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I- Introduction
The Romantic period is the most fruitful period in the history of English literature. The
revolt against the Classical school which had been started by writers like Chatterton,
Collins, Gray, Burne, Cowper, etc. reached its climax during this period, and some of the
greatest and most popular English poets like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and
Keats belong to this period.
This period started in 1798 with the publication of the Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and
Coleridge, and the famous Preface which Wordsworth wrote as a manifesto of the new
form of poetry which he and Coleridge introduced in opposition to the poetry of the
Classical school. In the Preface to the First Edition Wordsworth did not touch upon any
other characteristic of Romantic poetry except the simplicity and naturalness of its diction.
“The majority of the following poems”, he writes “are to be considered as experiments.
They were written chiefly with a view to ascertaining how far the language of conversation
in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure.”
In the longer preface to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads, where Wordsworth
explains his theories of poetic imagination, he again returns to the problem of the proper
language of poetry. “The language too, of these men (that is those in humble and rustic
life) has been adopted because from their intercourse, being less under the influence of
social vanity, they convey their feelings and notions in simple, unelaborated expression.”
Wordsworth chose the language of the common people as the vehicle of his poetry because
it is the most sincere expression of the deepest and rarest passions and feelings. This was
the first point of attack on the artificial and formal style of the Classical school of poetry.
The other point at which Wordsworth attacked the old school was its insistence on the town
and its artificial way of life. He wanted the poet to breathe the fresh air of the hills and
beautiful natural scenes and become interested in rural life and the simple folk living in the
lap of nature.
By attacking the supremacy of the heroic couplet as the only form of writing poetry, and
substituting it with simple and natural diction; by diverting the attention of the poet from
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French Revolution and the American War of Independence which broke away from the
tyranny of social and political domination and proclaimed the liberty of the individual or
nation to be the master of its own destiny. Just as the liberty of the individual was the
watchword of the French Revolution, liberty of a nation from foreign domination was the
watchword of the American War of Independence; in the same manner liberty of the poet
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from the tyranny of the literary rules and conventions was the watchword of the new
literary movement which we call by the name of Romantic movement. It is also termed as
the Romantic Revival, because all these characteristics—the liberty of the writer to choose
the theme and form of his literary production, the importance given to imagination and
full documents.
be called as the first Romantic age in English literature. But there was a difference between
the Elizabethan Age and the Romantic Age, because in the latter the Romantic spirit was
considered as discovery of something which once was, but had been lost. The poets of the
In the poems which were contributed in the Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth dealt with events
of everyday life, by preference in its humblest form. He tried to prove that the
commonplace things of life, the simple and insignificant aspects of nature, if treated in the
right manner, could be as interesting and absorbing as the grand and imposing aspects of
life and nature. To the share of Coleridge fell such subjects as were supernatural, which he
Wordsworth’s naturalism included love for nature as well for man living in simple and
natural surroundings.
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Coleridge’s supernaturalism, on the other hand, established the connection between the
visible world and the other world which is unseen. He treated the supernatural in his
masterly poem, The Ancient Mariner, in such a manner that it looked quite natural.
Associated with Wordsworth and Coleridge in the exploration of the less known aspects of
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humanity was Southey who makes up with them the trail of the so-called Lake Poets. He
devoted himself to the exhibition of “all the more prominent and poetical forms of
mythology which have at any time obtained among mankind.” Walter Scott, though he was
not intimately associated with the Lake poets, contributed his love for the past which also
full documents.
Though they were in their youth filled with great enthusiasm by the outburst of the French
Revolution which held high hope for mankind, they became conservatives and gave up
their juvenile ideas when the French Republic converted itself into a military empire
The second generation of Romantic writers —Byron, Shelley, Keats, Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt
and others—who came to the forefront after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815,
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an atmosphere the younger romantic generation renewed the revolutionary ardour and
attacked the established social order. Thus Romanticism in the second stage became a
literature of social conflict. Both Byron and Shelley rebelled against society and had to
leave England.
