and lack of sophistication. Much of the moralistic teaching of
Blake's day stressed the infant and boy Jesus as a figure with whom children could identify.
However, the Gospel accounts of Jesus' birth and childhood include experience of human
violence and so emphasize the vulnerability of the child. Thus like the lamb, the child represents
gentleness and innocence, together with vulnerability and openness to exploitation.
4. Tiger
     It is unclear what the tiger exactly symbolizes. It may symbolize the violent and terrifying
forces within the individual man. The splendid but terrifying tiger makes us realize the God's
purposes are not so easily understood. At the same time, the tiger is symbolic of the Creator's
masterly skill which enabled Him to frame the "fearful symmetry" of the tiger. But the lion
described in the poem "Night" offers an interesting contrary to the tiger. Both the beasts seem
dreadful, but the lion, like the beast of the fairy tale, can be magically transformed into a good
and gentle creature: the tiger cannot. The tiger also represents the energy and imagination of
man. Really, the list is almost infinite. The point is, the tiger is important, and Blake's poem "The
Tyger" barely limits the possibilities.
5. Garden
     The garden is a symbol providing the location of love and temptation leading to captivity. The
garden is commonly recalled in the "Songs of Experience". In the garden, mankind is walled or
fenced off from his neighbours; man tends his own desires, particularly by self-conscious
affections and jealousies. The garden is a sickly consolation among the evils of London. There
are "Soft Gardens" and "Secret Gardens". In a garden of delight, mankind is surrounded by
shadows. Urizen himself planted a "garden of fruits". This is Eden, never associated with
innocence, but always with temptation, the tree of mystery and forbidden knowledge. This aspect
of Eden is prototype of Blake's symbol of the garden.
6. Stars
     Stars are often used to symbolize heavenly bodies, purity, distance, light in the darkness,
unattainable things, good luck and eternity. In dreams, a shooting star is a sign of self-fulfillment
and advancement in life. However, Blake uses the star symbol in his own specific sense. The
stars are never romantic. At one level, stars and darkness are commonly assumed to endanger
health. The symbol of the stars assumes another dimension when it is associated with material
and spiritual repression. This is said to reflect Blake's reaction against the rational thoughts of his
times.
7. Forest
     The forest, that seems to overgrow the hills of Innocence, with its impenetrable superstition,
is one of Blake's most powerful symbols. The conventional beginning is seen in the "Poetical
Sketches" where the "thickest shades" provide concealment from the sun in "To Summer", and in
"To the Evening Star", the lion "glares through the dense forest". This poem is typical in its
refined holiness of eighteenth century mannerism, which Blake soon outgrew. In "Songs of
Innocence", the groves of "Night" and "The Little Black Boy" still occur in a religious context,
and we are moving towards the mention in "America" where the Royalist oppressors crouch
terrified in their caverns.
8. Looms and Net
     A loom is a device used to weave cloth. The basic purpose of any loom is to hold the warp
threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads. In the prophetic books,
the symbols of loom, with the action of weaving, the web and the net represent the soft, delusive
terror of sexual dominance and these symbols run together. "The silken net" in "How Sweet I
Roamed from Field to Field", suggests the trap of tenderness. The eighteenth century sought in
public works to slave its conscience over prostitution, poverty and disease. For Blake, it was
hypocrisy, while the old order perpetuated itself, and an oppressive social and moral code
fostered the destitution and traffic in childhood that all professed to deplore.  
Conclusion
     It is established that Blake is a highly symbolic poet. His use of symbolism is unique and
cinematic. It paints a lively and pulsating picture of dynamic life before us. He has depicted
nature and human nature; animals and plants as simple but profound symbols of powerful forces.
What is different in Blake is that he is not modeling after any symbols but his own. His handling
of symbols is markedly different from that of the French symbolists. His symbols are not
mechanical or inflexible. He has used archetypal symbolism in his poetry. In short, symbolism is
the main trait of William Blake as a poet and this has been well crystallized in his legendary
work, "The Songs of Innocence and Experience".
41. Poetry in the Romantic Age. The Lake District poets. William Wordsworth, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge
The Lake Poets were a group of English poets who all lived in the Lake District of England,
United Kingdom, in the first half of the nineteenth century. As a group, they followed no single
"school" of thought or literary practice then known. They were named, only to be uniformly
disparaged, by the Edinburgh Review. They are considered part of the Romantic Movement.
