University M’Hamed Bougara of Boumerdes

Faculty of Letters and Languages

Department of English
Literature
Lecturers: Dr. BESSAMI, Ms. TERKI, Mrs. ZEMMOURI
Course Coordinator: Dr. BESSAMI
E-mail : hbessami@univ-boumerdes.dz

Romantic Literature (1785-1830)

Week 2: The Historical Background of Romantic Literature.

“Great Spirits now on earth are sojourning” (Keats)

1. Introduction:
Despite its ephemeral existence, Romanticism has shown itself to be as convoluted as
any other literary period. Some of the famous writers of the era include W.
Wordsworth, S.T. Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Keats, and Blake. The
Lyrical Ballads (1798) marked the rise of Romanticism as a literary movement. Some
of the notable female writers of the age include Anna Berbauld, Charlotte Smith, and
Mary Robinson. The era’s intellectual spirit was shaped by political, social, and
economic factors.

2. The Rise of the Romantic Movement:

2.1. The French Revolution (1789)
 It drew England back into costly wars.
 The publication of The Rights of Man (1790) accentuated that property
would be equally distributed and the government would wither away.
 In England, this was a harsh/ critical period of time as public meetings
were prohibited, the rights of habeas corpus (the legal principle protecting

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 individuals from arbitrary imprisonment was suspended), and politicians
were charged with treason.
2.2. The Industrial Revolution:
 The period marked a shift from an agricultural to an industrialized mode of
production i.e. power is not in the hands of landlords but in industries.
 England also noticed an economic crisis that led to inflation and
depression.
 The latter led to changes in society’s social structure as it was threatened
by revolutions.
 The rise of new ideologies to which the ruling class responded by the
repression of traditional liberties.
 The “laissez-faire” policy: the government should not interfere with private
enterprise which made the working class under the mercy of the owners
 It created an enclosure that led to the creation of a landless class. Villages
were broken, and most citizens either migrated to the cities or remained in
farming (created starvation, and most landscapes were modernized)
 The creation of “Two Nations”: the wealthy owners and the poor working
class.

3.3. Abolishment of Slavery:

 It led to the rise of economic and political issues as the new social classes
started asking for votes and a place in the government.

3. The Spirit of the Age:

 Despite these harsh conditions, this period was marked by intellectual richness.
 “The Spirit of the Age” was a persuasive, intellectual, and imaginative climate;
a time of renewal and promise.
 The writers of this era did not refer to themselves as Romantic poets until half
a century later
 They are divided into three main schools:
1. The Lake School: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Robert Southey.
2. Cockney School: this is a derogatory term for Londoners Leigh Hunt, William
Hazlitt, and Keats.
3. Satanic School: Shelley and Byron.
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  The writers of this era emphasized personal experience; the expression of
individual thoughts and feelings and the use of nature as a source of
inspiration.
 The flourishment of the movement was in 1798 which marked the publication
of the Lyrical Ballads (a collection of “experiments” in poetic language and
subject matter)

4. Characteristics:
1. The concept of the poet and the poem: creativity is in the psychology of the
individual not in nature
2. Spontaneity and the impulses of feelings: Wordsworth defines poetry as the
“spontaneous overflow of feelings”
3. Romantic “Nature” Poetry:
 It calls for fixing the relationship with nature
 Nature stimulates imagination and human thinking
 Nature poems are meditative: they start with a personal crisis, then give
development, and end with a resolution.
4. The Glorification of the Ordinary:
 Romantic Poets dwell on incidents and situations of common life
 It focuses on humble and rustic life
 It uses a language used by laymen.
 It focuses on the representation of rural scenes and pleasures.
 It elevated simple and plain style in an unusual way using imagination.
5. The Supernatural, The Romance, and The Psychological Extremes:

Coleridge was into exploring the exotic and the supernatural experiences (letting
his imagination wander)

“Stories of bewitchings, hauntings, and possession—-shaped by antiquated

treatises on demonology, folklore, and Gothic novels—supplied him with the
means of impressing upon readers a sense of occult powers and unknown modes
of being” (Norton, 13)

6. Individualism and Alienation:

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  “The Romantic period, the epoch of free enterprise, imperial
expansion, and boundless revolutionary hope, was also an epoch of
individualism in which philosophers and poets alike put an
extraordinarily high estimate on human potentialities and powers.”
(Norton, 14)
 “In this context many writers' choice to portray poetry as a product of
solitude and poets as loners might be understood as a means of
reinforcing the individuality of their vision.” (Norton, 15)

Source:

Greenblatt, Stephan et al. (2006). The Norton Anthology of English Literature Vol. II. New
York and London: Norton and Company.