SHIA POST GRADUATE COLLEGE LUCKNOW

(Session 2023-2024)

Department of English
(Minor Project)

TOPIC - THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND ROMANTIC POETRY

Submitted by:- Submitted to:-

Name: Deepak sahu Dr. Mirza sibtain Beg
Course & Sem : Bachelor of Arts / VIth
Roll no: 2110731010250
 The French Revolution and Romantic Poetry

On August 22, 1795, the National Convention, now composed of moderates who had

survived the Excesses of the Reign of Terror approved the creation of anew constitution that

created France’s Bicameral legislature. The power would be in the hands of the Directory, a

five-member group Appointed by the parliament. Any opposition to this group was removed

through the efforts of the Army, now led by an upcoming and successful general, Napoleon

Bonaparte. The Directory’s rule Was marked by financial crises and corruption. In addition,

they had ceded much of their authority To the army that had helped them stay in power.

Finally, resentment against the Directory reached fever pitch and a coup d’état was staged

by Napoleon himself, toppling them from power. Napoleon appointed himself “first

consul”. The French Revolution was over and the Napoleonic era was about the begin

during which time French domination continental Europe would become the norm .

These ideals of Romanticism, first articulated by the English poets, spread to otherartistic

genres, including music and the visual arts, as well as to other countries. For those

countries which had not yet coalesced in terms of their own national identity, the

Romanticism offered a creative framework for defining and expressing what was unique to

that region, for Romanticism was inherently creative and imaginative,inviting its adherents

to envision possibilities that might never have been entertained before. As a result,

the value of the individual, of the arts, and of emotional expression, was able to regain a

place in thought and practice, tempering the logic-bound tendencies of science with the

shifting philosophies ofemotion. As Bloom and Trilling observe, the contributions of the

Romantics remain valuable and relevant in contemporary life. Perhaps, they write,

“romanticism is…endemic in human nature,” for “all men and women are questers to some

Degree.
 Declaration

I Deepak sahu hearby declare that the present minor project entitled The
French Revolution and Romantic Poetry submitted to department of
English SHIA PG COLLEGE is my original work under guidance of Dr. Mirza
sibtain Beg Department of English.

Deepak Sahu
BA 6th semester

Roll no: 2110731010250

 Table of contents
S.no Content page no .

1. Introduction 05-07
2. Origin of French Revolution 08-10
i) Aristocratic revolt, 1787–89 10
ii) Events of 1789 11-12
3. Three phase of french revolution 12
i) Influence of the Doctrinaire Phase 12-13
ii) Influence of political and military phase 13-14
4. Romanticism – Definition 15
5. Romanticism – Litrature 16-17
6. Romanticism - Visual art 18-19
7. Romanticism – Music 19-20
8. Characteristics of romantic age 20-22
9. Literary characteristics of age 23-27
10. Writers of romantic age 28
i) Poets of romantic age 28-33
ii) Prose writers of romantic age 34-38
iii) Novelists of romantic age 39-41
11. Reference 42-44
 Introduction
The French Revolution is widely recognized as one of the most influential events of late

eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century Europe, with far reaching consequences in

political, cultural, social, and literary arenas. Although scholars such as Jeremy Popkin

point to more concretepolitical issues as grounds for the upheaval, supporters of the

Revolution rallied around more abstract concepts of freedom and equality, such as

resistance to the King’s totalitarian authority as well as the economic and legal privileges

given to the nobility and clergy. It is in thisresistance to monarchy, religion,

and social difference that Enlightenment ideals of equality, citizenship, and human rights

were manifested. These beliefs had profound influence on the Romantic poets.

The Revolution affected first- and second-generation Romantics in different ways. First-

generation poets such as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert

Southey, the most well-known members of the “Lake District” school of poetry, initially

sympathized withthe philosophical and political principles of the Revolution, particularly

as expressed by William Godwin in his Inquiry into Political Justice (1793). Wordsworth

famously chronicled his response to the war in his Prelude, although the relevant passages

were not published in full untilafter his death in 1850. One shorter section, however, made

its way into print in 1809 under the title “French Revolution, as it Appeared to Enthusiasts

at Its Commencement.” The phrasing of the title indicates Wordsworth’s turn toward more

conservative politics later in life, particularly after the bloody turn of the revolution.

According to Simon Bainbridge, Wordsworth and Coleridge translated the Revolution’s

emphasis on man’s equality into the “language of the common man” and “low” subject

matter found in Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth’s everyday language and subject choices look

like a literary revolution that mirrors the historical revolution by breaking down the
boundaries that separated poetry - with its elevated characters, plots, and diction - from

ordinary representation.

This period extends from the war with the colonies, following the Declaration of

Independence in 1776 to the accession of Victoria in 1837. During the first part of the

period especially, England was in a continual turmoil, produced by political and economic

agitation at home, and by the longwars that covered two continents and the wide sea

between them. The mighty changes resulting from these two causes have given this period

the name of the Age of Revolution. The storm centerof all the turmoil in England and abroad

was the French Revolution, which had a profound influence on the life and literature of all

Europe. On the Continent the overthrow of Napoleon at Waterloo (1815) apparently

checked the progress of liberty, which had started with the French Revolution, but in

England the case was reversed. The agitation for popular liberty, which at one time

threatened a revolution, went steadily forward till it resulted in the final triumph of

democracy, in the Reform Bill of 1832, and in a number of exceedingly important reforms,

such as the extension of manhood suffrage, the removal of the last unjust restrictions

against Catholics, the establishment of a national system of schools, followed by a rapid

increase in popular education, and the abolition of slavery in all English colonies (1833). To

this added the changes produced by the discovery of steam and the inventionof machinery,

which rapidly changed England from an agricultural to a manufacturing nation, introduced

the factory system, and caused this period to be known as the Age of Industrial Revolution.

In the most basic sense, Romanticism, which is loosely identified as spanning the years of

1783-1830, can be distinguished from the preceding period called the Enlightenment by

observing that the one elevated the role of spirit, soul, instinct, and emotion, while the

other advocated a cool, detached scientific approach to most human endeavors and

dilemmas. In short,Romanticism inliterature was a rejection of many of the values

movements such as the Enlightenment and ScientificRevolution held as paramount.

Romanticism, initiated by the English poets such as Coleridge and Wordsworth, as wellas

Blake, Keats, Shelley, was concentrated primarily in the creative expressions of literature

and the arts; however, the philosophy and sentiment characteristic of the Romanticism

movement would spread throughout Europe and would ultimately impact not only the arts

and humanities, but the society at large, permanently changing the ways in which human

emotions, relationships, and institutions were viewed, understood, and artistically and

otherwise reflected. The Enlightenment was the name given to the period that preceded

the Romantic Age, and it is in understanding the key features of the Enlightenment that one

can best understand how the characteristics of Romanticism came to be, and how they

differed so radically from those of the industrialized era. The Enlightenment had developed

and championed logic and reason above all other qualities and there was little room in this

worldview for the emotion-based nature that would

define Romanticism. According the Enlightenment view, people and their relationships,

roles, institutions, and indeed, their whole societies, could be understood best if

organized and approached with a scientific perspective.

 Origin of French Revolution
The French Revolution, along with the Industrial Revolution, has probably done more than

anyother revolution to shape the modern world. Not only did it transform Europe politically,

but also, thanks to Europe's industries and overseas empires, the French Revolution's

ideas of liberalism andnationalism have permeated nearly every revolution across the

globe since 1945. In addition to the intense human suffering as described above, its origins

have deep historic and geographic roots,providing the need, means, and justification for

building the absolute monarchy of the Bourbon Dynasty which eventually helped trigger the

revolution.The need for absolute monarchy came partly from France's continental position

in the midst of hostile powers. The Hundred Years War (1337-1453) and then the series of

wars with the Hapsburgpowers to the south, east, and north (c.1500-1659) provided a

powerful impetus to build a strong centralized state. Likewise, the French wars of Religion

(1562-98) underscored the need for astrong monarchy to safeguard the public peace. The

means for building a monarchy largely came from the rise of towns and a rich middle class.

They provided French kings with the funds tomaintain professional armies and

bureaucracies that could establish tighter control over France.

Justification for absolute monarchy was based on the medieval custom of anointing new

kings with oil to signify God's favor. This was the basis for the doctrine of Divine Right of

Kings. In the late 1600's, all these factors contributed to the rise of absolutism in France.

