The Romanticism in English literature

The Romanticism in English literature

In English literature, 'Romanticism' was a new sensibility which typically refers to the late 18th century and the 19th century.

In the last thirty years of the 18th century, the faith in reason, which characterized the first part of the century, started losing its value. The consequence of the industrial revolution was an "ugly world", in which men followed precise schemes of living ruled by rationality.

As a result of the dissatisfaction for the present situation, men and especially poets turned their attention to feelings and emotion.

So the Nature was no more an organism which man can rule through rationality, but became something real and living, existing as a man exists.

Nature putting the artist in touch with the infinite and the divine and has a mystical effect on man. To the Romantic, the thing perceived is not important, but rather the thing imagined. Similarly in love, woman becomes an object, not a human creature, but a celestial being, to be adored and worshipped. To die for love becomes heroic as it is synonymous with dying for an ideal.

Images of women in Romantic literature are seldom convincing psychological portraits, but rather symbolic personifications of Romantic beauty. In the Gothic-Romantic tradition, women have a catalytic role, forcing men to act, and sometimes taking part in the struggle. The concept of the Fatal Woman develops, a sorceress who tempts man to love and then kills him through her negative loving.

The poets' attention was given to sensibility, to the natural and real world. So everyday life, stories of poor people and folk traditions became common themes in that literary context.

The nostalgia for the Gothic past mingled with the tendency to the melancholic and produced a fondness for ruins, graveyards, and the supernatural as themes.

Melancholy and sadness were dominate feelings, connected to the historical and social context, which in England evolved before than in the rest of Europe.

To overcome this melancholia, the Romantic artist seeks to escape. This escape has two aspects:

In time - The poet retreats into the past which becomes attractive because it is irrevocable and offers a heroism modern life lacks.

In space - The artist tries to create other worlds where he can realize his own true self.

An interest in suffering and death grew and ruins, ancient castles and graveyards became popular settings: desolate and peaceful places in contrast with the new active and chaotic society. The concept of "sublime", an elevated feeling (often of fear or terror) produce by what's terrible and infinitive, was developed too and become a recurrent theme in Romantic literary.

The Romantic sensibility depicts the hatred of everyday life and the desire to live out of the ordinary . The Romantic hero is depicted in a struggle for personal freedom against destiny and society. Sometimes he is ready to risk death or to kill himself, seeing in death the ultimate escape from reality.