UNIT-1

INTRODUCTION TO ROMANTIC AGE

Objectives
1. To provide the students with an understanding of the historical context of the Romantic
era.
2. To enlighten the students with the characteristics of the age.
3. To introduce students to some of the writers of Romanticism and their thoughts on the
changing conventions.

1.1.Introduction to Romantic Age

Romanticism (also known as the Romantic period) was an artistic, literary, musical, and
philosophical movement that began in Europe at the end of the 18th century and peaked in most
areas between 1800 and 1850. Romanticism was defined by its stress on emotions,
individualism, idealization of nature, distrust of science and industrialization, and exaltation of
the past. This
movement favored the medieval over the classical. It was partly a reaction to modernity and the
rapidly growing urbanization, caused by the Industrial Revolution. It also challenged the
conventions of the Age of Enlightenment.
It was most strongly represented in the visual arts, music, and literature, but it also influenced
historiography, education, chess, social sciences, and natural sciences. Romantic intellectuals
influenced conservatism, liberalism, radicalism, and nationalism, and had a significant and
complex impact on politics.
The movement stressed extreme emotion as an actual source of aesthetic experience, placing a
new emphasis on feelings like fear, horror, and terror, as well as wonder — particularly when
addressing romantic notions of sublime and natural beauty. It elevated folk art and historical
customs to a noble status and also made ‘spontaneity’ a desirable trait (as in the musical
impromptu). In opposition to the Enlightenment's Rationalism and Classicism, Romanticism
reintroduced medievalism with its authentic medieval elements of art and narrative. This was
done as an attempt to escape population increase, early urban development, and industrialism.
This movement was originally based on the German Sturm und Drang movement. The German
movement stressed upon extreme emotions, exalted nature and high individualism. It was also
against the ideals of Rationalism, of the Enlightenment era. Although Romanticism was centered
around the German moment, it was also motivated by many other factors. The primary factor
being that many Romantics were influenced by the French Revolution. Since many early
romantics were cultural revolutionaries and sympathizers, romanticism placed great importance
on the achievements of "heroic" individualists and artists, claiming that their example would
improve society.
Romanticism also emphasized that human imagination allowed artists to break free from
traditional concepts of form. In the portrayal of the movement’s ideas, there was a significant
reliance on the historical and the natural.
Realism was proposed as the polar opposite of Romanticism in the second part of the nineteenth
century. During this time, the decline of Romanticism was linked to several factors, including
social and political changes.

Different Writers of Romantic Literature

Joseph Warton (headmaster at Winchester College) and his brother Thomas Warton, Professor of
Poetry at Oxford University, were among the forerunners of Romanticism in English poetry in
the mid-eighteenth century. A poet's key qualities, according to Joseph, are invention and
imagination. With the international success of his Ossian cycle of poems published in 1762,
Scottish poet James Macpherson impacted the early development of Romanticism, inspiring both
Goethe and the young Walter Scott. Thomas Chatterton is often regarded as England's earliest
Romantic poet. Both Chatterton and Macpherson's work contained aspects of deception, as what
they purported to be previously discovered or gathered literature was, in fact, totally their work.
With a relish in terror and threat and exotic attractive locales, the Gothic fiction, which began
with Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764), was an important predecessor of one strain
of Romanticism, mirrored in Walpole's case by his role in the early resurgence of Gothic
architecture. Laurence Sterne (1759–67) presented a whimsical version of the anti-rational
sentimental fiction to the English literary public with Tristram Shandy.
Isabella di Morra, a 16th-century poet, is regarded by some as a predecessor of Romantic
literature. In contrast to the Patriarchist tendency of the time, which was centered on the
philosophy of love, her songs were about loneliness and solitude, which depicted the horrible
circumstances of her existence, are regarded as "an extraordinary prefigurement of
Romanticism".
The evocation or criticism of the past, the worship of "sensibility" with its emphasis on women
and children, the isolation of the artist or narrator, and love for nature were all common themes
in Romanticism's literature. Several romantic writers, including Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel
Hawthorne, based their works on the supernatural/occult and human psychology. Satire was
often dismissed by Romanticism as undeserving of serious consideration, a bias that persists
today.
"Romantics" is a representative term for describing those writers who became famous in the late
nineties and early twentieth century. There was no self-styled "Romantic movement" at the time,
and the great writers of the period did not refer to themselves as Romantics. A strong difference
between the "organic," "plastic" qualities of Romantic art and the "mechanical" character of
Classicism was not established until August Wilhelm von Schlegel's Vienna lectures of
September 1808.
Nonetheless, many of the era's leading writers believed that something new was unfolding in the
world's affairs. "A new heaven has begun," wrote William Blake in 1793, was followed by Percy
Bysshe Shelley's "The world's grand age begins afresh" a generation later. John Keats said of
Leigh Hunt and William Wordsworth, "These, these will give the world another heart, / And
other pulses." New ideas arose; in particular, the long-cherished English concept of liberty was
being expanded to all aspects of human endeavor. As that concept spread over Europe, it was
easy to imagine that the period of dictators was drawing to a close. The new role of individual
thought and personal experience is the most remarkable element of the poetry of the time.