Louis XIV (1643-1715) is especially associated with the absolute monarchy, and he did

make France the most emulated and feared state in Europe, but at a price. Louis' wars and

extravagant court at Versailles bled France white and left it heavily in debt. Louis'

successors, Louis XV (1715-74) and Louis XVI (1774-89), were weak disinterested rulers

who merely added to France'sproblems through their neglect. Their reigns saw rising

corruption and three ruinously expensive wars that plunged France further into debt and

ruined its reputation. Along with debt, themonarchy's weakened condition led to two other
problems: the spread of revolutionary ideas and the resurgence of the power of the nobles.

Although the French kings were supposedly absolute rulers, they rarely had the will to

censor the philosophes' new ideas on liberty and democracy. Besides, in the spirit of the

Enlightenment, they were supposedly "enlightened despots" who should tolerate, if not

actually believe, the philosophes' ideas. As a result, the ideas of Voltaire, Rousseau, and

Montesquieu on liberty and democracyspread through educated society.

Second, France saw a resurgence of the power of the nobles who still held the top offices

and were trying to revive and expand old feudal privileges. By this time most French

peasants were free and as many as 30% owned their own land, but they still owed such

feudal dues and services as the corvee (forced labor on local roads and bridges) and

captaineries (the right of nobles to hunt in thepeasants' fields, regardless of the damage

they did to the crops). Naturally, these infuriated the peasants. The middle class likewise

resented their inferior social position, but were also jealous of the nobles and eagerly

bought noble titles from the king who was alwaysin need of quick cash. This

diverted money from the business sector to much less productive pursuits and contributed

to economic stagnation.

Besides the Royal debt, France also had economic problems emanating from two main

Sources. First of all, while the French middle class was sinking its money into empty noble

Titles the English middle class was investing in new business and technology. For example,

by the French Revolution, England had 200 waterframes, an advanced kind of waterwheel.

France, with three times the population of England, had only eight. The result was the

Industrial Revolution in England, whichflooded French markets with cheap British goods,

causing business failures and unemployment in France. Second, a combination of the

unfair tax load on the peasants (which stifled initiative to produce more), outdated

agricultural techniques, and bad weather led to a series of famines andfood shortages in

the 1780's.All these factors (intellectual dissent, an outdated and unjust feudal social
order, and a stagnant economy) created growing dissent and reached a breaking point in

1789. It was then that LouisXVI called the Estates General for the first time since 1614.

What he wanted wasmore taxes. What he got was revolution

Aristocratic revolt, 1787–89

The Revolution took shape in France when the controller general of finances, Charles-

Alexandre de Calonne, arranged the summoning of an assembly of “notables” (prelates,

great noblemen, and a few representatives of the bourgeoisie) in February 1787 to propose

reforms designed to eliminate the budget deficit by increasing the taxation of the privileged

classes. The assembly refused to take responsibility for the reforms and suggested the

calling of the Estates-General, which represented the clergy, the aristocracy, and the Third

Estate (the commoners) and which had not met since 1614. The efforts made by Calonne’s

successors to enforce fiscal reforms in spite of resistance by the privileged classes led to

the so-called revolt of the “aristocratic bodies,” notably that of the parlements (the most

important courts of justice), whose powers were curtailed by the edict of May 1788.

During the spring and summer of 1788, there was unrest among the populace

in Paris, Grenoble, Dijon, Toulouse, Pau, and Rennes. The king, Louis XVI, had to yield. He

reappointed reform-minded Jacques Necker as the finance minister and promised to

convene the Estates-General on May 5, 1789. He also, in practice, granted freedom of the

press, and France was flooded with pamphlets addressing the reconstruction of the state.

The elections to the Estates-General, held between January and April 1789, coincided with

further disturbances, as the harvest of 1788 had been a bad one. There were practically no

exclusions from the voting; and the electors drew

up cahiers de doléances, which listed their grievances and hopes. They elected 600

deputies for the Third Estate, 300 for the nobility, and 300 for the clergy.
Events of 1789
The Estates-General met at Versailles on May 5, 1789. They were immediately divided over

a fundamental issue: should they vote by head, giving the advantage to the Third Estate, or

by estate, in which case the two privileged orders of the realm might outvote the third? On

June 17 the bitter struggle over this legal issue finally drove the deputies of the Third Estate

to declare themselves the National Assembly; they threatened to proceed, if necessary,

without the other two orders. They were supported by many of the parish priests, who

outnumbered the aristocratic upper clergy among the church’s deputies. When royal

officials locked the deputies out of their regular meeting hall on June 20, they occupied the

king’s indoor tennis court (Jeu de Paume) and swore an oath not to disperse until they had

given France a new constitution. The king grudgingly gave in and urged the nobles and the

remaining clergy to join the assembly, which took the official title of National

Constituent Assembly on July 9; at the same time, however, he began gathering troops to

dissolve it. These two months of prevarication at a time when the problem of maintaining

food supplies had reached its climax infuriated the towns and the provinces. Rumours of

an “aristocratic conspiracy” by the king and the privileged to overthrow the Third Estate led

to the Great Fear of July 1789, when the peasants were nearly panic-stricken. The gathering

of troops around Paris and the dismissal of Necker provoked insurrection in the capital. On

July 14, 1789, the Parisian crowd stormed the Bastille, a symbol of royal tyranny. Again the

king had to yield; visiting Paris, he showed his recognition of the sovereignty of the people

by wearing the tricolour cockade.In the provinces, the Great Fear of July led the peasants to

rise against their lords. The nobles and the bourgeois now took fright. The National

Constituent Assembly could see only one way to check the peasants; on the night of

August 4, 1789, it decreed the abolition of the feudal regime and of the tithe. Then on

August 26 it introduced the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen,

proclaiming liberty, equality, the inviolability of property, and the right to resist oppression.
The decrees of August 4 and the Declaration were such innovations that the king refused to

sanction them. The Parisians rose again and on October 5 marched to Versailles. The next

day they brought the royal family back to Paris. The National Constituent Assembly

followed the court, and in Paris it continued to work on the new constitution.

The Three Phases of the French Revolution

It is wrong to think of the French Revolution as a sudden coup unrelated to what had gone

before it. In fact, the seeds of the Revolution had been sown long before they sprouted in

1789. We can distinguish three clear phases of the French Revolution, which according to

Compton-Rickett, are asfollows:

1. The Doctrinaire phase-the age of Rousseau;

2. The Political phase-the age of Robespierre and Danton;

3. The Military phase-the age of Napoleon.”

All these three phases considerably influenced the Romantic Movement in England.

Influence of the Doctrinaire Phase

The doctrinaire phase of the French Revolution was dominated by the thinker Rousseau.

His teachings and philosophic doctrines were the germs that brought about an intellectual

and literary revolution all over England. He was, fundamentally considered, a naturalist

who gave theslogan “Return to Nature.” He expressed his faith in the elemental simplicities

of life and his distrust of the sophistication of civilisation which, according to him, had

been curbing the natural(and good) man. He revived the cult of the “noble savage”

untainted by the so-called culture. Social institutions were all condemned by him as so

many chains. He raised his powerful voice against social and politicaltyranny and exhorted

the downtrodden people to rise for emancipation from virtual slavery and almost hereditary

poverty imposed upon them by an unnatural political system which benefitted only a few.
Rousseau’s primitivism, sentimentalism, and individualism had their influence on English

thought and literature. In France they prepared the climate for the Revolution.

Rousseau’s sentimental belief in the essential goodness of natural man and the excellence

of simplicity and even ignorance found a ready echo in Blake and, later, Wordsworth and

Coleridge. The love of nature and the simplicities of village life and unsophisticated folk

found ample expression in their poetic works. Wordsworth’s love of nature was partly due

to Rousseau’s influence. Rousseau’s intellectual influence touched first Godwin and,

through him, Shelley. Godwin inPolitical Justice embodied a considerable part of

Rousseauistic thought. Like him he raised his voice for justice and equality and expressed

his belief in the essential goodness of man. Referring reverently to Political Justice Shelley

wrote that he had learnt “all that was valuable in knowledge and virtue from that book.”

Influence of the Political Phase and the Military Phase

The political phase of the Revolution, which started with the fall of the Bastille, sent a wave

of thrill to every young heart in Europe. Wordsworth became crazy for joy, and along with

him, Southeyand Coleridge caught the general contagion. All of them expressed

themselves in pulsating words. But such enthusiasm and rapture were not destined to

continue for long. The Reign of Terror and the emergence of Napoleon as an undisputed

tyrant dashed the enthusiasm of romantic poets to pieces. The beginning of the war

between France and England completed their disillusionment, and Wordsworth, Coleridge,

and Southey, who had started as wild radicals,ended as well-domesticated Tories. The

latter romantics dubbed them as renegades who had let down the cause of the

Revolution. Wordsworth, in particular, had to suffer much criticism down to the days of

Robert Browning who wrote a pejorative poem on him describing him as “the lost leader.”

