1. Early romantics. Gothic school. Poetry of the great romantics.

Early Romantic Poetry In the second half of the 18th century, a new sensibility became
manifest in poetry and a new generation of poets began to arise.

Even if they didn't lay down a precise programme of rules, they established new trends
which paved the way for the Romantic generations of poets. The main features of Early
Romantic Poetry are: The use of subjective, autobiographical material to express a lyrical and
personal experience of life; A balanced presentation of various emotional states; The
melancholy and sad tone; The cult of simple and primitive, rural life; The description of a wild,
gloomy nature, often connected with night and darkness; The choice of cemeteries and ruins;
The respect of classical proportion and poetic form. The two most popular trends of the period
were “Ossianic” and “Graveyard” poetry.

The former consist of a cycle of poems by a legendary Irish warrior, called Ossian, who
lived in the 3rd century in Scotland. “graveyard” poetry was called after an influential group of
poems know as “the Graveyard School” because of their melancholy tone and because they set
their poems in cemeteries or among ruins. Elegy written in a Country Churchyard The most
important work of the school of “the Graveyard School” was Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a
Country Churchyard, where the tomb became a symbol evoking the contemplation of death
and immortality. The poem opens with a death-bell sounding, a knell. The lowing of cattle, the
droning of a beetle in flight, the tinkling of sheep-bells, and the owl's hooting (stanzas 1-3)
mourn the passing of a day, described metaphorically as if it were a person, and then suitably
the narrator's eye shifts to a human graveyard. From creatures that wind, plod, wheel, and
wander, he looks on still, silent “mould'ring” heaps, and on turf under a moonlit tower where
“The rude forefathers” “sleep” in a “lowly bed.” Gray makes his sunset a truly human death-
knell. No morning bird-song, evening family life, or farming duties (stanzas 5-7) will wake,
welcome, or occupy them. They have fallen literally under the sickle, the ploughshare, and the
axe that they once wielded. They once tilled glebe land, fields owned by the church, but now lie
under another church property, the parish graveyard. This scene remains in memory as the
narrator contrasts it with allegorical figures who represent general traits of eighteenth-century
humanity: Ambition (29), Grandeur (31), Memory (38), etc… the narrator defends the dead in
his remote churchyward cemetery from the contempt of abstractions like Ambition and
Grandeur.

Gothic Literature- Merriam-Webster defines Gothic as: “of or relating to a style of writing
that describes strange or frightening events that take place in mysterious places.” Gothic
literature all started with with Horace Walpole’s novel Castle of Oronto in 1765, and the
tradition was continued by writers such as Ann Radcliffe, and in classic horror stories like
Frankenstein and Dracula. The genre itself was named after the architecture that inspired it: the
medieval castles and ruins in which much of Gothic literature takes place, and which often play
a vital role in the narrative’s plot. Gothic literature has evolved over the years to include
subgenres such as Southern Gothic literature, which takes place in the American South and is
associated with much-beloved authors Flannery O’Conner and William Faulkner, among others.
The Gothic tradition continues today in the works of such writers as Joyce Carol Oates and Julia
Elliott.

The term "Gothic Poetry" loosely refers to any poem that contains dark, frightening
elements. Some examples of gothic poets include Edgar Allen Poe and Christina Rossetti. Poets
often choose Gothic poetry to express deep inner conflicts, emotional pain, unrequited love, or
the need to shed a conventional existence.

2. Poets of the "Lake School".

The Lake Poets were a group of English poets who lived and wrote in the Lake District
during the nineteenth century.

The Lake Poets were part of the Romantic Movement and are best remembered for
verses related to natural imagery. Despite this, they did not follow a single idea or school of
thought.

The primary members of the loosely defined group were William Wordsworth, and later
(to an extent) his sister Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey. But
there were several other poets, mentioned below, who were also given the name. It was due to
the works of poets like Wordsworth that the Lake District became as well-known and defined as
it is today. His vision of the landscape, and how he wrote about it, created it. He was attracted
to the region for its isolation and for the undisturbed vision of nature he could find there. Other
poets, like Southey and Coleridge, were attracted to the region for different reasons.

Famous Lake Poets

William Wordsworth

Wordsworth was the best-known of the Lake Poets. He exemplified the attitude that’s
now associated with the region and with all those who were inspired by the landscape. He,
along with Coleridge, is remembered by history as helping to launch the Romantic Age of
English literature with their publication of Lyrical Ballads. The greatest work of his career, The
Prelude, was unknown during his lifetime. He began it when he was twenty-eight years old and
it was published posthumously. His broader oeuvre is noted for his veneration o nature and
dislike for change that flew in the face of the natural world. He often used common language
and centered the everyday person at the heart of his poems.
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, along with Wordsworth, is remembered as one of the

progenitors of the Romantic Movement in England. He worked as a poet, literary critic, and
philosopher. He is one of the most prominent members of the group referred to as the Lake
Poets. He collaborated on volumes with other writers on this list, such as Robert Southey and
Charles Lloyd. His work was often darker than Wordsworth’s. He used elements of the
supernatural, imagination, and naturalism.

Robert Southey

Robert Southey is remembered today for his lyrical verse, sonnets, odes, and ballads that
dealt with topics like social injustice and the supernatural. He, like Coleridge and Wordsworth,
became more conservative throughout his lifetime, acquiring deep respect for British social
institutions. He is remembered for his poem ‘After Blenheim.’

