Romanticism

Romanticism: philosophy

The philosophy surrounding romanticism came about in response to philosophers such as Kant, who amongst other things wrote that there was a shared sense of morality and aesthetics that would exist with or without God. This ties to the Romantic movement because it does away with the idea that every question has a single, true answer - ie. the answer that God would give. Here's a breakdown of the differences between Augustan/Classicism poetry and Romantic poetry.

Some of the key thinkers and writers of Romanticism are William Wordsworth (1770 –1850), William Blake (1757-1827), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Lord Byron (1788-1824), and John Keats (1795-1821). These writers knew about and took inspiration from each other’s work, and between them published many of the most famous and recognisable poems in the world. You probably already know poems like 'Ozymandias' (Shelley, 1818), 'Ode to a Nightingale' (Keats, 1819), 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' (Coleridge, 1800), and 'The Tyger' (Blake, 1794).

Romanticism in literature is often said to have begun in 1798 when William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads, but it can be argued that Romantic poetry began with William Blake’s collection Songs of Innocence in 1789. The poems in these collections were fuelled by imagination and a deep appreciation for nature and the natural order, and they were a great deal more sentimental than the poetry that came before them. They were extraordinarily influential, and over the next 20 years the movement grew and changed as the Romantic poets continued with their work.

Romanticism: characteristics

In his preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth summed up his view of what poetry should be: 'the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings'¹ . This is a great way to sum up Romanticism – feelings take centre stage, and there are no rules! The Romantics explored the supernatural and the legendary and blurred the lines between the real and the weird. Have a look at a couple of quotes to get your head around it.

Look at the devices Wordsworth uses here – He compares himself to a cloud, making himself into a part of nature. He also compares the daffodils to a crowd, personifying them – by using these two techniques, Wordsworth asks questions about humanity’s place in the world and celebrates the sense of belonging and wonder of being in nature. This is typical of Wordsworth – although all the Romantic poets wrote about nature, Wordsworth was the most devoted to it.

Another great signpost for Romanticism, this quote from Keats sums up another key belief of the Romantics – that beauty is the most important thing in any form of art. In this poem, Keats considers an urn created about two thousand years ago and how unlikely it was to have survived for him to see. He concludes that it is because of its beauty that it has survived, showing beauty to be an incredibly powerful force. This tracks with our summation of Augustan poetry – they were less concerned with aesthetics than the Romantics, and they are also much less famous in the 21^st century. Coincidence? You tell me!

This is a great example of a concept known as the sublime. The sublime is the experience of something that far exceeds our understanding, such as a vast and wild landscape or an incomprehensible passage of time. The sublime is awe-inspiring but also terrifying because it taps into the human fear of that which we can’t understand. Romantic poets were very interested in the sublime because of the epic scale of the natural world and the excess of emotion that it causes. In 'Ozymandias', Shelley highlights the sublime by showing that even the 'King of Kings' means nothing in the grand scheme of things because time and the cruel desert are so much bigger and more powerful than anything a human can achieve or imagine.

Fig. 1 - Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1818) by Caspar David Friedrich. This painting gives a small insight into what it means to experience the sublime!

Romanticism: literature

The Romantic poets were a varied and interesting bunch - let's meet them!

William Blake

William Blake was the oldest of the great Romantics, born in 1857. A pioneer of Romanticism, poetry was not his only artistic outlet – he was also a painter and an engraver, his engraving earning him a living in his early life. In 1783, Blake published the collection Poetical Sketches, which much more closely resembled his satirical, political predecessors. In 1789 he published Songs of Innocence, a huge turning point for the Romanticism movement. Five years later, in 1794, he published Songs of Experience, which contained 'The Tyger', one of the most iconic and recognisable poems in the English language.

Blake continued to publish up until his death in 1827, also writing the poem 'Jerusalem' (1808), which you might have sung in school! Blake’s poetry was somewhat more concerned with religion than the other Romantics, and he believed that God was in everything and everyone, informing his love of the world around him.

Fig. 2 - William Blake's 1794 engraving The Ancient of Days.

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge

These two were a bit of a dynamic duo – Born two years apart, their meeting was fated as it brought about the publication of Lyrical Ballads, the most important collection of the early Romantic period.

William Wordsworth was born in 1770 in the Lake District in Cumbria, his hometown becoming a huge source of inspiration for his poetry. Similarly, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in 1772 in Devon, but he went away to study in Cambridge and London before meeting Wordsworth in 1795. The poets worked together and influenced each other deeply, even to the point that there are certain lines of Coleridge’s 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' that were directly contributed by Wordsworth!

Some of Wordsworth’s most famous poems are 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud' (1802), 'A Slumber did My Spirit Seal' (1800), and his gargantuan autobiographical blank verse poem 'The Prelude' (1850). Notable poems by Coleridge include 'Kubla Khan' (1816), 'The Eolian Harp' (1796), and of course 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'.

Lord Byron

'Mad, bad, and dangerous to know' – that’s how one of George Gordon Byron’s lovers once referred to him². Born in 1788, Byron was known as a bit of a dandy and a womaniser, and this comes out in his work. His poetry is deeply autobiographical and is often concerned with feelings of love and lust, as well as rejection, alienation and frustration.

Byron was known to use complex structures in his work, weaving different rhyming and metrical effects to create poetry that was pleasing to multiple senses. To understand what we mean, take a look at one of Byron’s most famous poems, 'She Walks in Beauty' (1814). This poem is written in Iambic Tetrameter, a rare rhyme scheme because of its difficulty and awkwardness. Byron’s choice to use this kind of structure and his great success in doing so shows his raw skill as a poet.

John Keats

Saved the best till last! John Keats was born in 1795 and died in 1821 at the age of 25, but the amount he got done in those years was absolutely staggering. Much of his poetry was interested in transience, the idea that things can only truly last for a short time. He felt desperately helpless about the fact that his love for his girlfriend Fanny Brawne could not last forever (see 'Bright Star' (1838)) and the idea that he may die before he could fully realise his artistic potential (see 'When I have Fears that I May Cease to Be' (1848)).

Tragically, it seems that these fears were realised – he came down with tuberculosis in 1820 and died in Rome in 1821, where he had been sent to take the warm air and recover. Many of his poems were not published until years after his death. He was so sure of his failure as an artist that he had the words 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water' written on his gravestone – ironic, then, that you are reading about him 200 years later! It seems that, as he wrote in his epic poem 'Endymion' (1818), 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever.'