The modern era has unfolded in the shadow of the French Revolution. French society itself

underwent a transformation as feudal, aristocratic, and religious privileges disappeared

and old ideas about tradition and hierarchy were abruptly overthrown under the mantra of

"Liberté, égalité, fraternité". Globally, the Revolution accelerated the rise of republics and

democracies, the spread of liberalism, nationalism, socialism and secularism, the

development of modern politicalideologies, and the practice of total war. Some of its

central documents, like theDeclaration of the Rights of Man, expanded the arena of human

rights to include women and slaves.

 Romanticism – Definition
Romanticism, attitude or intellectual orientation that characterized many works of

literature, painting, music, architecture, criticism, and historiography in Western civilization

over a period from the late 18th to the mid-19th century. Romanticism can be seen as a

rejection of the precepts of order, calm, harmony, balance, idealization, and rationality that

typified Classicism in general and late 18th-century Neoclassicism in particular. It was also

to some extent a reaction against the Enlightenment and against 18th-century rationalism

and physical materialism in general. Romanticism emphasized the individual, the

subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional,

the visionary, and the transcendental.

Among the characteristic attitudes of Romanticism were the following: a deepened

appreciation of the beauties of nature; a general exaltation of emotion over reason and of

the senses over intellect; a turning in upon the self and a heightened examination of human

personality and its moods and mental potentialities; a preoccupation with the genius, the

hero, and the exceptional figure in general and a focus on his or her passions and inner

struggles; a new view of the artist as a supremely individual creator, whose creative spirit is

more important than strict adherence to formal rules and traditional procedures; an

emphasis upon imagination as a gateway to transcendent experience and spiritual truth;

an obsessive interest in folk culture, national and ethnic cultural origins, and the medieval

era; and a predilection for the exotic, the remote, the mysterious, the weird, the occult, the

monstrous, the diseased, and even the satanic.

 Romanticism and Literature
Romanticism proper was preceded by several related developments from the mid-18th

century on that can be termed Pre-Romanticism. Among such trends was a new

appreciation of the medieval romance, from which the Romantic movement derives its

name. The romance was a tale or ballad of chivalric adventure whose emphasis on

individual heroism and on the exotic and the mysterious was in clear contrast to the

elegant formality and artificiality of prevailing Classical forms ofliterature, such as the

French Neoclassical tragedy or the English heroic couplet in poetry. This new interest in

relatively unsophisticated but overtly emotional literary expressions of the past was to be

a dominant note in Romanticism.

Romanticism in English literature began in the 1790s with the publication of the Lyrical

Ballads of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Wordsworth’s “Preface” to the

second edition (1800) of Lyrical Ballads, in which he described poetry as “the spontaneous

overflow of powerful feelings,” became the manifesto of the English Romantic movement in

poetry. William Blake was the third principal poet of the movement’s early phase in

England. The first phase of the Romantic movement in Germany was marked by

innovations in both content and literary style and by a preoccupation with the mystical, the

subconscious, and the supernatural. A wealth of talents, including Friedrich Hölderlin, the

early Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Jean Paul, Novalis, Ludwig Tieck, August Wilhelm and

Friedrich von Schlegel, Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, and Friedrich Schelling, belong to

this first phase. In Revolutionary France, François-Auguste-René, vicomte de

Chateaubriand, and Madame de Staël were the chief initiators of Romanticism, by virtue of

their influential historical and theoretical writings.The second phase of Romanticism,

comprising the period from about 1805 to the 1830s, was marked by a quickening of

cultural nationalism and a new attention to national origins, as attested by the

collection and imitation of native folklore, folk ballads and poetry, folk dance and music,
and even previously ignored medieval and Renaissance works. The revived historical

appreciation was translated into imaginative writing by Sir Walter Scott, who is often

considered to have invented the historical novel. At about this same time English Romantic

poetry had reached its zenith in the works of John Keats, Lord Byron, and Percy Bysshe

Shelley. A notable by-product of the Romantic interest in the emotional were works dealing

with the supernatural, the weird, and the horrible, as in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and

works by Charles Robert Maturin, the Marquis de Sade, and E.T.A. Hoffmann. The second

phase of Romanticism in Germany was dominated by Achim von Arnim, Clemens

Brentano, Joseph von Görres, and Joseph von Eichendorff.

By the 1820s Romanticism had broadened to embrace the literatures of almost all of

Europe. In this later, second, phase, the movement was less universal in approach and

concentrated more on exploring each nation’s historical and cultural inheritance and on

examining the passions and struggles of exceptional individuals. A brief survey of Romantic

or Romantic-influenced writers would have to include Thomas De Quincey, William Hazlitt,

and Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë in England; Victor Hugo, Alfred de Vigny, Alphonse

de Lamartine, Alfred de Musset, Stendhal, Prosper Mérimée, Alexandre Dumas, and

Théophile Gautier in France; Alessandro Manzoni and Giacomo Leopardi in Italy; Aleksandr

Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov in Russia; José de Espronceda and Ángel de Saavedra in

Spain; Adam Mickiewicz in Poland; and almost all of the important writers in pre-Civil War

America.
 Romanticism and Visual Arts
In the 1760s and ’70s a number of British artists at home and in Rome, including James

Barry, Henry Fuseli, John Hamilton Mortimer, and John Flaxman, began to paint subjects

that were at odds with the strict decorum and classical historical and mythological subject

matter of conventional figurative art. These artists favoured themes that were bizarre,

pathetic, or extravagantly heroic, and they defined their images with tensely linear drawing

and bold contrasts of light and shade. William Blake, the other principal early Romantic

painter in England, evolved his own powerful and unique visionary images.

In the next generation the great genre of English Romantic landscape painting emerged in

the works of J.M.W. Turner and John Constable. These artists emphasized transient and

dramatic effects of light, atmosphere, and colour to portray a dynamic natural world

capable of evoking awe and grandeur.

In France the chief early Romantic painters were Baron Antoine Gros, who painted

dramatic tableaus of contemporary incidents of the Napoleonic Wars, and Théodore

Géricault, whose depictions of individual heroism and suffering in The Raft of the Medusa

and in his portraits of the insane truly inaugurated the movement around 1820. The greatest

French Romantic painter was Eugène Delacroix, who is notable for his free and expressive

brushwork, his rich and sensuous use of colour, his dynamic compositions, and his exotic

and adventurous subject matter, ranging from North African Arab life to revolutionary

politics at home. Paul Delaroche, Théodore Chassériau, and, occasionally, Jean-Auguste-

Dominique Ingres represent the last, more academic phase of Romantic painting in France.

In Germany Romantic painting took on symbolic and allegorical overtones, as in the works

of Philipp Otto Runge. Caspar David Friedrich, the greatest German Romantic artist,

painted eerily silent and stark landscapes that can induce in the beholder a sense of

mystery and religious awe.Romanticism expressed itself in architecture primarily through

imitations of older architectural styles and through eccentric buildings known as “follies.”
Medieval Gothic architecture appealed to the Romantic imagination in England and

Germany, and this renewed interest led to the Gothic Revival.

Romanticism and Music

Musical Romanticism was marked by emphasis on originality and individuality, personal

emotional expression, and freedom and experimentation of form. Ludwig van Beethoven

and Franz Schubert bridged the Classical and Romantic periods, for while their formal

musical techniques were basically Classical, their music’s intensely personal feeling and

their use of programmatic elements provided an important model for 19th-century

Romantic composers.The possibilities for dramatic expressiveness in music were

augmented both by the expansion and perfection of the instrumental repertoire and by the

creation of new musical forms, such as the lied, nocturne, intermezzo, capriccio, prelude,

and mazurka. The Romantic spirit often found inspiration in poetic texts, legends, and folk

tales, and the linking of words and music either programmatically or through such forms as

the concert overture and incidental music is another distinguishing feature of Romantic

music. The principal composers of the first phase of Romanticism were Hector Berlioz,

Frédéric Chopin, Felix Mendelssohn, and Franz Liszt. These composers pushed orchestral

instruments to their limits of expressiveness, expanded the harmonic vocabulary to exploit

the full range of the chromatic scale, and explored the linking of instrumentation and the

human voice. The middle phase of musical Romanticism is represented by such figures as

Antonín Dvořák, Edvard Grieg, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Romantic efforts to express a

particular nation’s distinctiveness through music was manifested in the works of the

Czechs Antonín Dvořák and Bedřich Smetana and by various Russian, French, and

Scandinavian composers.

