A GENERAL PRESENTATION OF
THE RISE OF ROMANTIC LITERATURE AND THE PERIOD OF ROMANTICISM: FOCUS ON
REPRESENTATIVE ROMANTIC MASTERPIECES
Romanticism is an intellectual, literary
and artistic movement originating in the 18th c as a reaction to Neoclassicism.
It was marked especially by sensibility and the use of autobiographical
material, exaltation of the primitive and common man. It is term loosely
applied to a movement in European literature (and other arts) during the last
quarter of the 18th c and. It was marked by a rejection of the ideals and rules
of classicism and neoclassicism streamline and by an affirmation of the need
for a more subjective expression of passion and personal feelings. The Romantic
period in Britain is usually taken to run between 1798, the year in which
Coleridge and Wordsworth published the first edition of Lyrical Ballads, and
1832, when Sir 'Walter Scott died and the rise of Queen Elizabeth to power in
1837.The major British writers in this period were Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
William Wordsworth, Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, John Keats, Jane
Austen, and de Quincey.
THE RISE OF
ROMANTIC LITERATURE
Romanticism did not just spring out of nowhere but out
of something. The following events led to the rise of romanticism:
THE AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE (1776)
America was, for a long period, a British colony. George
III ruled America in an unscrupulous manner and when Thomas Pain wrote Rights
of Man and Common Sense the
people of the thirteen colonies read eagerly, all proclaiming the dignity of
common life, and all uttering the same passionate cry against every form of
class or caste oppression. They realized that they needed liberty. This made
them to take uproar in 1776 in the American war of Independence. This influence
literature as the romantics wanted to go against all forms of Neoclassical streamlines.
They sought a revolution in literature just as the Americans did for freedom.
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONS
The changing landscape (the industrial revolution) of Britain brought about by the steam engine. This caused cities to expand. This expansion caused the depopulation of the countryside. In effect, there was mass exodus from rural areas to cities. This movement was because the mass went in search of jobs in the newly created factories. In the factories the poor condition of workers, the new class-conflicts and the pollution of the environment caused a reaction to urbanism and industrialization prompting poets to rediscover the beauty and value of nature. This rediscovery was the birth of romanticism.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION (1789)
The state of political unrest finally came
to an end in France. Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated. On the fourteen of July
women marched in the streets on protests against Louis IV and his rule. The
frightful uprising proclaimed the natural rights of man and the abolition of
class distinctions started in France. Their revolutionary watchwords were
liberty, equality and fraternity. The immediate action that led to the freedom
of the French was the storming of the Bastille prison in France. This was
called the spirit of the age. The sentence “France stands at the top of the
golden hour and human nature seems born again” is a total sum of this
revolution. These revolutionary ideas spread to the rest of continental Europe
and suddenly governments started facing the same issues in their countries. It
affected literary production as English poets like William Wordsworth went to
France to study the revolution and he realized that all the previous rules that
were laid in society ended and thus man could write literature that reflected
the self. He concluded that poetry in particular had to be spontaneous. With
these ideas romanticism started with the publication of the Lyrical Ballads by
Wordsworth and Coleridge.
THE ROMANTIC PERIOD
Literature saw a change during this
period. There was a shift in genre. It was chiefly an age of poetry. There was a shift from the use of iambic
pentameter to the use of free verse. The common man was praised in poetry. The
age also saw an immerse emphasis placed on individualism and an interest on the
supernatural. Wordsworth defined poetry as the “spontaneous overflow of
powerful emotions recollected in perfect tranquility.” This reflected the poetry of the time. The
first work that marked the peak of the time was Wordsworth and Coleridge’s
Lyrical Ballads. These two were early Romantic poets but not as early as
William Blake who is also considered as one of the Romantics with his “Songs of
Innocence” and Songs of Experience”. Coleridge must be credited for his long
and impressive “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. Coleridge and Wordsworth,
however, understood romanticism in two entirely different ways: while Coleridge
sought to make the supernatural real, Wordsworth sought to stir the imagination
of readers through his down-to-earth characters taken from real life of the
Lake District that largely inspired his production. This is reflected in
"Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey". But his life is
reflected in his “prelude.” To Wordsworth, nature is “all in all”. He says “sweet
is the lore which nature brings but our meddling intellect misshapes the
beauteous forms of things.”
Also, some Romantics of the age are The "Second
generation" of Romantic poets includes Lord Byron, the literary writer, who
professed to despise the art that made him famous, wrote “Hours of Idle” It was
a juvenile work that was ridiculed by The Edinburgh Review. Others include Percy
Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley and John Keats. Byron, however, was still
influenced by 18th-century satirists and was, perhaps the least 'romantic' of
the three. This movement also saw the rise of female artist like Jane Austen
and Mary Anne Radcliffe. Also, Walter Scott greatly contributed to the rise of
the English novel during this period.