Mary Lamb

Mary Lamb is best-remembered for her collaboration with Charles Lamb, her brother, on
Tales from Shakespeare. She and her brother were part of the same literary circles as the other
poets on this list and she is often included as part of the group of Lake Poets. She spent most of
her life, after briefly being confined to a mental facility for murdering Elizabeth Lamb, her
mother, working as a seamstress in London under the care of her brother.

Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb was brother to Mary Lamb and is best-remembered as a poet, essayist, and
children’s author. His collection of essays titled, Essays of Elia, is his best-known work. He was
at the center of the poet’s literary circle in London and was a much-loved character there. His
most famous poem was ‘The Old Familiar Faces.’

Charles Lloyd

Charles Lloyd was a close friend of the other poets on this list and is best known for his
poem, ‘Desultory Thoughts in London.’ He was a student of Coleridge’s and collaborated with
him on a few occasions. It was through Coleridge that he met Charles Lamb with whom he also
collaborated.

3. Embodiment of the theme of poet and poetry: P.B. Shelley, J.G. Byron. Historical novel
by Scott.

Byron and Shelley were among the most controversial writers of the English Romanticist
era. Both of them were attacked during their lifetime on political, religious and moral grounds.
Shelley was assaulted for his atheism, while Byron’s works were condemned for having
blasphemous and nihilistic attitudes, lacking conventional religious convictions. He was also
reproached for his political attitudes: his favorable attitude towards Napoleon, his severe
assaults of George III and Castlereigh, his uncompromising criticism of every destructive war
and his lack of patriotic spirit. On the other hand, Shelley’s political socialist principles
advocating equality, abolition of private property and monarchy were considered radical and
unacceptable (Redpath, 1973, p. 168-169).
They shared the same image regarding moral issues too. Byron was accused of
misanthropy and unhealthy pessimism, while Shelley’s flaws were his egotism and self-
assurance. Both of them were considered depraved and sexually permissive, which was being
evidenced by their various love affairs and defense of free love (which included incestuous
relationships). Both of them being considered outcasts, the two rebels were compelled to leave
England. They met in Europe and started the most important literary friendship of their lives
(Franklin, 2006, p. 15).
Both poets’ literary works overflow with yearning to reclaim human freedom. Affected by
the spirit of the French Revolution, the two poets recurrently employed the concept of liberty
as their literary motif. However, as a more thorough investigation into their works in the
following sections of the paper will illustrate, their conceptualization of freedom underwent
transformations in relation to “liberté” as perceived in the French Revolution. For the
Revolution, freedom referred to liberation from authoritarian social oppression. Drawing
heavily on Enlightenment philosophy, it championed logic, order and reason. It stood for
collective national well-being and equal human rights in an organized society. For Byron and
Shelley, freedom translated into unconfined individual free spirit. For them, at the heart of
freedom there is an unbound inward-looking, creative, contemplative, intensely instinctual
individual on the quest to know the self.
Despite all attacks on them, Byron and Shelley left as their legacy some of the greatest
works of the English Romanticist era (Ferber, 2012). This paper will focus on analyzing three of
their works, accompanied by relevant background biographical information. The three works
are all a fine representation of the poets’ revolutionary literary spirit in their own distinctive
manners. Byron’s The Vision of Judgement was deemed “Heavenly! Unsurpassable!” by Goethe
(Marsben, 1953, p. 327), while his Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage “is famous for making him
famous” (Markovits, 2011). Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, being his “most ambitious work”
(Barbuscia, 2016, p. 55), was placed “among the sacred books of the world” (Yeats, 1961, p. 65).
Walter Scott and the Historical Novel
The historical novel is a literary genre that links strong dramatic plot lines and credible
human psychology, within a setting characterized by specific historical details. The founder of
this genre, which had a great impact on Romantic Europe, was sir Walter Scott (1771-1832),
whose novels, starting with Waverley (1814), created a passion for the historical novel among
readers and writers that remains strong up to this day. Scott’s main achievement was to get
people to realize that history was not just a list of political and religious events, but the product
of human decisions. He took the past of Scotland as his main subject and mixed it with
imaginative adventures. He blended highly figurative language with dialect to portray real and
living characters, who belong both to the aristocracy and the low, humble classes. He
introduced a new concept of history, based on the lives of the ordinary people, rather than on
those of kings and noblemen. His interpretation of English history offered him various examples
of compromise between two extreme situations: the fight between the Anglo-Saxons and the
Normans, which had given rise to a mixed people, the English and the Glorious Revolution of
1688 which had marked the end of the struggles between the King and Parliament. He was
interested in the moments when an historical crisis, especially in Scottish history, caused
personal problems in individuals or in groups.
Ivanhoe (1820) and Waverley (1814), his most important works, respectively describe
these conflicts. Most of his novels follow a pattern which has been called the “journey”: a
traveler, that is, Ivanhoe or Waverley, moves from a safe situation inside an ethic group, comes
into contact with another ethic group and shares their life for a time. In the end he will return
from where he came with a different experience of life which will enable him to mediate
between two rival groups.
Scott made the novel a modern epic form by making it national, and he made it national
by making it historical. In doing so, he endowed the novel with the aura of philosophical dignity
attached to history, the most prestigious of the Enlightenment human sciences, especially in
Scotland. The historical novel became the ‘classical’ form of the novel as such throughout the
nineteenth century, retaining popularity and prestige well after the major Victorian novelists
had absorbed Scott's techniques for a historicism trained on modern conditions. The
combination of history and Bildungsroman inaugurated in Waverley; or, ‘Tis Sixty Years Since
(1814) would provide a model for aspiring national literatures across Continental Europe, its
imperial frontiers, and its colonial satellites, well into the next century.