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English Romanticism

The Rise of the Pre-Romantic Sensibility

• The Romantic sensibility: born out of the paradoxes and contradictions of the Enlightenment

• The Cult of Reason ® the attitude of humanitarianism and social benevolence (initiated by the Deists) ®
the cult of Feeling, the Age of Sensibility / the Sentimental revolution

• Virtue: associated no longer with Reason, but with Feeling

• Increasing attention to emotional response (e.g. the sentimental novel); new interest in the workings of the
creative mind (abundance of biographies) – favoured by:

 the growing interest in the individual psychology

 the preoccupation of 18th century philosophy with the processes of thought (John Locke, An Essay
concerning Human Understanding, 1690)

In poetry: a shift from the Neoclassic emphasis on the public relevance of art as a product of civilisation to the
interest in subjective experience

 the rise of a kind of meditative poetry which assumed a personal voice and became the vehicle of
private feeling

 from the confident optimism of the Age of Reason to a preference for the expression of
melancholy and dark thoughts – the macabre
E.g. The Graveyard School of poetry:
Thomas Parnell: A Night-piece on Death (1722)
Robert Blair:  The Grave (1743)
Thomas Gray: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751) 
James MacPherson: A Night Piece (mid-late 18th c.)
In fiction: from the light of Reason and attention to the observable world of fact to the darker aspects of the
human self and to the supernatural – from the realistic to the GOTHIC NOVEL
E.g. Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto (1764)
Matthew Lewis's The Monk (1796)

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Thomas Gray: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751) 
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day*,
The lowing* herd wind* slowly o’er the lea*,
The plowman homeward plods* his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
[…]
Beneath those rugged* elms*, that yew tree’s* shade,
Where heaves the turf* in many a mouldering* heap,
Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
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The rude* forefathers* of the hamlet sleep.

[…]
Full many a gem* of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathomed* caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
[…]
Far from the madding* crowd’s ignoble* strife,
Their sober* wishes never learnt to stray*;
Along the cool sequestered* vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor* of their way.
the curfew tolls the knell of parting day dangătul clopotului de seară anunţă sfârşitul zilei
to low a mugi
to wind, wound a şerpui, a merge şerpuit
lea camp, pajişte, luncă
to plod to walk slowly, with difficulty and great effort
rugged solid, masiv; cu înfăţişare aspră, severă, neînduplecată
elm ulm
yew tree tisă
turf brazdă de iarbă (the turf heaves: se înalţă movile acoperite de iarbă)
to moulder to decay slowly (a putrezi, a se descompune)
rude simplu, modest (uneducated, unlearned, simple)
forefather străbun, strămoş
hamlet cătun
full many a gem very many gems (precious stones, jewels)
unfathomed whose depth has not been taken, which has not been fathomed (measured for depth)
madding maddening
ignoble mârşav, nemernic
sober cumpătat, moderat
to stray to wander away from its proper place (a se abate, a se rătăci)
sequestered quiet and hidden away from people
tenor curs, trecere, direcţie
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PRIMITIVISM

• Shift from the Augustan focus on contemporary civilisation and its enlightened cosmopolitanism to a new
sense of and INTEREST IN THE PAST

• The revival of local and national mythologies, the interest in folk legend, art and poetry; interest in early
poetic forms ® PRIMITIVISM: admiration for and revival of early forms;

• Primitivism: cultural reaction against Neoclassicism, as well as against the sophistication, luxury and
materialism of urban civilisation

 Thomas Percy: Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (collection of popular ballads, 1765)

 James Macpherson, The Poems of Ossian (1765) – interest in Britain’s Celtic past (Ossian: Irish
bard and hero, 3rd c. A.D. – Macpherson claimed that he had translated his poems from Erse/Gaelic – the
Highlands of Scotland) – themes: heroic virtue, nostalgia, regret; descriptions of wild, sublime nature

