Course 2

THE ROMANTIC PERIOD

1780-1830

In the English literature, the poetry of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge,

Byron, Shelley and Keats has created a concept of what romantic poetry is.
The Romantic period in Europe meant an escape from Renaissance1
tradition and from cultural authority of classical Rome2. The result was the
rediscovery of the local cultures and a flowering of vernacular3 literatures.
Romantic literature is strong in many vernaculars of Europe and especially in
the literature created by it, so to say – German and Russian.
It draws on one of the meanings of the word ‘romantic’, which derives from Old
French ‘Romans’ meaning a vernacular language derived from Latin. In Britain,
where there had been a vernacular literature for several centuries, passing to
Romanticism was not so sudden. There were some aspects to point at that. In the
18th century there was one Thomas Gray4, who had explored other literatures
than classical, namely Celtic5 and Norse6. There was little influence of the
classical inheritance on ballads, folk-songs and the literature of common people;

1
The Renaissance (UK /rɨˈneɪsəns/, US /ˈrɛnɨsɑːns/, French pronunciation: [ʁənɛsɑ̃ s], from French: Renaissance
"re-birth", Italian: Rinascimento, from rinascere "to be reborn") was a cultural movement that spanned the
period roughly from the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading
to the rest of Europe. Though availability of paper and the invention of metal movable type sped the
dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century, the changes of the Renaissance were not uniformly
experienced across Europe.
As a cultural movement, it encompassed innovative flowering of Latin and vernacular literatures, beginning
with the 14th-century resurgence of learning based on classical sources, which contemporaries credited to
Petrarch, the development of linear perspective and other techniques of rendering a more natural reality in
painting, and gradual but widespread educational reform.
2
Classical antiquity (also the classical era, classical period or classical age) is a broad term for a long period of
cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilisations of ancient Greece
and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world. It is the period in which Greek and Roman
society flourished and wielded great influence throughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. It is
conventionally (socially accepted, n.a.) taken to begin with the earliest-recorded Greek poetry of Homer (8th–
7th century BC), and continues through the emergence of Christianity and the decline of the Roman Empire
(5th century AD).
3
dialect, language
4
Thomas Gray (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771) was an English poet, letter-writer, classical scholar and
professor at Cambridge University. He is widely known for his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, published
in 1751.
5
In the strictly academic context of Celtic studies, the term Celtic literature is used by Celticists to denote any
number of bodies of literature written in a Celtic language, encompassing the Irish, Welsh, Cornish, Manx,
Scottish Gaelic and Breton languages in either their modern or earlier forms.
6
Old Norse literature refers to the vernacular literature of the Scandinavian peoples up to ca. 1350. It chiefly
consists of Icelandic writings.

1
then there was non-classical medieval world; in the vogue7 for the word
‘gothic8’; there was also the biblical tradition.
The adjective ‚romantic’ derives from the word that gives us the
expression ‚Romance languages’; though, it came to mean more than a
language, it referred to the quality and preoccupations of literature written in
those languages – romances and stories. By 17th century, the word ‘romantic’
had come to refer to anything from imaginative or fictious to fabulous or
(downright) complete extravagant. It was often used disapprovingly, but in the
18th century was used approvingly, especially when describing landscape. The
romantic poetry of the period from 1780 to 1830 has this bunch of meanings
behind it.
The ‘romantic’ period saw changes in philosophy, politics, religion, as
well as in literature, painting and music, changes articulated and symbolized by
the English Romantic poets. In philosophy, the Romantic period saw a reaction
against the rationalism of the 18th century, a reaction against the physical world
dominated by science and the mental world dominated by the theories of John
Locke. The Augustan9 satirists began the attack against the adequacy of reason
in literature, but it was the Romantics who tried to explore it and see what was
missing. The Romantic poets rebelled against the emphasis on material and on
‘common sense’ which dominated the preceding period. For more of them there
was a more real order which commanded10 their faithful allegiance11
\ə-ˈlē-jən(t)s\ .
The Romantic period in literature coincided with the French Revolution,
which to some extent it was an enactment of its ideas in politics. In its idealistic
early stages involved breaking out of the restrictive patterns of the past. Each of
7
fashion
8
The word "Gothic" for art was initially used as a synonym for "Barbaric", and was therefore used pejoratively.
Its critics saw this type of Medieval art as unrefined and too remote from the aesthetic proportions and shapes
of Classical art. Renaissance authors believed that the Sack of Rome by the Gothic tribes in 410 had triggered
the demise of the Classical world and all the values they held dear. In the 15th century, various Italian
architects and writers complained that the new 'barbarian' styles filtering down from north of the Alps posed a
similar threat to the classical revival promoted by the early Renaissance. The "Gothic" qualifier for this art was
first used in Raphael's letter to Pope Leo X c. 1518 and was subsequently popularised by the Italian artist and
writer Giorgio Vasari, who used it as early as 1530, calling Gothic art a "monstrous and barbarous"
"disorder".Raphael claimed that the pointed arches of northern architecture were an echo of the primitive huts
the Germanic forest dwellers formed by bending trees together - a myth which would resurface much later in a
more positive sense in the writings of the German Romantic movement. "Gothic art" was strongly criticized by
French authors such as Boileau, La Bruyère, Rousseau, before becoming a recognized form of art, and the
wording becoming fixed.
In its beginning, Gothic art was initially called "French work" (Opus Francigenum), thus attesting the priority of
France in the creation of this style
9
The eighteenth century in English literature has been called the Augustan Age, the Neoclassical Age, and the
Age of Reason. The term 'the Augustan Age' comes from the self-conscious imitation of the original Augustan
writers, Virgil and Horace, by many of the writers of the period. Specifically, the Augustan Age was the period
after the Restoration era to the death of Alexander Pope (~1690 - 1744). The major writers of the age were
Pope and John Dryden in poetry, and Jonathan Swift and Joseph Addison in prose.
10
imposed
11
loyalty, commitment