Romantic opera in Germany began with the works of Carl Maria von Weber, while Romantic

opera in Italy was developed by the composers Gaetano Donizetti, Vincenzo Bellini, and
Gioachino Rossini. The Italian Romantic opera was brought to the height of its

development by Giuseppe Verdi. The Romantic opera in Germany culminated in the works

of Richard Wagner, whocombined and integrated such diverse strands of Romanticism as

fervent nationalism; the cult of the hero; exotic sets and costumes; expressive music; and

the display of virtuosity in orchestral and vocal settings. The final phase of musical

Romanticism is represented by such late 19th-century and early 20th-century composers

as Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Edward Elgar, and Jean Sibelius.

Characteristics of Romantic Age

• Celebration of Nature: Romantic writers saw nature as a teacher and a source of infinite

beauty. One of the most famous works of Romanticism is John Keats’ To Autumn (1820):

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,–

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

Keats personifies the season and follows its progression from the initial arrival after summer,

through the harvest season, and finally to autumn’s end as winter takes its place.

• Focus on the Individual and Spirituality: Romantic writers turned inward, valuing the

individual experience above all else. This in turn led to heightened sense of spirituality in

Romantic work, and the addition of occult and supernatural elements.

The work of Edgar Allan Poe exemplifies this aspect of the movement; for example, The
Raven tells the story of a man grieving for his dead love (an idealized woman in the Romantic

tradition) when a seemingly sentient Raven arrives and torments him, which can be interpreted

literally or seen as a manifestation of his mental instability.

• Celebration of Isolation and Melancholy: Ralph Waldo Emerson was a very influential

writer in Romanticism; his books of essays explored many of the themes of the literary

movement and codified them. His 1841 essay Self-Reliance is a seminal work of Romantic

writing in which he exhorts the value of looking inward and determining your own path,

and relying on only your own resources.

Related to the insistence on isolation, melancholy is a key feature of many works of Romanticism,

usually seen as a reaction to inevitable failure—writers wished to express the pure beauty they

perceived and failure to do so adequately resulted in despair like the sort expressed by Percy

Bysshe Shelley in A Lament:

O world! O life! O time!

On whose last steps I climb.

Trembling at that where I had stood before;

When will return the glory of your prime?

No more—Oh, never more!

• Interest in the Common Man: William Wordsworth was one of the first poets to embrace

the concept of writing that could be read, enjoyed, and understood by anyone. He eschewed

overly stylized language and references to classical works in favor of emotional imagery

conveyed in simple, elegant language, as in his most famous poem I Wandered Lonely as a

Cloud:

I wandered lonely as a Cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and Hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden Daffodils;

Beside the Lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Idealization of Women

In works such as Poe’s The Raven, women were always presented as idealized love interests, pure

and beautiful, but usually without anything else to offer. Ironically, the most notable novels of the

period were written by women (Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and Mary Shelley, for example),

but had to be initially published under male pseudonyms because of these attitudes. Much

Romantic literature is infused with the concept of women being perfect innocent beings to be

adored, mourned, and respected—but never touched or relied upon.

• Personification and Pathetic Fallacy: Romantic literature’s fixation on nature is

characterized by the heavy use of both personification and pathetic fallacy. Mary

Shelley used these techniques to great effect in Frankenstein:

Its fair lakes reflect a blue and gentle sky; and, when troubled by the winds, their tumult is but as
the

play of a lively infant, when compared to the roaring’s of the giant ocean.

Romanticism continues to influence literature today; Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight novels are clear

descendants of the movement, incorporating most of the characteristics of classic Romanticism

despite being published a century and half after the end of the movement’s active life.
 Literary Characteristics of the Age
Literature was the first branch of art to be influenced by the waves of Romanticism, although the

concepts remain the same in all the art forms. It is one of the curiosities of literary history that the

strongholds of the Romantic Movement were England and Germany, not the countries of the

romance languages themselves. Thus it is from the historians of English and German literature that

we inherit the convenient set of terminal dates for the Romantic period, beginning in 1798, the year

of the first edition of Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge and of the composition of

Hymns to the Night by Novalis, and ending in 1832, the year which marked the deaths of both Sir

Walter Scott and Goethe. However, as an international movement affecting all the arts,

Romanticism begins at least in the 1770's and continues into the second half of the nineteenth

century, later for American literature than for European, and later in some of the arts, like music

and painting, than in literature. This extended chronological spectrum (1770-1870) also permits

recognition as Romantic the poetry of Robert Burns and William Blake in England, the early

writings of Goethe and Schiller in Germany, and the great period of influence for Rousseau's

writings throughout Europe.

The early Romantic period thus coincides with what is often called the "age of revolutions"

including, of course, the American (1776) and the French (1789) revolutions--an age of upheavals

in political, economic, and social traditions, the age which witnessed the initialtransformations of

the Industrial Revolution. A revolutionary energy was also at the core of Romanticism, which quite

consciously set out to transform not only the theory and practice of poetry (and all art), but the very

way we perceive the world. Some of its major precepts are as follows:

1. Imagination: The imagination was elevated to a position as the supreme faculty of the

mind. This contrasted distinctly with the traditional arguments for the supremacy of reason.

The Romantics tended to define and to present the imagination as our ultimate "shaping"

or creative power, the approximate human equivalent of the creative powers of nature or

even deity. It is dynamic, an active, rather than passive power, with many functions.

Imagination is the primary faculty for creating all art. On a broader scale, it is also the
faculty that helps humans to constitute reality, for (as Wordsworth suggested), we not only

perceive the world around us, but also in part create it. Uniting both reason and feeling

(Coleridge described it with the paradoxical phrase, "intellectual intuition"), imagination

is extolled as the ultimate synthesizing faculty, enabling humans to reconcile differences

and opposites in the world of appearance. The reconciliation of opposites is a central ideal

for the Romantics. Finally, imagination is inextricably bound up with the other two major

concepts, for it is presumed to be the faculty which enables us to "read" nature as a system

of symbols.

2. Nature: The Romantics greatly emphasized the importance of nature and the primal

feelings of awe, apprehension and horror felt by man on approaching the sublimeness of

it. This was mainly because of the industrial revolution, which had shifted life from the

peaceful, serene countryside towards the chaotic cities, transforming man's natural order.

Nature was not only appreciated for its visual beauty, but also revered for its ability to help

the urban man find his true identity. While particular perspectives with regard to nature

varied considerably--nature as a healing power, nature as a source of subject and image,

nature as a refuge from the artificial constructs of civilization, including artificial language-

-the prevailing views accorded nature the status of an organically unified whole. It was

viewed as "organic," rather than, as in the scientific or rationalist view, as a system of

"mechanical" laws, for Romanticism displaced the rationalist view of the universe as a machine (e.g., the
deistic image of a clock) with the analogue of an"organic" image, a

living tree or mankind itself. At the same time, Romantics gave greater attention both to

describing natural phenomena accurately and to capturing "sensuous nuance"--and this is

as true of Romantic landscape painting as of Romantic nature poetry. Accuracy of

observation, however, was not sought for its own sake. Romantic nature poetry is

essentially a poetry of meditation.

3. Symbolism and Myth: Symbolism and myth were given great prominence in the
Romantic conception of art. In the Romantic view, symbols were the human aesthetic

correlatives of nature's emblematic language. They were valued too because they could

simultaneously suggest many things, and were thus thought superior to the one-to-one
communications of allegory. Partly, it may have been the desire to express the

"inexpressible"--the infinite--through the available resources of language that led to

symbol at one level and myth (as symbolic narrative) at another.

4. Emotion v/s Rationality: Consequently, the Romantics sought to define their goals
through systematic contrast with the norms of "Versailles neoclassicism." In their critical

manifestoes--the 1800 "Preface" to Lyrical Ballads, the critical studies of the Schlegel

brothers in Germany, the later statements of Victor Hugo in France, and of Hawthorne,

Poe, and Whitman in the United States--they self-consciously asserted their differences

from the previous age (the literary "ancien regime"), and declared their freedom from the

mechanical "rules." Certain special features of Romanticism may still be highlighted by

this contrast. We have already noted two major differences: the replacement of reason by

the imagination for primary place among the human faculties and the shift from a mimetic

to an expressive orientation for poetry, and indeed all literature. In addition, neoclassicism

had prescribed for art the idea that the general or universal characteristics of human

behavior were more suitable subject matter than the peculiarly individualmanifestations

of human activity. From at least the opening statement of Rousseau's Confessions,

first published in 1781--"I am not made like anyone I have seen; I dare believe that I am

not made like anyone in existence. If I am not superior, at least I am different."--this view

was challenged. Unlike the age of Enlightenment, which focused on rationality and intellect, Romanticism

placed human emotions, feelings, instinct and intuition above

everything else. While the poets in the era of rationality adhered to the prevalent rules and

regulations while selecting a subject and writing about it, the Romantic writers trusted their

emotions and feelings to create poetry. This belief can be confirmed from the definition of

poetry by William Wordsworth, where he says that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of

powerful feelings. The emphasis on emotions also spread to the music created in that

period, and can be observed in the compositions made by musicians like Weber,

Beethoven, Schumann, etc. Beethoven played an important role in the transition of Western

music from the classical to the Romantic age.