 Thomas Chatterton – interest in the Middle Ages (claimed to offer transcripts of poems of
mediaeval monk Thomas Rowley – 15th c.)
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• The works of both MacPherson and Chatterton turned out to be literary forgeries – faced with failure of his
prospects of achieving fame, Chatterton committed suicide before he was eighteen
• Chatterton, “the marvellous Boy,/ The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride” (William Wordsworth,
“Resolution and Independence”, 1807) remained for the Romantics the icon of the young misfit genius,
destroyed by a hostile society

Town vs. countryside

• Primitivism: nostalgia for a supposed Golden Age – the praise of the state of nature – the influence of Jean
Jacques Rousseau

• The Enlightenment critical spirit: now oriented towards civilisation (the highest achievement of the Age of
Reason) ® abundance of optimistic utopias – the idealisation of country life

• the sentimental opposition between TOWN and COUNTRY – almost an Augustan convention (e.g. Henry
Fielding, Oliver Goldsmith)
Poetry:

• Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village (1770) – an idyllic picture of a rural paradise – laments the
disintegration of the traditional way of country life under the pressure of the new economic tendencies

• George Crabbe, The Village (1783) – the realistic picture of countryside – he claims to describe village life “as
Truth will paint it and as bard will not” (a reaction against the unreality and artificiality of the pastoral
convention)

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William Cowper, The Task (1785)

“God made the country, and man made the town.

What wonder then that health and virtue, gifts
That can alone make sweet the bitter draught
That life holds to all, should most abound
And least be threatened in the fields and groves?”

From Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village

Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain*,
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,
And parting summer’s* lingering* blooms delayed:
Dear lovely bowers* of innocence and ease*,
Seat of my youth, when every sport* could please,
How often have I loitered* o’er thy green*,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene*;
How often have I paused on* every charm,
The sheltered cot*, the cultivated farm,
The never-failing brook*, the busy* mill,
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The decent church that topped* the neighbouring hill.

labouring swain săteanul / omul truditor
parting summer the summer which is departing
lingering încet, zăbavnic
bower sălaş
ease tihnă, linişte, pace
sport zburdălnicie
to loiter a hoinări
o’er over
green pajişte
endeared each scene made each secene more loveable
to pause on a zăbovi asupra
cot căsuţă
never-failing brook pârâul care nu seacă niciodată
busy full of work or activity
topped stood on top of

From George Crabbe, The Village

Ye* gentle* souls who dream of rural ease,
Whom the smooth* stream and smoother sonnet please,
Go! if the peaceful cot your praises share,
Go, look within, and ask if peace be there.
If peace be his – that drooping* weary* sire,
Or theirs, that offspring* round their feeble* fire;
Or hers, the matron* pale, whose trembling hand
Turns on the wretched* hearth* the expiring* brand*!
[…] yonder* see that hoary swain*, whose age
Can with no cares except his own engage;
Who, propped* on that rude* staff*, looks up to see
The bare arms* broken from the withering* tree
On which, a boy, he climbed the loftiest bough*,
Then his first joy, but his sad emblem now.
ye you (pl.)
gentle nobil, ales, generos
smooth calm, liniştit
drooping aplecat, încovoiat
weary exhausted (istovit)
sire (poetic) tată, părinte
offspring vlăstar, urmaş
feeble plăpând, slab
matron mamă de familie
wretched biet, jalnic, nenorocit
hearth vatră, cămin
expiring dying (care se stinge)
brand tăciune
yonder (poetic) there
hoary swain săteanul cărunt /nins/ venerabil
propped proptit, sprijinit, rezemat
rude rudimentary, coarse; simple, lacking adornments
staff toiag
bare arms ramurile/crengile desfrunzite
withering decaying, losing vitality (care se usucă)
loftiest bough ramura cea mai înaltă

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New attitude to Nature

The Augustan treatment of nature – the local / topographical poem – e.g. Alexander Pope, Windsor Forest (1713) –
mythological allusions; celebration of natural variety, “harmoniously confused” – integration Man-Nature
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through work – a mirror to social harmony

• The poetry of sensibility: different treatment of the theme of Nature

 The praise of solitude; the emphasis on the spiritual comforts offered by nature, its healing
effect, its superior joys