The three main figures of what has become known as the Lakes School were William
Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey. They were associated with several
other poets and writers, including Dorothy Wordsworth, Charles Lamb, Mary Lamb, Charles
Lloyd, Hartley Coleridge, John Wilson, and Thomas De Quincey.
The "Lake Poet School" (or 'Bards of the Lake', or the 'Lake School') was initially a derogatory
term ("the School of whining and hypochondriacal poets that haunt the Lakes", according
to Francis Jeffrey as reported by Coleridge) [1] that was also a misnomer, as it was neither
particularly born out of the Lake District, nor was it a cohesive school of poetry. The principal
members of the 'group' were William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert
Southey. Dorothy Wordsworth was an auxiliary member who was unpublished during her
lifetime (her journals, letters, and poems were published posthumously), but she provided much
of the inspiration for her brother William's work.[2]
There was a certain amount of additional irony involved in the 'School's' perception by readers,
who were inspired, upon reading the poetry, to visit the area, thus helping to destroy, in the mind
of Wordsworth at least, the very thing that made the Lakes special (although he himself ended up
writing one of the best guides to the region). In addition, many of the first and second generation
practitioners of Romantic poetry had a complex and not entirely easy relationship with the Lakes
(apart from Wordsworth). "For the most part other Romantic poets either struggle with a Lake
Poet identity or come to define themselves against what the Lakes seem to offer in poetic terms."
For Wordsworth, who settled at Dove Cottage, Grasmere, with his sister Dorothy after some
years of wandering, the Lakes became bound up with his identity as a poet. Born and brought up
on the fringes of the Lake District (at Cockermouth and Penrith), Wordsworth came back to the
area in December 1799 and settled into a 'poetic retirement' within his 'native mountains.'
Although Wordsworth did not 'discover' the Lake District, nor was he the one who popularised it
the most, he "was destined to become one of the key attractions to the area, while his particular
vision of his native landscape would have an enduring influence upon its future".[4] Not just a
'nature poet', his poetry "is about the organic relationship between human beings and the natural
world...'[5] After a brief flirtation with the Picturesque in his Cambridge years, he came to see
this aesthetic view of nature as being only one of many (although it is arguable that he "was
under the sway of Picturesque theory", he frequently transcended it).[6] His 'vision' of nature
was one that did not distort it in order to make art.
Wordsworth's early radical political ideas led him to his second poetic innovation: the use of
'plain language' and having for his subject the 'common man', as represented by the Dales-folk,
(rather than "kings and queens, lords and ladies or gods and goddesses" as was the case up to
then).[5] His third innovation was to do with the inward-turning of his mind, producing a semi-
autobiographical take on nature and imagination : his poem The Prelude, he wrote to Dorothy,
was "the poem on the growth of my own mind."
Despite this reclusive side of his personality, Wordsworth was a strong believer in family and
community, and he was much concerned with the effects on (especially poor) people's way of life
of social change (for example, due to the enclosure movement) that were taking place. He
disliked change that flew in the face of Nature: the planting of regimented lines of Larches; the
coming of the railways; new building that did not chime with the vernacular; and the building of
grand houses in the Lakes by the industrialists of Lancashire particularly upset him. In 1810 he
published his Guide to the Lakes, tellingly subtitled "for the Use of Tourists and Residents", and
with a Section Three entitled "Changes, and Rules of Taste for Preventing their Bad Effects."
For other writers, the region's pull was more uncertain. Coleridge followed Wordsworth to the
Lakes and moved into Greta Hall in 1800. Although identified by his contemporaries as a 'Lake
Poet', Coleridge's response to the landscape was at variance with the vision of Wordsworth,
leading Coleridge to identify the landscape's "Gothic elements"..."and in so doing seems to
recognise a potential for psychological horror rather than solace." [10] Wordsworth's rejection of
the poem Christabel, partly written at Greta Hall, for the Lyrical Ballads collection, added to
Coleridge's depression over his personal life, his doubts about being able to write as he would
have wished and his ill-health which was made worse by the Cumbrian climate. This led him to
resort to the Kendal Black Drop, making matters desperate. Coleridge moved out of the area in
1804.