1. Characteristics and Characters
The Romantic Period
Characteristics and Characters
These notes come from a variety of sources, most of which I have forgotten. To those whose work I might inadvertently have used without crediting, I apologize. These notes are in no way intended for publication or other potentially profitable use. They are used only as educational support materials.

2. First, let’s get rid of confusion
“Romanticism” and “Romantic” originally referred to imaginative medieval stories about the adventures of knights of the period. They were written in French, which is a derivation of the old Roman language, Latin. Hence, “Romance language”. Stories thus written were called romances.
Because these stories involved frequent amorous encounters between knights and their ladies, the language evolved such that we now commonly use the word in this more restricted sense.
In the study of literature, however, the term “romance” refers to imaginative, often idealizing, fiction – the stories themselves, the romances

3. The Romantic Period
The publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads in 1798 marks the beginning of the Romantic Period in English Literature.
The major figures of the period included William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, George Gordon Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats.
The period’s end is generally recognized as 1832, the year of the death of Sir Walter Scott and the passage of the First Reform Bill in parliament.

4. Characteristics of the Romantic Period
The work of the eighteenth-century Classic period had been marked by perfection of form, by precision and polish.
The reader expected the rhyming couplet (heroic couplet); predictable metre, usually iambic pentameter; narrow, often light-weight subject matter dealing with the upper classes; and an ample supply of satire.
The Romantic period was more diverse.

5. Characteristics of the Romantic Period
The movement was influenced by developments on the continent: the German Sturm und Drang period, the French revolution.
Precursors in England include Robert Burns and Thomas Gray, poets frequently referred to as “pre-Romantic”
The main philosophical influence on the movement comes from Jean-Jacques Rousseau ( )

6. Characteristics of the Romantic Period
The German notion of the protagonist as suffering individual, young genius rebelling against unjust authority, and of the ascendancy of Nature influenced the English writers – here we have the origin of the enthusiasm for Nature and the strong individualism in rebellion against authority, two of the main characteristics of the Romantic period. The Sturm und Drang movement also rebelled against the staid literary and professional establishments of German society.

7. Characteristics of the Romantic Period
With the pre-Romantics originates the idea that the simple, the ordinary, the common is also the stuff of poetry. From them, too, we get the use of simple language.
The expression of the ordinary in terms of the extraordinary is a characteristic of the literature of the period. Thus Burns’ wee mouse’s nest becomes as important as our own homes in the moment of our comprehension of the poet’s relationship to nature.

8. Characteristics of the Romantic Period
Further characteristics include
A trust in emotion and imagination more than in reason and judgement
The use of supernatural elements.
A concern with the particular as opposed to the general or universal.
A greater interest in the medieval than in the classical.
A concern for ecological preservation
Activists for individual liberties, especially the rights of the downtrodden

9. Concurrent Events The French Revolution The Reign of Terror
The Ascension of Napoleon
European War
The Industrial Revolution
Enclosure (privatization of public communal property)
The Slave Trade
Laissez-faire economic policy
An insane king (Geo III) until 1811, followed by an indulgent one (Geo IV) until 1820

10. The Poets William Wordsworth (1770-1850) From the Lake District
Educated at Cambridge, lived a time in France
Worked closely with Coleridge when a quarrel caused a rift that lasted until 1828
Became Poet Laureate of England in 1843
Died in 1850
After his death, The Prelude is published, a work at whose centre are the ideas of growth and memory, the mutability of experience

11. The Poets William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Notable for a felicity of phrasing, a simplicity in diction and in subject matter.
He is the “High Priest of Nature” and very often discusses nature in general terms, philosophizing in her lessons for himself and for mankind.

12. The Poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) From Devonshire
Educated in London and at Cambridge (left without a degree)
Worked closely with Wordsworth when a quarrel caused a rift that lasted until 1828
In an effort to relieve the pain of rheumatism, Coleridge became addicted to opium
Joined such luminaries as Sidney, Dryden, and Johnson as one of the select few elite poet-critics of English literature
Became the best public lecturer in England, with a reputation for eloquence and conversational ability
Died in 1834

13. The Poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) A master of atmosphere
In a few words can bring us to a world where it seems natural to speak of a “woman wailing for her demon lover.”
An awareness of the blessedness of the natural order of things