5. Artist, the Creator: As the Romantic period emphasized on human emotions, the position
of the artist or the poet also gained supremacy. In the earlier times, the artist was seen as a

person who imitated the external world through his art. However, this definitionwas

mooted in the Romantic era and the poet or the painter was seen as a creator of something

which reflected his individuality and emotions. The Romantic perception of the artist as

the creator is best encapsulated by Caspar David Friedrich, who remarkedthat "the artist's

feeling is his law". It was also the first time that the poems written in the first person were

being accepted, as the poetic persona became one with the voice of the poet.

6. Nationalism: The Romantics borrowed heavily from the folklore and the popular local

art. During the earlier eras, literature and art were considered to belong to the high-class

educated people, and the lower classes were not considered fit to enjoy them. Also, the

language used in these works used to be highly lyrical, which was totally different from

what was spoken by people. However, Romantic artists took no shame from being influenced by

the folklore that had been created by the masses or the common people,and not by the literary

works that were popular only among the higher echelons of the society. Apart from poetry, adopting

folk tunes and ballads was one of the very importantcharacteristics of Romantic music. As the

Romantics became interested and focused upondeveloping the folklore, culture, language, customs

and traditions of their own country, they developed a sense of Nationalism which reflected in their

works. Also, the language used in Romantic poems was simple and easy to understand by the

masses.

7. The Everyday and the Exotic: The attitude of many of the Romantics to the everyday,

social world around them was complex. It is true that they advanced certain realistic

techniques, such as the use of "local color" (through down-to-earth characters, like

Wordsworth's rustics, or through everyday language, as in Emily Bronte's northern dialects

or Whitman's colloquialisms, or through popular literary forms, such as folk narratives).

Yet social realism was usually subordinate to imaginative suggestion, and what was most

important were the ideals suggested by the above examples, simplicity perhaps, or

innocence. Earlier, the 18th-century cult of the noble savage had promoted similar ideals,

but now artists often turned for their symbols to domestic rather than exotic sources--to

folk legends and older, "unsophisticated" art forms, such as the ballad, to contemporary
country folk who used "the language of common men," not an artificial "poetic diction,"

and to children (for the first time presented as individuals, and often idealized as sources

of greater wisdom than adults).

Simultaneously, as opposed to everyday subjects, various forms of the exotic in time

and/or place also gained favor, for the Romantics were also fascinated with realms of

existence that were, by definition, prior to or opposed to the ordered conceptions of

"objective" reason. Often, both the everyday and the exotic appeared together in

paradoxical combinations. In the Lyrical Ballads, for example, Wordsworth and Coleridge

agreed to divide their labors according to two subject areas, the natural and the

supernatural: Wordsworth would try to exhibit the novelty in what was all too familiar,

while Coleridge would try to show in the supernatural what was psychologically real, both

aiming to dislodge vision from the "lethargy of custom." The concept of the beautiful soul

in an ugly body, as characterized in Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame and Mary

Shelley's Frankenstein, is another variant of the paradoxical combination.

8. Supernatural: Another characteristic of this movement is the belief in the supernatural.

The Romantics were interested in the supernatural and included it in their works. Gothic

fiction emerged as a branch of Romanticism after Horace Walpole's 1764 novel The Castle

of Otranto. This fascination for the mysterious and the unreal also led to the development

of Gothic romance, which became popular during this period. Supernatural elements can

also be seen in Coleridge's Kubla Khan', The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Keats' La

Belle Dame Sans Merci. As no Romantic artist followed any strict set of rules or

regulations, it is difficult to define the characteristics of this movement accurately.

Nevertheless, some of these characteristics are reflected in the works of that period. Though

many writers and critics have called this movement "irrational", it cannot be denied that it

was an honest attempt to portray the world, especially the intricacies of the human nature,

in a paradigm-shifting way.
 Writers of the Romantic Age
Poets of the Romantic Age

➢ William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) brought a completely new approach to the writing of English

poetry. His objections to an over-stylized poetic diction, his attitude to nature, his choice of simple

incidents and humble people as the subjects of his poetry— these well known characteristics of his,

are all but, minor aspects of his revolutionary achievements. No, earlier English poet, had held such

a view, nor in spite of Wordsworth’s undoubted influence on later poetry, any subsequent poet, has

held it in its purity. Thus, Wordsworth is unique in the history of English poetry.

In 1791 he graduated from Cambridge, and traveled abroad to France. The spiritof the French

Revolution had strongly influenced Wordsworth, and he returned (1792) to England, imbued with

the principles of Rousseau and Republicanism. In 1793, were published, “An Evening Walk”

and “Descriptive Sketches”, written in a stylized idiom and vocabulary of the 18th century. The

outbreak of the Reign of Terror, prevented Wordsworth’s return to France, and after gaining several

small legacies, he settled with his sister, Dorothy in Dorsetshire.

In Dorsetshire Wordsworth became an intimate friend with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and together

they wrote the Lyrical Ballads (1798), where they sought to use the language of ordinary people in

poetry; it includes Wordsworth’s poem Tintern Abbey.The work introduced Romanticism into

England and became a manifesto for Romantic poets. In 1800, the second edition of the Lyrical

Ballads was published, which included the critical essay outlining Wordsworth’s poetic principles.

In its Preface, Wordsworth describes poetry as the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”

The Prelude, his long autobiographical poem, was completed in 1805, but was notpublished until

his death. His next collection: Poems in two volumes (1807) include the famous, “Ode to Duty” and

the “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”, and few other sonnets.

Wordsworth’s personality and poetry were deeply influenced by his love of nature, especially of

the sights and scenes of the Lake District, where he spent the mature part of his life. A profoundly,

original and sincere thinker, Wordsworth displayed a high seriousness comparable, at times, to Milton’s but
tempered with tenderness and love of simplicity.

Wordsworth’s earlier works show the poetic beauty of common place things and people in works
like “Margaret”, “Peter Bell”, “Michael”, and “The Idiot Boy”. His otherwell known poems are,

“Lucy”, “The Solitary Reaper”, “Daffodils”, “The Rainbow”, “Resolution and Independence”, and

the sonnet, “The World is Too Much with Us”.

Though his use of ordinary speech was highly criticized but it helped to get rid of the artificial

conventions in poetry of the 18th century diction. Wordsworth—the profound, original and sincere

thinker, is considered to be the greatest of English poets, but above all, he would be remembered as

the creator of a new poetic tradition.

➢ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Coleridge (1772-1834), an English poet and a Man of Letters, was the most influential, brilliant and

versatile figure, of the Romantic Movement in English literature.

Although Coleridge had been busy and productive in writing both poetry and topical prose, it was

not until his friendship with Wordsworth, that he wrote his best poems. In 1798, Wordsworth and

Coleridge published the volume Lyrical Ballads, whose poems and Preface have made it a seminal

work and a manifesto of the Romantic Movement in English literature.

Coleridge’s main contribution to the volume was the haunting, dream-like ballad, The Rime of the

Ancient Mariner. This long poem was well as Kubla Khan and Christabel, written during the same

period are two of his best known works. The three works make use of exotic images and

supernatural themes. Dejection: An Ode, published in 1802, is the last of Coleridge’s great poems.

It shows the influence of (or the affinity to) Wordsworth’s poetic ideals, notably, the meditation

upon self, nature, and the relationship among emotion, sense, experience and understanding. His

confessions of an Enquiring Spirit was published posthumously in 1840.

His shorter poems include Youth and Age, Fears in Solitude, Work without Hope, etc. Coleridge

worked for many years on his Biographia Literaria (1817), containing accounts of his literary life,

and critical essays on philosophical and literary subjects. It presents Coleridge’s theories of creative

imagination, but its debt to other writers, notably the German idealistphilosophers, is often so heavy

that the line between legitimate borrowing and plagiarism is blurred. This borrowing tendency, evident in

some of his poetry, together with Coleridge’s notorious inability to complete projects,

and his suggestions of impractical ones, made him a problematic figure. His most profound work is

the philosophical Aids to Reflection.