 The use of the natural detail in the creation of mood and atmosphere

 unprecedented attention to detail; precision of notation

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From Alexander Pope, Windsor Forest

Thy* forests, Windsor! and thy green retreats*,
At once the Monarch’s and the Muse’s seats*,
Invite my lays*. Be present, sylvan maids*!
Unlock your springs and open all your shades.
[…]
Here hills and vales, the woodland and the plain
Here earth and water, seem to strive again;
Not chaos-like together crushed and bruised,
But as the world, harmoniously confused:
Where order in variety we see,
And where, though all things differ, all agree.
[…]
Here Ceres’ gifts in waving prospect* stand,
And nodding tempt the joyful reaper’s* hand.
Rich Industry sits smiling on the plains,
And peace and plenty tell, a Stuart reigns.
thy your
retreat refugiu, adăpost
seat lăcaş
lay cântec, baladă
sylvan maids nymphs of the wood
Ceres goddess of cereals and of the harvest in Roman mythology
Ceres’ gifts in waving prospect the corn in the fields is waving in the wind
reaper secerător

James Thomson The Seasons (1726-30) – from Autumn

Thus, solitary, and in pensive guise*,
Oft* let me wander o’er the russet mead*
And through the saddened grove, where scarce is heard
One dying strain*, to cheer* the woodman’s toil*…
He comes! he comes! in every breeze the Power
Of Philosophic Melancholy comes!
[…]
As fast the correspondent passions rise,
As varied, and as high: Devotion, raised
To rapture* and divine astonishment;
The love of Nature unconfined*, and, chief*,
Of human race; the large ambitious wish
To make them blessed; the sigh for suffering worth*
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Lost in obscurity; the noble scorn*

Of tyrant-pride; the fearless great resolves *(…)
The sympathies of love and friendship dear,
With all the social offspring of the heart..
pensive guise looking thoughtful; in a meditative mood
oft often
russet mead pajiştea ruginie
strain melodie
to cheer to shout in praise or support
toil hard continuous work (trudă)
rapture ecstasy; ecstatic joy
unconfined unlimited
chief (chiefly) most important
suffering worth men of merit and virtue who suffer
scorn contempt, disdain (dispreţ)
resolve resolution (hotărâre, decizie)
tyrant pride the arrogance of arbitrary or unjust power
the social offspring of the heart the community, whom the heart feels as a family

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FEATURES OF ENGLISH ROMANTICISM

• English Romanticism: between 1798 (W. Wordsworth and S.T. Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads; 1800: Wordsworth’s
Preface to its second edition: the first manifesto) and 1832 (The Reform Act / The Representation of the
People Act)

• Inspired by the American and French Revolutions – increasing radicalism of political thought and
championship of progressive social causes

• The sense of hope, of an apocalyptic change – influence of religious Nonconformism on English radicalism –
politics through the perspective of Biblical prophecy (“renovate old earth”, “the regeneration of the human
race”)

• Versions of Romantic “rebellion”:

 openly supportive of a social, political or ideological cause (e.g. Shelley)

 manifested as withdrawal into a world rendered ideal by the Imagination (the sensitive individual
rejecting the common world; the misfit, the genius, etc.)

 Romantic rewriting of myth

 William Blake, The Four Zoas (1797–1804)

 Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound (1820)

 George Gordon Byron, Cain (1821)

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 John Keats, Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion (1818–19)

• Romantic myths of the Rebel and the Victim: Satan/Lucifer, Prometheus, Cain

• Main themes: freedom, spiritual and political emancipation

• Myth: in the service of utopian social-political thought

 The assertion of the individual Self – the value of individual experience

• The influence of J.J. Rousseau – the description of the solitary inner self in his Confessions, published in 1782

• The lyrical exploration of the inner self:

 the autobiographical poem: Wordsworth – The Prelude (1815/1850);

 the crisis poem: Coleridge – “Dejection. An Ode” (written 1802), Shelley – “Ode to the
West Wind” (written 1819)

• The dramatic projection of the Romantic self – e.g. Byron’s dramatic poems – the Byronic hero (e.g. Manfred,
1817)