14. The Lyrical Ballads
Greatest collaboration in all of English literature
The power of poetic imagination “reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities”
Coleridge’s comments in Bibliographia Literaria affirm that the aims of their book, and of the Romantic movement, are not so much monolithic literary standards or rules as a tension between often opposing values
This idea leads naturally to Wordsworth’s assertion that it is the poet’s mind and craft working on “real language” that transforms such language into poetry

15. The Lyrical Ballads
Whereas Wordsworth’s role in the book was the expression of the ordinary as extraordinary, Coleridge’s was to explore the supernatural, “or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief which constitutes poetic faith”

16. The Lyrical Ballads
“Tintern Abbey” is a prime example of the intense love of nature evident in Romantic poetry
Wordsworth looks at rustic life because “in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature.”
The mind of the poet, or of the persona of the poem, is the ultimate subject for the poet

17. The Lyrical Ballads
In the preface Wordsworth gives us his definition of poetry: “All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.” Emotional experience is not enough – it must be “contemplated” and given shape by the mind and adapted to language before it can be called poetry.

18. The Lyrical Ballads
Also in the preface, Wordsworth tells us that the language of the poet must be “the real language of men.” This is a direct challenge to the preceding Age of Reason (Pope, Swift, Johnson)

19. Required Readings Wordsworth Coleridge “My Heart Leaps Up”
“The World Is Too Much With Us” p. 675 P-H
Coleridge
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” p. 686 P-H

20. Required Readings in P-H
Timeline pp
Background, Romantic Period pp
Changing Language pp. 622
Burns Background pp
Blake Background pp
Mary Shelley Background pp
Wordsworth Background pp
The Collaboration pp
Early Reviews of Wordsworth pp
Coleridge Background pp

21. The Poets Part 2 George Gordon Lord Byron (1788-1824)
Born into an arisocratic family
Attended prestigious private schools and universities
Left England because of social pressure concerning his unconventional personal life.
Was celebrated throughout Europe for his poems, especially Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.
He died in exile in Greece, where he is celebrated as a revolutionary hero

22. The Poets Part 2 George Gordon Lord Byron (1788-1824)
Created the “Byronic Hero”, a passionate, moody, restless character who has become bored with the world, is enduring the consequence of some sinful past, refuses to be constrained by society’s mores, and whose daring life both sets him apart, and makes him attractive.
Was influenced greatly by Dryden and Pope, and is more connected to the eighteenth century than most of his Romantic contemporaries. In terms of poetics, he was frequently critical of the other Romantics, except for Shelley

23. The Poets Part 2 Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
Born into an arisocratic family
Attended prestigious private schools and universities
Left England because of social pressure concerning his unconventional personal life.
His poetry was never popular in his lifetime and often misunderstood.
Stylistic experimentation and complex philosophy were beyond the ability of many readers
He engaged in revolutionary activity and was active in workers’ rights movements
He drowned of the coast of Italy in a boating accident.

24. The Poets Part 2 Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
His writing is the most passionate and intense of the Romantics, yet the most intellectual
His desire to push the language to extremes, to express the inexpressible, makes him also the most difficult of the Romantics to understand.
Is remembered also for a brilliant essay on poetry: A Defense of Poetry, 1821
Matthew Arnold has said of Shelley that he was too sensitive to be a really great writer; he called him a “beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.”
Shelley was much admired by his fellow Romantics, considered by most to be a better intellect and a better artist than the others; had he lived, he too might have produced far greater works than are left to us.

25. The Poets Part 2 John Keats (1795-1821)
Youngest of the second generation of Romantic poets, and the first to die.
He was a mere twenty-four years old when his poetic genius became evident with the body of work he produced between January and September of 1819: Almost all his greatest poems were written in this time period.
Critics agree that his works are some of the greatest poems in the English language, and that, had he lived, he might have gone on to achieve the stature of a Shakespeare.
Unfortunately, Tuberculosis struck him in February of 1820 and he died in 1821.

26. The Poets Part 2 John Keats (1795-1821)
Is able to embody the complexity and concreteness of experience
Unrivalled ability to appeal to the senses through language
Unlike the other Romantics, Keats sought to subordinate his own personality, and to focus on his subject in all its complexity
The capacity for forgetting oneself in the concentration on, or identification with, the subject of the poem is what Keats called “negative capability”.

27. Credits
Holt, Rinehart, Winston. Adventures in English Literature. Athena Edition