Coleridge’s lifelong friend, Charles Lamb called him a “damaged Archangel”. Indeed, 20th century

editorial scholarship has unearthed additional evidence of plagiarism, thus Coleridge is still a

controversial figure. However, the originality and beauty of his poems, and his enormous influence

on the intellectual and aesthetic life of his time, can hardly be questioned.He was the most brilliant

conversationalist, and his Lectures on Shakespeare, remain among the most important statements

in literary criticism.

➢ Robert Southey

Closely associated with Wordsworth and Coleridge is Robert Southey; and the three, on account of

their residence in the northern lake district, were referred to contemptuously as the “Lakers” by the

Scottish magazine reviews. Southey holds his place in this group more by personal association than

by his literary gifts. He was born at Bristol, in 1774; studied atWestminster School, and at Oxford,

where he found himself in perpetual conflict with the authorities on account of his independent

views. He finally left the university and joined Coleridge in his scheme of a Pantisocracy. For more

than 50 years he labored steadily atliterature, refusing to consider any other occupation.

Southey gradually surrounded himself with one of the most extensive libraries in England, and set

himself to the task of writing something every working day. The results of his industry were one

hundred and nine volumes, besides some hundred and fifty articles for the magazines, most of which

are now utterly forgotten. His most ambitious poems are Thalaba, a tale of Arabian enchantment;

The Curse of Kehama, a medley of Hindu mythology; Madoc, a legend of a Welsh prince who

discovered the Western world; and Roderick, a tale of the last of the Goths. Southey wrote far better

prose than poetry, and his admirable Life of Nelson is still often read. Besides there are his Lives of

British Admirals, his lives of Cowper and Wesley, and his histories of Brazil and of the Peninsular

War.

Southey was made Poet Laureate in 1813, and was the first to raise that office from the low estate

into which it had fallen since the death of Dryden. A few of his best known short poems include, “The
Scholar”, “Auld Cloots”, “The Well of St. Keyne”, “The Inchcape Rock”, and “Lodore”.

➢ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Shelley was of that second generation of Romantic poets that did not live to be old and respectable.

Shelley, in many respects was a Romantic poet par excellence. His strange, and brief life with its eccentric
unworldliness, his moods of ecstasy and lagour, his swooning idealism,
combined to produce a popular image of Romanticism.

Shelley’s life continued to be dominated by his desire of a political and social reform, andhe was

constantly publishing pamphlets. When he was at the university, he wrote severalextraordinary

pamphlets, one such work, The Necessity of Atheism, caused him to be expelled from Oxford. His

first important poem, Queen Mab, privately published in 1813, st forth a radical system of curing

social ills by advocating the destruction of various established institutions.

In 1814, Shelley left England for France, with Mary Godwin, daughter of WilliamGodwin. During

their first year together, they were plagued by social ostracism and financial difficulties. However,

in 1815, Shelley’s grandfather died and left him an annual income. Laon and Cynthna appeared in

1817, but was withdrawn and reissued the following year as The Revoltof Islam; it is a long poem

in Spenserian stanzas that tells of a revolution and illustrates the growth of the human mind aspiring

toward perfection.

Shelley composed the great body of his poetry in Italy. The Cenci, a tragedy in verse exploring

moral deformity, was published in 1819, followed by his masterpiece, Prometheus Unbound (1820).

In this lyrical drama, Shelley put forth all his passions and beliefs, which were modeled after the

ideas of Plato. Epipsychidion (1821) is a poem addressed to Emilia Viviani, whom Shelley met in

Pisa, and developed a brief but close friendship.

His great elegy, Adonais (1821), written in memory of Keats, asserts the immortality of beauty.

Hellas (1822), a lyrical drama was inspired by the Greek struggle for independence. His other

poems include, Alastor or the Spirit of Solitude (1816), it is a long poem in blank verse andis a kind

of spiritual autobiography. “Ode to the West Wind”, “To a Skylark”, “Ozymandias”, “The Indian

Serenade”, and “When the Lamp is Shattered” are his shorter poems.

Most of Shelley’s poetry reveals his philosophy, a combination of belief in the power of human

love and reason, and faith in the perfectibility and ultimate progress of man. His lyric poems are

superb in their beauty, grandeur and mastery of language. Although Matthew Arnold labeled him

an “ineffectual angel”, 20th century critics have taken Shelley seriously, recognizing his wit, his

gifts as a satirist, and his influence as a social and political thinker.

➢ . John Keats

John Keats is perhaps the greatest of the second-generation Romantic poets who blossomed early

and died young. Indeed, one of the most striking things about Keats is the independence with which

he worked out his poetic destiny, the austere devotion with which he undertook his own artistic

training.

Apprenticed to a surgeon (1811), Keats came to know Leigh Hunt and his literary circle, and in

1816 he gave up surgery to write poetry. His first volume of poems appeared in1817. It included,

“I Stood tip-toe Upon a Little Hill”, “Sleep and Poetry”, and the famous sonnet, “On First Looking

into Chapman’s Homer.”

Endymion, a long poem, was published in 1818. Although faulty in structure, it isnevertheless full

of rich imagery and color. Keats returned from a walking tour in the Highlands to find himself

attacked in Blackwood’s Magazine—an article berated him for belonging to Leigh Hunt’s

“Cockney School” of poetry—and in the Quarterly Review. The critical assaults of 1818 marked a

turning point in Keats’ life; he was forced to examine his work carefully, and as aresult the influence

of Hunt was diminished.

With his friend, the artist Joseph Severn, Keats sailed for Italy shortly after the publication of

“Lamia”, “Isabella; or the Pot of Basil”, “The Eve of St. Agnes”, and other poems (1820), which

contains most of his important work and is probably the greatest single volume of poetry published

in England in the 19th century. He died in Rome (1821) at the age of twenty five.

In spite of his tragically brief career, Keats is one of the most important English poets. Heis also

among the most personally appealing. Noble, generous, and sympathetic, he was capable not only

of passionate love but also of warm, steadfast friendship. Keats is ranked with Shelley and Byron,

as one of the three great Romantic poets. Such poems as “Ode to a Nightingale”, “Ode on a Grecian

Urn”, “To Autumn”, and “Ode on Melancholy” are unequaled for dignity, melody and richness of

sensuous imagery.

Keats’ posthumous pieces include “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”, in its way is an evocation of

Romantic medievalism as “The Eve of St. Agnes”. Among his sonnets, familiarones are, “When

I Have Fears that I May Cease to be”. “Lines on the Mermaid Tavern”, “Fancy”, and “Bards of

Passion and of Mirth” are delightful short poems.

Some of Keats’ finest work is the unfinished epic Hyperion. In recent years critical attention has

focused on Keats’ philosophy, which involves not abstract thought but rather absolute receptivity

to experience. This attitude is indicated in his celebrated term “negative capability—to let the mind

be a thoroughfare for all thought.”

➢ George Gordon, Lord Byron

Lord Byron, the third of the trio of second-generation Romantic poets, was the master of colloquial

tone in verse and the inventor of a species of discursive narrative poetry.

His first volume, Fugitive Pieces (1806) was suppressed, revised and expanded, and later appeared

as Poems on Various Occasions in 1807. This was followed by Hours of Idleness (1807), which

provoked such severe criticism from the Edinburgh Review that Byron replied with, English Bards

and Scotch Reviewers (1809), a satire in heroic couplets reminiscent of Pope, which brought him

immediate fame.

Byron left England the same year for a grand tour through Spain, Portugal, Italy and the Balkans.

He returned in 1811 with Cantos I and II of Childe Harold (1812), a melancholy, philosophic poem

in Spenserian stanzas, which made him the social lion of London. It was followed by the verse tales,

The Giaour (1813), The Bride of Abydos (1813), The Corsair (1814),Lara (1814), The Siege of

Corinth (1816), and Parisina (1816).

In 1816, Byron left England, never to return. He passed sometime with Shelley in Switzerland,

writing Canto III of Childe Harold and The Prisoner of Chillon. Settling in Venice (1817), Byron

led for a time a life of dissipation, but produced Canto IV of Childe Harold (1818), Beppo (1818),

and Mazeppa (1819) and began Don Juan.

Ranked with Shelley and Keats as one of the great Romantic poets, Byron became famous

throughout Europe as the embodiment of Romanticism. His good looks, his lameness, and his

flamboyant lifestyle all contributed to the formation of the Byronic legend. By the mid 20th century,

his reputation as a poet had been eclipsed by growing critical recognition of his talent as a wit and

satirist.