Romantic Writing/ Poetry in Romantic Literature

The main trend in 18th-century poetics was to glorify the general. The poet was considered a
spokesman of society, who preached to a cultivated and homogeneous audience with the
conveyance of "truth" as his goal. However, the Romantics found poetry's basis to be in the
personal, and unique experiences of an individual. "To Generalize is to be an Idiot," Blake writes
(in a marginal note on Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses) "The only Distinction of Merit is to
Particularize." The Romantics considered the poet to be a unique individual, different from
others in his perceptions and intellect. Poetry was thought to transmit its truth, and sincerity was
the standard by which it was judged.
In some ways, the emphasis on feeling—perhaps best exemplified in Robert Burns' poems—was
a continuation of the previous "cult of sensibility," and Alexander Pope commended his father
for knowing no language except the language of the heart. However, sentiments had begun to
receive special attention, and they can be found in most Romantic poetry. In 1833, John Stuart
Mill defined poetry as "feeling itself, employing thought only as of the medium of its utterance."
Wordsworth called poetry "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling," and John Stuart Mill
defined poetry as "feeling itself, employing thought only as of the medium of its
utterance." As a result, the best poetry was that, which portrayed the greatest intensity of feeling,
and the lyric was given a new level of importance.
Another distinguishing feature of Romantic writing was its shift away from the Neoclassical era's
mimetic, or imitative norms to a fresh emphasis on imagination. Imagination, according to
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is the greatest poetic quality, quasi-divine creative energy that elevates
the poet to godlike status. "Invention, imagination, and judgment" were the components of
poetry according to Samuel Johnson, while Blake said, "One Power alone produces a Poet:
Imagination, the Divine Vision." As a result, poets of the time placed a strong focus on the
unconscious mind, dreams and reveries. The supernatural, and the infantile or primeval vision of
the world also gained special attention. The latter was valued for its clarity and intensity, which
had not been constrained by civilized "reason."
The Romantic attitude towards form is another indicator of the reduced emphasis on judgment: if
poetry is to be spontaneous, sincere, and intense, it should be fashioned according to the rules of
creative imagination. "You feel deeply; trust those sensations, and your poem will acquire its
shape and proportions as a tree does from the vital element that actuates it," Wordsworth
instructed a young poet. In other words, poetry is free and spontaneous. Its biological conception
contrasts with the classical theory of "genres," each with its own grammatical rules and
regulations. This gives the impression that poetic sublimity could only be achieved in brief
passages.
Demand for new techniques of writing went hand in hand with the new understanding of poetry
and the insistence on a new subject matter. Wordsworth and his followers, particularly Keats, felt
that the late-eighteenth-century poetic diction was old and stiff, or "gaudy and inane," and
completely inappropriate to the expression of their feelings. It couldn't possibly be the language
of feelings for them, therefore Wordsworth set out to reintroduce poetry to the realm of everyday
speech. Wordsworth's diction, on the other hand, frequently contradicts his idea. Nonetheless, the
time was ripe for a change when he wrote his prologue to Lyrical Ballads in 1800: the agile
diction of earlier 18th-century poetry had fossilized into a purely conventional language.
Summary
Romanticism (1800 – 1850) was an intellectual movement that influenced all fields of study.
Resulting as a by-product of the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment era’s logic and
rationality, romanticism sought for the pure and sublime. The Romantic movement focused on
the individual and his place in nature. It emphasized emotion, imagination and beauty. It also
favored the medieval in place of the classical. Moving from the general to the specific,
romanticism placed value in subjectivity and found healing in nature. And with Wordsworth’s
effort poetry was made enjoyable for everyone, being written in the common tongue.
Assessment Questions
1. What do you know about the Romantic Age?
2. What are the distinguishing features of romantic writing and how does Wordsworth
contribute to that?