Romanticism

I. Introduction

Romanticism (the Romantic Movement), a literary movement, and profound shift in sensibility, which took place in Britain and throughout Europe 1770-1848. Intellectually it marked a violent reaction to the Enlightenment. Politically it was inspired by the revolutions in America and France and popular wars of independence in Poland, Spain, Greece, and elsewhere. Emotionally it expressed an extreme assertion of the self and the value of individual experience (the 'egotistical sublime'), together with the sense of the infinite and transcendental. Socially it championed progressive causes, though when these were frustrated it often produced a bitter, gloomy, and despairing outlook.

As an age of romantic enthusiasm, The Romantic Age began in 1798 when William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor published Lyrical Ballads, [in the Preface of the 2nd and 3rd editions of which Wordsworth laid down the principles of poetry composition,] and ended in 1832 when Walter Scott (1771-1832) died. At the beginning the literature reflected the political turmoil of the age stirred by French Revolution.

The glory of the age is notably seen in the Poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats, who were grouped into two generations: Passive Romantic poets represented by the Lakers / Lake Poets — Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burns, and Blake though introspective 18th-cent. poets such as Thomas Gray (1716-71) and William Cowper (1731-1800) show pre-Romantic tendencies, as well as Gothic novelists such as Horace Walpole (1717-97) and 'Monk' Lewis (1775-1818, Matthew Gregory Lewis), who reflected those classes which had been ruined by the bourgeoisie, but later grew conservative and turned to the feudal past and idealized the life of the Middle Ages to protest against capitalist development; and Active / Revolutionary Romantic poets represented by those younger poets — Byron, Shelley and Keats, firm supporters of French Revolution, who expressed the aspiration of the labouring classes and set themselves against the bourgeois society and the ruling class, as they bore a deep hatred for the wicked exploiters and oppressors and had an intensive love for liberty.

Women novelists appeared in this period and assumed for the first time an important place in English literature.  Mrs Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823) was one of the most successful writers of the school of exaggerated romance. Jane Austen offered us her charming descriptions of everyday life in her enduring work. The greatest historical novelist Sir Walter Scott also appeared in this period. He praised Jane's in the Quarterly Review in 1815, and later wrote of "that exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting".

Charles Lamb (1775-1834), William Hazlitt (1778-1830), Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) and David Hume (1711-76) represented romantic prose of the period.

II. Features of Romantic writing

1) The Romanticists' own aspiration and ideals are in sharp contrast to the common sordid daily life under capitalism. Their writings are filled with strong-willed heroes or even titanic images, formidable events and tragic situations, powerful conflicting passions and exotic pictures. Sometimes they resorted to symbolic methods, with the active romanticists, symbolic pictures represent a vague ideal of some future society; while with the passive romanticists, these pictures often take on a mystic colour.

2). The romanticists paid great attention to the spiritual and emotional life of man. Personified nature plays an important role in the pages of their works. Terror, passion, and the Sublime (an idea associated with religious awe, vastness, natural magnificence, and strong emotion which fascinated 18th-cent. literary critics and aestheticians) are essential concepts in early Romanticism; as is the sense of primitive mystery rediscovered in the Celtic bardic verse of *Macpherson's 'Ossian', the folk ballads collected by *Percy, and the medieval poetry forged by *Chatterton (whom *Southey edited).  [Foreign sources were also vital: *Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther 1774); the ghostly ballads of Burger (*Lenore, 1773); the verse dramas of *Schiller (The Robbers, 1781); and the philosophical criticism of A. W. *Schlegel.]

3) The tone of Romanticism was shaped by the naked emotionalism of *Rousseau's Julie, ou la nouvelle Heloise (1761), and the exotic legends and mythology found in Oriental and Homeric literatures and 17th-cent. travel writers. The stylistic keynote of Romanticism is intensity, and its watchword is 'Imagination'. Remembered childhood, unrequited love, and the exiled hero were constant themes.

4) Romanticism expressed an unending revolt against classical form, conservative morality, authoritarian government, personal insincerity, and human moderation.  The Romantics saw and felt things brilliantly afresh.  They virtually invented certain landscapes — the Lakes, the Alps, the bays of Italy.  They were strenuous walkers, hill-climbers, sea-bathers, or river-lovers.  They had a new intuition for the primal power of the wild landscape, the spiritual correspondence between Man and Nature, and the aesthetic principle of 'organic' form (seen at their noblest in Wordsworth's *Prelude or J. M. W. *Turner', paintings).  In their critical writings and lectures they described poetry and drama with new psychological appreciation (the character of Hamlet, for example); they discussed dreams, dramatic illusion, Romantic sensibility, the process of creativity, the limits of Classicism and Reason, and the dynamic nature of the Imagination. 

5) The second generation of Romanticists absorbed these tumultuous influences, wrote swiftly, travelled widely (Greece, Switzerland, Italy), and died prematurely: their life-stories and letters became almost as important for Romanticism as their poetry. They in turn inspired autobiographical prose-writers such as *Hazlitt, *De Quincey, and *Lamb; while the historical imagination found a champion in Sir W. *Scott.

The British Romantics had a powerful influence in France after the Napoleonic wars, especially remarkable in *Chateaubriarid, *Hugo, De *Vigny, the paintings of *Delacroix, and the music of *Berlioz. The Romantics' sense of Liberty also helped the emergence of an influential generation of women writers, and later the *Bronte sisters.