Byron’s poetry covers a wide range. In English Bards and Scotch Reviewers and in The Vision of

Judgement (1822) he wrote 18th century satire. He also created the Byronic Hero, who appears

consummately in the Faustian tragedy Manfred (1817)—a mysterious, lonely, defiant figure whose
past hides some great crime. Cain (1821) raised a storm of abuse for its skeptical attitude towards

religion. The verse tale, Beppo is in the ottava rima, that Byron later used for hisacknowledged

masterpiece, Don Juan (1814-24), an epic satire combing Byron’s art as a storyteller, his lyricism,

his cynicism, and his detestation of convention.

Prose writers of the Romantic Age

Though the Romantic period specialized in poetry, there also appeared a few prose- writers-Lamb,

Hazlitt and De Quincey who rank very high. There was no revolt of the prose- writers against the

eighteenth century comparable to that of the poets, but a change had taken place in the prose-style

also. Whereas many eighteenth century prose-writers depended on assumptions about thesuitability

of various prose styles for various purposes which they shared with their relatively small but

sophisticated public; writers in the Romantic period were rather more concerned with subject matter

and emotional expression than with appropriate style. They wrote for an ever- increasing audience

which was less homogeneous in its interest and education than that of their predecessors. There was

also an indication of a growing distrust of the sharp distinction between matter and manner which

was made in the eighteenth century, and of a romantic preference for spontaneity rather than

formality and contrivance. There was a decline of the ‘grand’ style and ofmost forms of contrived

architectural prose written for what may be called public or didactic purposes. Though some

Romantic poets—Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Byron—wrote excellent prose in their critical writings,

letters and journals, and some of the novelists like Scott and Jane Austen were masters of prose-

style, those who wrote prose for its own sake in the form of theessays and attained excellence in

the art of prose-writing were Lamb, Hazlitt and De Quincey.

➢ Charles Lamb (1775-1834)

Charles Lamb is one of the most lovable personalities in English literature. He lived a very humble,

honest, and most self-sacrificing life. He never married, but devoted himself to the care of his sister

Mary, ten years his senior, who was subject to mental fits, in one of which she had fatally wounded

her mother. In his Essays of Elia (1823) and Last Essays (1833), in which isrevealed his own

personality, he talks intimately to the readers about himself, his quaint whims and experiences, and

the cheerful and heroic struggle which he made against misfortunes. UnlikeWordsworth who was
interested in natural surroundings and shunned society, Lamb who was born and lived in the midst

of London Street, was deeply interested in the city crowd, its pleasures and occupations, its endless

comedies and tragedies, and in his essays he interpreted with great insight and human sympathy

that crowded human life of joys and sorrows.

Lamb belongs to the category of intimate and self-revealing essayists, of whom Montaigne is the

original, and Cowley the first exponent in England. To the informality of Cowley, he adds the

solemn confessional manner of Sir Thomas Browne. He writes always in a gentle, humorous way

about the sentiments and trifles of everyday. The sentimental, smiling figure of ‘Elia’ in his essays

is only a cloak with which Lamb hides himself from the world. Though in his essays he plays with

trivialities, as Walter Pater has said, “We know that beneath this blithe surface there is something

of the domestic horror, of the beautiful heroism, and devotedness too, of the old Greek tragedy.”

The style of Lamb is described as ‘quaint’, because it has the strangeness which we associate with

something old-fashioned. One can easily trace in his English the imitations of the 16th and 17th

century writers he most loved—Milton, Sir Thomas Browne, Fuller, Burton, Issac Walton.

According to the subject he is treating, he makes use of the rhythms and vocabularies of these

writers. That is why, in every essay Lamb’s style changes. This is the secret of the charmof his

style and it also prevents him from ever becoming monotonous or tiresome. His style is also full of

surprises because his mood continually varies, creating or suggesting its own style, and calling into

play some recollection of this or that writer of the older world.

Lamb is the most lovable of all English essayists, and in his hand the Essay reached its perfection.

His essays are true to Johnson’s definition; ‘a loose sally of the mind.’ Though his essays are all

criticisms or appreciations of the life of his age and literature, they are all intensely personal. They,

therefore, give us an excellent picture of Lamb and of humanity. Though he often starts with some

purely personal mood or experience he gently leads the reader to see lifeas he saw it, without ever

being vain or self-assertive. It is this wonderful combination of personal and universal interest

together with his rare old style and quaint humour, which have given his essays his perennial charm,

and earned for him the covetable title of “The Prince among English Essayists

➢ William Hazlitt (1778-1830)

As a personality Hazlitt was just the opposite of Lamb. He was a man of violent temper, with strong
likes and dislikes. In his judgment of others he was always downright and frank, and never cared

for its effect on them. During the time when England was engaged in a bitterstruggle against

Napoleon, Hazlitt worshipped him as a hero, and so he came in conflict with the government. His

friends left him one by one on account of his aggressive nature, and at the time of his death only

Lamb stood by him.

Hazlitt wrote many volumes of essays, of which the most effective is The Spirit of the Age (1825)

in which he gives critical portraits of a number of his famous contemporaries. This was a work

which only Hazlitt could undertake because he was outspoken and fearless in the expression of his

opinion. Though at times he is misled by his prejudices, yet taking his criticism of art and literature

as a whole there is not the least doubt that there is great merit in it. He hasthe capacity to see the

whole of his author most clearly, and he can place him most exactly in relation to other authors. In

his interpretation of life in the general and proper sense, he shows an acute and accurate power of

observation and often goes to the very foundation of things.Underneath his light and easy style there

always flows an undercurrent of deep thought and feeling.

The style of Hazlitt has force, brightness and individuality. Here and there we find passages of

solemn and stately music. It is the reflection of Hazlitt’s personality—outspoken, straightforward

and frank. As he had read widely, and his mind was filled with great store of learning, his

writings are interspersed with sentences and phrases from other writers and there are also echoes

of their style. Above all, it vibrates with the vitality and force of his personality, and so never lapses

into dullness.

➢ Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859)

De Quincey is famous as the writer of ‘impassioned prose’. He shared the reaction of his day against the
severer classicism of the eighteenth century, preferring rather the ornate manner of Jeremy

Taylor, Sir Thomas Browne and their contemporaries. The specialty of his style consists in

describing incidents of purely personal interest in language suited to their magnitude as they appear

in the eyes of the writer. The reader is irresistibly attracted by the splendour of hisstyle which

combines the best elements of prose and poetry. In fact his prose works are more imaginative and

melodious than many poetical works. There is revealed in them the beauty of theEnglish language.

The defects of his style are that he digresses too much, and often stops in the midst of the fine

paragraph to talk about some trivial thing by way of jest. But in spite of these defects his prose is
still among the few supreme examples of style in the English language.

De Quincey was a highly intellectual writer and his interests were very wide. Mostly he wrote in

the form of articles for journals and he dealt with all sorts of subjects—about himself and his friends,

life in general, art, literature, philosophy and religion. Of his autobiographical sketches the best-

known is his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, in which he has given us,in a most interesting

manner, glimpses of his own life under the influence of opium. He wrote fine biographies of a

number of classical, historical and literary personages, of which the most ambitious attempt is The

Caerars. His most perfect historical essay is on Joan of Arc. His essays on principle of literature

are original and penetrating. The best of this type is the one where he gives the distinction between

the literature of knowledge and of power. On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth is the most

brilliant. He also wrote very scholarly articles on Goethe, Pope, Schiller and Shakespeare. Besides

these he wrote a number of essays on science and theology.

In all his writings De Quincey asserts his personal point of view, and as he is a man of strong

prejudices, likes and dislikes, he often gives undue emphasis on certain points. The result is that we

cannot rely on his judgment entirely. But there is no doubt that his approach is always original and

brilliant which straightway captures the attention of the reader. Moreover, the splendour of

his ‘poetic prose’ which is elaborate and sonorous in its effects, casts its ownspecial spell.

The result is that De Quincey is still one of the most fascinating prose-writers of England.

➢ Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864)

While Hazlitt, Lamb, de Quincey, and other Romantic critics went back to early English literature for their
inspiration, Landor shows a reaction from the prevailing Romanticism by his imitation of

the ancient classic writers. His life was an extraordinary one and, like his work, abounded in sharp

contrasts. On the one hand, there are his egoism, his uncontrollable anger, his perpetual lawsuits,

and the last sad tragedy with his children, which suggests King Lear and his daughters; on the other

hand there is his steady devotion to the classics and to the cultivation of the deep wisdom of the

ancients, which suggests Pindar and Cicero. His works show the wild extravagance of Gebir,

followed by the superb classic style and charm of Pericles and Aspasia. Such was Landor, a man

of high ideals, perpetually at war with himself and the world.

