The English Romanticism
It is very difficult to delineate with precision the
attitudes and interest which characterized the poetry of the 18th century. The
period between the Enlightenment and Romanticism was defined "Pre-romanticism"
or "Early Romantic". This period can hardly be classified as a real literary
movement; in fact some critics even tend to consider it simply as a trend, a
typically English tradition. It is a period of transition of positive loss. The
first signs of a new approach to literature began to appear when the writers
shared a common distate for the elegance of the Augustans and the same belief
in imagination against realism, feeling against reason and pathos against with
and common sense. Young, a writer of this time, emphasized the contrast between
the conception of "natural" and "artificial". He said the man is spontaneous in
nature and artificial in society. The word 2nature" for the "primitivisms" came
to mean the spontaneous manifestation of impulse and feelings. It followed that
the most natural people were also the most ignorant and among them the savage,
the peasant and the child as it said also ROUSSEAU. Rousseau, a French
philosopher, in his rejection of Enlightenment and its rationalism, worked out
theories which were to characterize romanticism: the child is seen as the
archetypal innocent, wise and happy and so is seen also the noble savage; the poor
were to be preferred to the upper classes; the nature became a refuge from
society; the flight from human society opposing the ideal to the real. In
conclusion the romanticism privileged the spontaneity against the elaboration,
the emphasis on the individual genius against reason and the feeling and
emotions against the know and the conventional. The romantic period was, above
all, the age of poetry. Poetry flourished at time of important social and
political developments which can be broadly summarized as follows: the break up
of the traditional agricultural economy, the industrial revolution the drift of
country people to the cities in search of work in the new factories. The energy
for these revolutions came from the growing economic power of the middle class,
who were fighting to win control in societies still organized in the colonial
and aristocracy. Romanticism was a movement of thought and writing which began
in Germany and England towards the end of the 18th century in reaction against
the Neo-classicism of the period. The Romantic writers did not like the
changes, which were occurring around them, which perhaps explains- they did not
often speak of the new industrial society in their work, preferring to
concentrate on nature or their own feeling. Many of the Romantic poets
expressed sympathy with the French revolution and were sensitive to the poor
suffering and the oppressed. In general they reacted to the social and
political pressures of the period by asserting the importance of the individual's
identity, emotions and experience. They attached less importance to the power
of reason. However it is possible to trace a number of unifying themes in their
works. The first concerned the nature- flowers, animals; trees- filled them
with pleasure while they felt the industrial cities as dehumanised. They also
sensed correspondences between natural landerscapes and the man' feelings and
values. The nature was seen as a manifestation of God on earth, a moral force,
a fountain of poetic inspiration. Also the childhood was valued, in fact in
this period of life, the man was innocent and the feelings were fresh. The
imagination was seen as a faculty, which can dissolve and remake the objects of
the external world. The poet was seen as someone who posses imagination in the
highest degree and is able to see deeply into the real essence of things. He
language, through metrical conventions, remained fairly traditional. Romantic
poet wrote poetry in a language really used by the power of imagination. Six
great poets dominate the poetry of this period. They are grouped into two
generations: the poets of first generation are Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge.
They are characterized by emphasis on the self and its relationship with
nature. The poets of the second generation are Byron, Shelley and Keats. They
are more interested in the problems connected with the relationship between
life and art.
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