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But basically the poets of the two generations of Romanticism shared the same literary
beliefs and ideals. They were all innovators in the forms well as in the substance of their
poetry. All, except, Byron, turned in disgust from the pseudo-classical models and
condemned in theory and practice the “poetical diction” prevalent throughout the
full
populardocuments.
Pope. To it they usually preferred either blank verse or stanzas, or a variety of shorter
lyrical measures inspired by poetry are truly original.
As the Romantic Age was characterised by excess of emotions, it produced a new type of
Whereas the Classical age was the age of prose, the Romantic age was the age of poetry,
which was the proper medium for the expression of emotions and imaginative sensibility
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Romantic Revival as the Renaissance of Wonder. Instead of living a dull, routine life in
the town, and spending all his time and energy in to midst of artificiality and complexity
of the cities, the poets called upon man to adopt a healthier way of living in the natural
world in which providence has planted him of old, and which is full of significance for his
soul. The greatest poets of the romantic revival strove to capture and convey the influence
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of nature on the mind and of the mind on nature interpenetrating one another.
The essence of Romanticism was that literature must reflect all that is spontaneous and
unaffected in nature and in man, and be free to follow its own fancy in its own way. They
Main features
3. An almost religious response to nature. They were concerned that Nature should not just
be seen scientifically but as a living force, either made by a Creator, or as in some way
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6. An interest in ‘primitive' forms of art – for instance in the work of early poets (bards),
in ancient ballads and folksongs. Some of the Romantics turned back to past times to find
inspiration, either to the medieval period, or to Greek and Roman mythology. See Aspects
of the Gothic: Gothic and the medieval revival.
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7. An interest in and concern for the outcasts of society: tramps, beggars, obsessive
characters and the poor and disregarded are especially evident in Romantic poetry
8. An idea of the poet as a visionary figure, with an important role to play as prophet (in
both political and religious terms).
No longer tolerated, for example, were the fixed classical conventions, such as the
famous three unities (time, place, and action) of tragedy. An increasing demand for
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1896), a famous critical document in its own right, Hugo not only defended his break
from traditional dramatic structure but also justified the introduction of the grotesque into
art. In their choice of heroes, also, the romantic writers replaced the static universal types
of classical 18th-century literature with more complex, idiosyncratic characters; and a
great deal of drama, fiction, and poetry was devoted to a celebration of Rousseau's
“common man.”
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II- The Romantic Themes
A -Libertarianism
full documents.
centuries were engendered by the romantic philosophy —the desire to be free of
convention and tyranny, and the new emphasis on the rights and dignity of the individual.
Just as the insistence on rational, formal, and conventional subject matter that had
In William Tell (1804; translated 1825), by German dramatist Friedrich von Schiller, an
obscure medieval mountaineer becomes an immortal symbol of opposition to tyranny
and foreign rule. In the novel The Betrothed (1825-1827; translated 1834), by Italian
writer Alessandro Manzoni, a peasant couple become instruments in the final crushing
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The general romantic dissatisfaction with the organization of society was often channeled
into specific criticism of urban society. La maison du berger (The Shepherd's Hut, 1844),
by French poet Alfred Victor de Vigny, expresses the view that such an abode has more
nobility than a palace. Earlier, Rousseau had written that people were born free but that
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everywhere civilization put them in chains. This feeling of oppression was frequently
expressed in poetry—for example, in the work of English visionary William Blake,
writing in the poem “Milton” (about 1804-1808) of the “dark Satanic mills” that were
beginning to deface the English countryside; or in Wordsworth's long poem The Prelude
“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1751) by Thomas Gray, and The Borough
(1810) by George Crabbe. The melancholic strain later developed as a separate theme, as
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reflects the author's knowledge of European folktales as well as contemporary romantic
poetry and the Gothic novel. The Leather-Stocking Tales by James Fenimore Cooper
celebrate the beauty of the American wilderness and the simple frontier life; in romantic
fashion, they also idealize the Native American as (in Rousseau's phrase) the “noble
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savage.” By the middle of the 19th century, the nature tradition was absorbed by
American literary transcendentalism, chiefly expressed in the essays of Ralph Waldo
Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
full documents.