Landor’s reaction from Romanticism is all the more remarkable in view of his early efforts, such as

Gebir, a wildly romantic poem, which rivals any work of Byron or Shelley in its extravagance.
Notwithstanding its occasional beautiful and suggestive lines, the work was not and never has been

successful; and the same may be said of all his poetical works. His first collection of poems was

published in 1795, his last full half century later, in 1846. In the latter volume, The Hellenics—

which included some translations of his earlier Latin poems, called Idyllia Heroica. In all these

poem the impressive feature is the strikingly original figures of speech which Landor uses to

emphasize his meaning.It is by his prose works, largely, that Landor has won a place in English literature;

partly because of their intrinsic worth, their penetrating thought and severe classic style; and partly because

of their profound influence upon the writers of the present age. The most noted of his prose works are his

six volumes of Imaginary Conversations (1824-1846). For these conversations Landor brings

together, sometimes in groups, sometimes in couples, well-known characters, or rather shadows,

from the four corners of the earth and from the remotest ages of recorded history. Thus Diogenes

talks with Plato, Aesop with a young slave girl in Egypt, Henry VIII with Anne Boleyn in prison,

Dante with Beatrice, Leofric with Lady Godiva—all these and many others, from Epictetus to

Cromwell are brought together and speak of life and love and death, each from his own view point.

Occasionally, as in the meeting of Henry and Anne Boleyn,the situation is tense and dramatic; but

as a rule the characters simply meet and converse in the same quiet strain, which becomes, after

much reading, somewhat monotonous. On the otherhand, one who reads Imaginary Conversations

is lifted at once into a calm and noble atmosphere which braces and inspires him, making him forget

petty things, like a view from a hilltop. By its combination of lofty thought and severely classic

style the book has won, and deserves, a very high place among the English literary records.

The same criticism applies to Pericles and Aspasia, which is a series of imaginary letters, telling the

experiences of Aspasia, a young lady from Asia Minor, who visits Athens at the summit of its fame

and glory, in the great age of Pericles. This is considered to be the best of all of Landor’s works,

one gets from it not only Landor’s classic style, but—what is worthwhile—a better picture of

Greece in the days of its greatness than can be obtained from many historical volumes.
 Novelists of the Romantic Age

The great novelists of the Romantic period are Jane Austen and Scott, but before them there

appeared some novelists who came under the spell of medievalism and wrote novels of ‘terror’ or

the ‘Gothic novels’. The origin of this type of fiction can be ascribed to Horace Walpole’s (1717-

97) The Castle of Otranto (1746). Here the story in set in medieval Italy and it includes a gigantic

helmet that can strike dead its victims, tyrants, supernatural intrusions,mysteries and secrets. There

were a number of imitators of such a type of novel during the eighteenth century as well as in the

Romantic period.

➢ The Gothic Novel

The most popular of the writers of the ‘terror’ or ‘Gothic’ novel during the Romantic age was Mrs.

Ann Radciffe (1764-1823), of whose five novels the best-known are The Mysteries of Udolpho and

The Italian. She initiated the mechanism of the ‘terror’ tale as practiced by Horace Walpole and his

followers, but combined it with sentimental but effective description of scenery.

The Mysteries of Udolpho relates the story of an innocent and sensitive girl who falls in the hands

of a heartless villain named Montoni. He keeps her in a grim and isolated castle full of mystery and

terror. The novels of Mrs. Radcliffe became very popular, and they influenced someof the great

writers like Byron and Shelley. Later they influenced the Bronte sisters whose imagination was

stimulated by these strange stories. Though Mrs. Radcliffe was the prominent writer of ‘Gothic’ novels, there

were a few other novelists who earned popularity by writing such novels. They were Mathew Gregory (‘Monk’)

Lewis (1775-1818). Who wrote The Monk, Tales of Terror and Tales of Wonder; and Charles Robert Maturin

whose Melmoth the Wanderer exerted great influence in France. But the most popular of all ‘terror’

tales was Frankenstein (1817) written by Mrs. Shelley. It is the story of a mechanical monster with

human powers capable of performing terrifying deeds. Of all the ‘Gothic’ novels it is the only one

which is popular even today.

➢ Jane Austen (1775-1817)

Jane Austen brought good sense and balance to the English novel which during the Romantic age had

become too emotional and undisciplined. Giving a loose rein to their imagination the novelist of the period

carried themselves away from the world around them intoa romantic past or into a romantic future. The

novel, which in the hands of Richardson and Fielding had been a faithful record of real life and of the

working of heart and imagination, became in the closing years of the eighteenth century the literature of

crime, insanity and terror. It, therefore, needed castigation and reform which were provided by Jane Austen.

Living a quiet life she published her six novels anonymously, which have now placed her among the front

rank of English novelists. She did for the English novel precisely what the Lake poets did for English

poetry—she refined and simplified it, making it a true reflection of English life. As Wordsworth made a

deliberate effort to make poetry natural and truthful, Jane Austen also from the time she started writing her

first novel—Pride and Prejudice, had in her mind the idea of presenting English country society exactly as

it was, in opposition to the romantic extravagance of Mrs. Radcliffe and her school. During the time of

great turmoil and revolution in various fields, she quietly went on with her work, making no great effort to

get a publisher, and, when a publisher was got, contenting herself with meagre remuneration and never

permitting her name to appear on a title page. She is one of the sincerest examples in English literature of

art for art’s sake.

In all Jane Austen wrote six novels—Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Mansfield Park,

Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. Of these Pride and Prejudice is the best and most widely read of her

novels. Sense and Sensibility, Emma and Mansfield are now placed among the front rank of English novels.

From purely literary point of view Northanger Abbey gets the first place on account of the subtle humour

and delicate satire it contains against the grotesque but popular ‘Gothic’ novels.

As a novelist Jane Austen worked in a narrow field. She was the daughter of a humble clergyman living in

a little village. Except for short visits to neighbouring places, she lived a static life but she had such a keen

power of observation that the simple country people became the characters of her novels. The chief duties

of these people were of the household, their chief pleasures were in country gatherings and their chief

interest was in matrimony. It is the small, quiet world of these people, free from the mighty interests,

passions, ambitious and tragic struggles of life that Jane Austin depicts in her novels. But in spite of these

limitations she has achieved wonderful perfection in that narrow field on account of her acute power of
observation, her fine impartiality and self-detachment, and her quiet, delicate and ironical humour. Her

circumstances helped her to give that finish and delicacy to her work, which have made them artistically

prefect. Novel-writing was a part of her everyday life, to be placed aside should a visitor come, to be

resumed when he left, to be pursued unostentatiously and tranquilly in the midst of the family circle. She

knew precisely what she wanted to do, and she did it in the way that suited her best. Though in her day she

did not receive the appreciation she deserved, posterity has given her reward by placing this modest,

unassuming woman who died in her forties, as one of the greatest of English novelists.

Among her contemporaries only Scott, realized the greatness and permanent worth of her work, and most

aptly remarked: “That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters

of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big bow strain I can do myself, like

any now going, but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters

interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me, what a pity such a gifted

creature died so early!”

➢ Walter Scott (1771-1832)

Walter Scott’s qualities as a novelist were vastly different from those of Jane Austen. Whereas she painted

domestic miniatures, Scott depicted pageantry of history on broader canvases. Jane Austen is precise and

exact in whatever she writes; Scott is diffusive and digressive. Jane Austen deals with the quiet intimacies

of English rural life free from high passions, struggles and great actions; Scott, on the other hand, deals

with the chivalric, exciting, romantic and adventurous life of the Highlanders—people living on the border

of England and Scotland, among whom he spent much of his youth, or with glorious scenes of past history.

During his first five or six years of novel-writing Scott confined himself to familiar scenes and characters.

The novels which have a local colour and are based on personal observations are Guy Mannering, The

Antiquary, Old Mortality and The Heart of Midlothian.His first attempt at a historical novel was Ivanhoe

(1819) followed by Kenilworth (1821),Quentin Durward (1823), and The Talisman (1825). He returned

to Scottish antiquity from time to time as in The Monastery (1820) and St. Ronan’s Well (1823).

In all these novels Scott reveals himself as a consummate storyteller. His leisurelyunfolding of the story

allows of digression particularly in the descriptions of natural scenes or of interiors. Without being historical

in the strict sense he conveys a sense of the past age by means of a wealth of colourful descriptions,
boundless vitality and with much humour and sympathy. The historical characters which he has so

beautifully portrayed that they challenge comparison with the characters of Shakespeare include Queen

Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scott. Besides these he has given us a number of imperishable portraits of

the creatures of his imagination. Heis a superb master of the dialogue which is invariably true to characte
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Palmer's only published text was a short piece opposing the Repeal of the corn laws.