Lastly, modern literary magazines like Edinburg
Review (1802), The Quarterly review (1808) and the Westminster Review were
created. It assembled the works of poets of the age.
REPRESENTATIVE
MASTERPIECES OF THE AGE
In 1798, two young poets, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge (then 26) and William Wordsworth (then 28), both frustrated with the
subject matter and style of poetry being produced in England, published a
cooperative volume of poems titled Lyrical Ballads. It consisted of 23 poems,
four by Coleridge, including “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, and 19 by
Wordsworth (1770-1850), the best being “Tintern Abbey.” At its publication,
Lyrical Ballads was bitterly attacked in the more periodicals. However, it sold
well enough to call for a second printing in 1800. The 1800 edition contains
the epoch making “Preface” written by Wordsworth.
"The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner," which is Coleridge's masterpiece, and "Lines Written a Few
Miles above Tintern Abbey," expresses Wordsworth's poetical creed, and
which it is one of the noblest and most
significant of Romantic poems. Colerige’s “Rime of The Ancient Mariner” tells
the story of a tragic ballad about the survival of one sailor through a series
of supernatural events on his voyage through the south seas which involves the
slaying of an albatross, the death of the rest of the crew, a visit from Death
and his mate, Life-in-Death, and the eventual redemption of the Mariner.
On the other hand, Wordsworth’s “ Tintern
Abbey’ expresses the ideas that in nature we can find comfort and solitude. He
says in “Expostulation and Reply” “One impulse from a vernal wood/ may teach
you more of man of all good and bad / than that sages can.” This expresses his
idea of man leaving the artificial society to return to nature that does not
fail man like man. In “Titern Abbey” he reflects on the interconnectedness that
exists between nature and man. He imagines how his sister will pass through the
same stages that he passed through.
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to The West
Wind” is also one of the masterpieces of this age. In the poem Shelley invokes
the wind magically, describing its power and its role as both “destroyer and
preserver,” the poet then takes a remarkable turn, transforming the wind into a
metaphor “dead thoughts”, “withered leaves.” Here the spring season is a
metaphor for a “spring” of human consciousness, imagination, liberty, or
morality. Shelley wished that all this thinks happen to man. Shelley asks the
wind to be his spirit, and in the same movement, his poetic faculty, which will
play him like a musical instrument, the way the wind strums the leaves of the
trees.
Another significant Romantic masterpiece is John Keats’ Ode to a Grecian
Urn. In this lyric the poet explores exclusive inner feelings of man. Keats
creates his own rhyme scheme. The poem is made up of three stanzas. When the speaker of the poem gazes
at the Grecian urn, he meditates on the nature of truth and beauty. Each of the
three scenes depicted on the urn moves him in a different way, and he describes
them in detail, marveling at their artistry. In the first stanza of the poem,
the speaker starts describing an ancient Grecian urn. It depicts three scenes:
a wild party, the playing of instruments, and a ritual slaughter. The second,
third and fourth stanzas are an explanation of the scene in detail, envying all
the beautiful figures. The party scene is of particular interest to the
speaker. It is a scene where several amorous men chase after women. In the
final stanza, the speaker states that if the urn could speak for itself, it
would declare, "Beauty is truth, and truth beauty.”
Further,
another masterpiece of this era is Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, a depiction of
Saxon and Norman characters. It is one of the earliest novels. His immense
contribution to the rise of the English novel cannot be undermined. Some rightly
think that the most popular novelist of the era was Sir Walter Scott, whose
grand historical romances inspired a generation of painters, composers, and
writers throughout Europe. His most remembered work, Ivanhoe, continues to be
studied to this day.
Jane
Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility are masterpieces of the
era which are written by a woman. Her novels center on the life of the landed
gentry, seen from a woman's point of view. They also focus on practical social issues,
especially marriage, partners in life, with love being above at the top of
everything. Her most important and popular novel is Pride and Prejudice. In it
Jane Austen creates the ultimate hero and heroine in Darcy and Elizabeth, who
must overcome their own stubborn pride and the prejudices they have toward each
other, in order to come to a middle ground, where they finally realize their
love for one another . In her novels, Jane Austen brings to light the hardships
women faced, who usually did not inherit money, could not work and where their
only chance in life depended on the man they married. Her works generally are
seen as 'realist' and not romantic in the artistic sense.
Lastly,
William Blake, poet, painter and printmaker is
usually included among the English romanticists, though his visionary work and
masterpiece, songs of innocence and songs of experience is much different from those
of the others discussed above.