 The “cult of the extinct”

• The preoccupation with the past, with origins, with reminiscing – Romantic primitivism

• The theme of CHILDHOOD – Wordsworth, Blake

• Interest in the Middle Ages, in folk poetry and legend

 Coleridge – The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 1798;

– Christabel, 1797; 1800;

 Keats – La Belle Dame Sans Merci, 1819;

– Lamia, 1820

 Romantic nature:

• Either wild, overwhelming, irregular, sublime, or simple, delicately beautiful

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• Pervasive theme in English Romanticism: the exploration of the relation between NATURE and
CONSCIOUSNESS or NATURE and IMAGINATION

• The rediscovery of the superiority of Nature to Art / Civilisation;

• The valuation of the spontaneous, the “unpremeditated”, of freedom from the bondage of convention (both
in the expressions of human nature and in poetry)
• Coleridge: the metaphor of the Eolian Harp and the ”natural music” made by the wind on its strings – the mind
visited by Inspiration (in a state of Imagination) – poetic creativity: a natural, spontaneous process

 Hostility towards Augustan aesthetics

• Programmatic cultivation of simple, unsophisticated forms; the increasing preference of blank verse over the
heroic couplet (William Blake: the “great cage” of the Augustan couplet) – the great models: Shakespeare and
Milton

• The rejection of the notions of “poetic diction” and “decorum”; the rejection of tradition in favour of innovation
(but: the second generation of Romantics returned to Augustan genres like the satire, the ode, the hymn)

• Augustan art: mimetic (i.e concerned with faithful representation/imitation of reality) and pragmatic (i.e.
concerned with obtaining certain effects on the audience)

• Romantic art: expressive – shift of focus from audience to the creator: emphasis on the poet’s natural genius,
on emotional spontaneity and creative imagination

M.H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp. Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (1953):
“Art is essentially the internal made external, resulting from a creative process operating under the
impulse of feeling, and embodying the combined product of the poet’s perceptions, thoughts and feelings.
The primary source and subject matter of a poem, therefore, are the attributes and actions of the poet’s
own mind; or if aspects of the external world, then these only as they are converted from fact to poetry by
the feelings and operations of the poet’s mind”

The belief in Imagination as the supreme faculty of the human mind

• Imagination affords access to realities and truths to which the ordinary intelligence is blind

• It can modify reality – the “Apocalypse by Imagination” (M.H. Abrams)

Romantic poets on Imagination:

William Wordsworth:
(Imagination) “in truth
Is but another name for absolute power
And clearest insight, amplitude of mind
And reason, in its most exalted mood.”
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(The Prelude)

P.B. Shelley (A Defense of Poetry, 1821):

Imagination: “the mind acting upon (…) thoughts so as to color them with its own light, and composing from them,
as from elements, other thoughts, each containing within itself the principle of its own integrity";
The Poet: “a seer, gifted with a peculiar insight into the nature of reality. And this reality is a timeless, unchanging,
complete order, of which the familiar world is but a broken reflection.”
Poets: ”the unacknowledged legislators of the world”
Poetry: “the great instrument of moral good”

William Blake:
“I assert for myself that I do not behold the outward creation and that to me it is hindrance and not action; it is as
the dirt upon my feet, no part of me. “What,” it will be questioned, “when the sun rises, do you not see a round disk
of fire somewhat like a Guinea?” O no, no, I see an innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying “Holy, holy,
holy is the Lord Almighty.” I question not my corporeal or vegetative eye any more than I would question a window
concerning a sight: I look through it and not with it.”

“I know that this world is a world of imagination and vision. I see everything I paint in this world, but everybody
does not see alike. To the eye of a miser, a Guinea is more beautiful than the sun, and a bag worn with the use of
money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes…. To me this world is all one continued vision
of fancy or Imagination. What is it sets Homer, Virgil and Milton in so high a rank of art? Why is the Bible more
entertaining and instructive than any other book? Is it not because they are addressed to the Imagination, which is
Spiritual Sensation, and but mediately to the Understanding or Reason?”