(5th century to 15th century) for themes and settings and chose locales ranging from the
awesome Hebrides of the Ossianic tradition, as in the work of Scottish poet James
MacPherson (see Ossian and Ossianic Ballads), to the Asian setting of Xanadu evoked
Scott, and his historical novels, the Waverley series (1814-1825), combine these
concerns: love of the picturesque, preoccupation with the heroic past, and delight in
D- The Supernatural
The trend toward the irrational and the supernatural was an important component of
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English and German documents
romantic literature. It was reinforcedto download.
on the one hand by disillusion
with 18th-century rationalism and on the other by the rediscovery of a body of older
literature—folktales and ballads—collected by Percy and by German scholars Jacob and
Wilhelm Karl Grimm and Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen. From such material
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comes, for example, the motif of the doppelgänger (German for “double”). Many
romantic writers, especially in Germany, were fascinated with this concept, perhaps
because of the general romantic concern with self-identity. Poet Heinrich Heine wrote a
lyric apocryphally titled “Der Doppelgänger” (1827; translated 1846); The Devil's Elixir
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(1815-1816; translated 1824), a short novel by E. T. A. Hoffmann, is about a double; and
Peter Schlemihl's Remarkable Story (1814; translated 1927), by Adelbert von Chamisso,
the tale of a man who sells his shadow to the devil, can be considered a variation on the
theme. Later, Russian master Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky wrote his famous novel
full documents.
III- William Wordsworth’s Preface to The Lyrical Ballads (1800)
Summary
received a legacy of £900 from Raisley Calvert in 1795 so that he could pursue writing
poetry. That year, he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Somerset. The two poets quickly
developed a close friendship. In 1797, Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, moved to
Alfoxton House, Somerset, just a few miles away from Coleridge's home in Nether Stowey.
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Together, Wordsworth and Coleridge (with insights from Dorothy) produced Lyrical
Ballads (1798), an important work in the English Romantic movement. The volume had
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avoids the poetic diction of much eighteenth-century poetry. Here, Wordsworth gives his
famous definition of poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its
origin from emotion recollected in tranquility". A fourth and final edition of Lyrical
Ballads was published in 1805.
I - Subject-Matter (Content)
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A very Neo-Classical view of Art: it holds a mirror up to nature: its “object” is “truth, not
individual and local, but general, and operative”
Poetry is the most accurate form of knowledge. Sounding a similar note to Sidney,
Wordsworth argues that there is “no object standing between the poet and the image of
things”, whereas a “thousand” obstacles stand between the things themselves and the
“biographer and historian” and, he adds, the scientist.
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Revolutionary view of the object of representation: his goal is to represent “incidents and
situations from common life”, especially “[h]umble and rustic life” (i.e. not just the rich
His goal is to trace the “primary laws of our nature, in particular, the “manner in which we
associate ideas in a state of excitement”. Wordsworth is particularly interested in capturing
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less sophisticated sorts, that is, those who are untainted by wealth and city life.
II- Language
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The language of humble country folk, once pruned of all the “vulgarity and meanness of
ordinary life”, is “purified” from “all real defects” in that it reflects the fact that “such men
hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally
derived”.
full documents.
and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions”.
He avoids “personifications of abstract ideas” and “poetic diction” in general, that is, the
“large portion of phrases and figures of speech which from father to son have long been
2. He argues that he chose to write in verse because “words metrically arranged” give
more pleasure than mere prose. Where morally sound prose is only ‘utile,’ morally
sound poetry is also ‘dulce.’
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“What is a Poet?”, Wordsworth asks. His answer: the poet is a “man speaking to men”:
Poets are men who “being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had als o
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thought long and deeply”.
Although the poet feels things more keenly than other people, the nature of his passions
and feelings is not different from those of others: they are the “general passions and
thoughts and feelings of men”. The poet is “nothing differing in kind from othe r men, but
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only in degree”.
The poet is “chiefly distinguished from other men by a greater promptness to think and feel
without external excitement; and a greater power in expressing such thoughts and feelings
are produced in him in that manner”.
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