2
the two generations of poets was affected by it. The older generation, Blake,
Wordsworth and Coleridge were young in 1789 and they were animated by its
revolutionary ideals. Nevertheless what followed the Terror12 and the rise of
Napoleon caused disillusionment. Although some retreated into reaction in their
later life, these poets were lucky enough to have lived times which offered
something to match their idealism of youth. The younger generation, Byron,
Shelley and Keats were not so lucky; they grew up in a society dominated by the
repression of a series of Tory governments apprehensive13 that every request for
freedom might open the floodgates of revolution.
It was galling14 for the writers to think how under the threat of an invasion
that never came the country could do itself so much damage. Blake memorably
exposed the ‘mental chains’ with which his countrymen were bound. The
difference between the Romantics and their predecessors is their attitude
towards society. The 18th century regarded society as the work of man, ideally
holding all the ranks together in harmony; whereas for the Romantics, the
society became an evil force. It was not because of the foolish, greedy and vain
people, but because the society itself was regarded as dark, limited and obscure.
Another difference, on the one hand, but consequence on the other,
between the Romantics and their predecessors is that the Romantics wanted to
flee from the city into the rural environment, while the classical literature was
metropolitan, associated with the Greek cities, Alexandria and Rome. Shelley
remarked:
‘Hell is a city much like London—
A populous and a smoky city;
There are all sorts of people undone,
And there is little or no fun done;
Small justice shown, and still less pity.’15
Wordsworth considered it as a prison from which he fled to English Lakes.
Of all the social evils of the late 18th century and early 19th – slave trade,
treatment of the poor, press-gangs – one was conventionally recognized as the
worse: industrialization. The image of a heavily industrialized London and its
factory, made the Romantic poets want to turn to nature. Nature represents a
common point with both the Augustans and the Romantics. The difference lies
in that the Augustans liked to see man and nature working together, reflecting
good government and a benevolent Creator. In their opinion Nature needed man

12
The Reign of Terror (5 September 1793 – 28 July 1794), also known simply as The Terror (French: la Terreur),
was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between
rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of the
revolution". The death toll ranged in the tens of thousands, with 16,594 executed by guillotine (2,639 in Paris),
and another 25,000 in summary executions across France.
13
worried
14
annoying, infuriating, madening
15
Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Hell," pt. 3, st. 1, Peter Bell the Third.

3
in order to fulfil itself. On the contrary, the romantics depicted nature as wild
places, independent of man. In their opinion, man needed nature to fulfil him.
Another change in the Romantic period concerned the religious
perception. In the past, man looked for answers in many areas from the Church.
Romanticism is the first period in the English literature when Christianity failed
to provide all the answers and the Romantic writers searched for a spiritual
reality, which the orthodox Christianity could not supply. The inversion in the
perception lie in that the writers did not look for heaven through Church, but
they celebrated the hell, which was useful to have an extreme projection of state
of mind16, and they went on drawing on Platonism and Neo-Platonism in
personal searches for the spiritual and therefore many of their poems were built
round this search.
Searching for spiritual truth, the Romantic poets used two faculties17
which rationalism had not credited too much: feelings and imagination. Keats
wrote in a letter to his friend, Benjamin Bailey18: ‘I am certain of nothing but of
the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of Imagination’. The
imagination in the Romantic period became a method of apprehending and
communicating the truth. In searching for the spiritual truth, the poet played a
greater role and imagination, as the gift of the poet, the man’s most important
endeavour19.
Through his endeavour, the poet became an artist, who found difficult
surviving in the world where a writer had to market his product through the
booksellers. Only two poets had commercial success, Scott and Byron, the
others survived through inheritances or their friends’ help. In this sense, the
poets depicted the tragic destiny of the poet living in such times. One of them,
Thomas Gray wrote Elegy written in a Country Church-Yard, picture of a young
poet suffering an untimely death; it was inspired by his own temperament. A
real case was that of Thomas Chatterton, who inspired by medieval documents,
wrote poems in the name of a monk. He was believed that he had found the real
thing. It is believed that the lyricism of the verses caused his death, which then
appeared as a suicide. For the Romantic poets, Chatterton became the symbol of
the poet: a young genius, driven by poverty and lack of recognition to a tragic
death.
The use of the term ‘Romantic’ reveals many differences between the
poets of the period, differences in what the English poets are concerned and
differences concerning the literature of the time on the continent. We shall find
out only by examining the work and life of some English Romanticists.

16
mentality, attitude
17
abilities
18
Benjamin Bailey was a remarkable man in the cultural history of Kerala, India.
19
effort