The British Romantic Movement



The British Romantic Movement

1785-1830

Significant Historical Events:

1789-1815: Revolutionary and Napoleonic period in France.

➢ 1789: The Revolution begins with the assembly of the States-General in May and the storming of the Bastille on July 14.

➢ 1793: King Louis XVI executed; England joins the alliance against France.

➢ 1793-94: The Reign of Terror under Robespierre.

➢ 1798: Irish Patriot Theobald Wolfe Tone uses his service in the French army to raise tens of thousands of soldiers to fight against the English rule in Ireland. The revolt is a catastrophe, resulting in mass casualty. Sentenced to death as a traitor to England. Wolfe Tone argues that he never swore an oath to the English and commits suicide with his quill.

➢ 1801: Act of Union – Great Britain and Ireland combined to make the United Kingdom. Introduces new flag known as the Union Jack – combination of three saint flags – St. Andrew of Scotland, St. Patrick of Ireland, and St. George of England stamped over the two. Symbolic dominance and unified rule of the English over Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.

➢ 1804: Napoleon crowned (himself) emperor.

➢ 1812-15: War of 1812

➢ 1815: Napoleon defeated at Waterloo.

1807: British slave trade outlawed (slavery abolished throughout the empire, including the West Indies, twenty-six years later).

1811-20: The Regency – George, Prince of Wales, acts as regent for George III, who has been declared incurably insane.

1819: Peterloo Massacre – St. Peter’s Field, Manchester, England: English cavalry charged into a crowd of protestors. 15 killed and 400-700 Injured.

1820: Accession of George IV

The Romantic Period, though by far the shortest, is at least as complex and diverse as any other period in British literary history. For much of the twentieth century, scholars singled out five poets – William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron (George Gordon), Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats, adding William Blake belatedly to make a sixth – and constructed notions of a unified Romanticism on the basis of their works. But there were problems all along: even the two closest collaborators of the 1790s, Wordsworth and Coleridge, would fit no single definition; Byron despised both Coleridge’s philosophical speculations and Wordsworth’s poetry; Shelley and Keats were at opposite poles from each other stylistically and philosophically; Blake was not at all like any of the other five.

Source: The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Romantic Period

The Romantic Movement began in Germany, spread through Britain, and then eventually to America. Romanticism was a reaction against rationalism and materialism. They held the belief that the previous “Age of Reason” did not support their values. Imagination, creativity, individualism, and nature were embraced amidst the radical changes across Europe. Each poet has a different philosophy on life however, they make up the force of this brief movement. It is important to note that the first three poets lived a full life, whereas the second generation died rather young. The saying, “A candle that burns at both ends burns twice as bright, but will not last the night” is more than fitting for how the second generation lived and wrote.

With slight exception to William Blake, these six knew each other rather well through writing and formed “schools” or “circles” where they shared ideas and contributed as editors. Noteworthy circles include, Wordsworth and Coleridge; Byron and Shelley (Satanic circle); Shelley, Keats, and Leigh Hunt (Cockney circle).

Biographic and Philosophical Information

William Blake (1757-1827) “There is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott” – Henry Crabb Robinson

William Blake was the most widely unknown and unappreciated of the six. His primary occupation was an engraver and blended his art with his poetry. It wasn’t until after his death that his works of literature and poetry have been recognized as significant. Blake believed the guide to truth was not the critical and skeptical reason, but the free imagination. There was one rule to this belief, “Be free, and Love all things.” Greater even than Liberty was Love, that bond of universal sympathy, charity, and pity which should unite rich and poor, old and young, mankind and all other creatures. Hence, Blake dwelt with peculiar fondness upon the innocence of children, the pitifulness of their suffering, the wickedness of cruelty to animals, and the glory of forgiveness.

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) “Time may restore us in his course / Goethe’s sage mind and Byron’s force; / But where will Europe’s latter hour / Again find Wordsworth’s healing power?” – Mathew Arnold

“He expresses the ideals and attitudes of the Engliss-speaking peoples. He voices our paradoxical devotion to both the natural and the mystical, to both the commonplace and the sublime. He represents our peculiar conception of liberty, national welfare, morality, duty, the ideal man, the ideal woman, good manners, the relation of nature to self-culture, the true pursuit of happiness, and other matters of profound importance. He militates against two of our most dangerous tendencies, - the single-minded pursuit of wealth, and the ostentatious squandering thereof, - by revealing the beauty and happiness of plain living and high thinking.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) “One of the touchstones of supreme imaginative vision lies in its unerring recognition of what is universal in the remote and strange” – John Livingston Lowes

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the son of a clergyman and from his childhood devoted to reading, daydreaming, and solitude. However, he was a very sociable person – known by peers as an eloquent conversationalist full of mysticism and radical politics. Poor health and medical advisement of his day led to opium for his pains, which led to addiction. After awhile of abstaining from alcohol and opium he relapsed and from the age of 30-43 was a complete slave to opium and alcohol (Laudanum.), neglected his family, estranged his friends, and fell into humiliating dependence upon charitable benefactors. Changing physicians saved his life. We read the poetry of Coleridge with a sense of awe, because it expresses the marvelous and eternal mystery of the interpenetration of good and evil, of spirit and matter. In showing the effects of the supernatural on his character that remain unerringly faithful to our common human nature. He had the power to evoke an atmosphere of mystery, wonder, and pathos; and his command over the appropriate diction, rhythm, and harmony was complete.

Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788-1824) “It is in the contrast between his august conceptions of man, and his contemptuous opinions of men, that much of the almost incomprehensible charm, and power, and enchantment, of his poetry consists” – John Wilson

“He is like a solitary peak, all access to which is cut off not more by elevation than distance. He is stead on a lofty eminence, “cloud-capt”, or reflecting the last rays of setting suns; and in his poetical moods, reminds of us the fabled Titans, retired to a ridgy steep, playing on their Pan’s-pipes, and taking up ordinary men and things in their hands with haughty indifference. He raises his subject to himself, or tramples on it; he neither stoops to, nor loses himself in it. He exists not by sympathy, but by antipathy. He scorns all things, even himself. “ – William Hazlitt, 1821

George Gordon was born a poor boy in Aberdeen, Scotland to a twice-married father with a notorious background in lechery and gambling and a mother with a family strain of insanity. While barely into his teenage years, his uncle died and George Gordon became the 6th Lord Byron, instantly moving him to an estate in London, the top academy, and a seat in the House of Lords. He was undeniably the most popular of all these six and remains the most controversial. To Byron, man is an idea or an ideal men are- what they are. Although Byron seems to sneer at everything, he admired, as much as any Romantic, whatever was really true, good, and beautiful. He was enthusiastic bout the majestic features of Nature; he admired youth, womanhood, liberty, fame, and the glories of ancient Greece and Rome. He hated oppression and hypocrisy. In his world, so full of pain and evils, the doors are not shut against the possibility of all kinds of perfection. What separates him from the other Romantics is that he found it almost impossible to discern any manifestations of ideals in the actual life of mankind. Actual life was devoid of present bliss or future promise. The glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome, had no modern successors in Byron’s belief. Love and happiness might visit us in youth, but the rest of life was disillusionment.

Byron’s controversy surrounds his wild and often exaggerated (by the public) sex life and his public hate of Wordsworth and Coleridge. The one main poet that Byron had great respect for and worked with was Percy Shelley. At one time he was the public’s idol, but when they turned he felt driven into exile and fiercely resented them.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) “Alike remote from Byron’s scorn / And Keats’s magic as of morn, / Bursting forever newly-born On forest old, / To wake a hoary world forlorn / with a touch of gold; / Impatient of the world’s fixed way, / He ne’er could suffer God’s delay, / But all the future in a day / would build divine. – William Watson

Born into a wealthy family, he married and had a child as a young man. he would be spurned from this family and any chance at its wealth when he left his wife and child for Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Daughter of William Godwin, radical philosopher and Mary Wollstonecraft, radical feminist). His first wife then drowned herself. His actions during this youthful period would lead people to indict him as “rash, impious, and wicked”. He was in some ways a mentor for John Keats during a brief period when Keats first started writing. He was well respected by other poets for his intellect (fluent in 7 languages, could translate 6 of them) and craftsmanship, but his ideals and philosophies were strongly debated. Wordsworth said of Shelley, “he is the best artist of us all: I Mean in workmanship of style.” However, his greatest works would come later in life during the “Italian years” from 1818-1822. Rejecting our notion of territorial boundaries, Shelley believed himself to be a citizen of the earth. A challenge to write the best ghost story in a single night was made by Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and Mary Godwin. Percy and Byron failed to finish, but Mary (later Mary Shelley) began what is now Frankenstein (Originally titled, Modern Prometheus). Percy drowned to death in a boating accident – he had previously written that he imagined his death would come by drowning. Leigh Hunt and Lord Byron burned his fish-eaten body on the shore, but not before removing his heart and giving it to his wife Mary. She kept it with her at all times.

Shelley believed that the poet’s highest opportunity lay in not merely describing phenomena objectively but in evoking that ideal beauty which the visual appearance tended to veil. The Shelley of the great poems believed in a Soul of the Universe, a Spirit of Love, revealed through poetry and art. He believed that the will of mankind could be more successfully exerted against our besetting evils than it had been in the past, and that soon it would be thus exerted; but this liberation of mankind would be achieved, not by cool reason, but rather by ardent love and faith. To Shelley, those who struggled onwards in that spirit were the truly great and good.

John Keats (1795-1821) “In what other English poet (however superior to him in other respects) are you so certain of never opening a page without lighting upon the loveliest imagery and the most eloquent expressions? Name one.” – Leigh Hunt

At the age of 8 John Keats lost his father and at 14 his mother died of tuberculosis. Orphaned along with his brothers he was taken out of school at 15 and sent to become an apprentice of surgery and medicine until 21. Between the ages of 21 and 25 he would write his poetry. At 23 he would endure the deeply agonizing reality that his health and poverty would make marriage impossible with his fiancé. Furthermore, his brother would die of tuberculosis. Less than 9 months after these tragedies he would produce an astonishing sequence of masterpieces. But, at 24 he coughed up blood and realized that he would meet the same fate as his brother and mother. A year after that realization he died at the age of 25. However, in a mere four years of writing poetry, without any previous experience, he would show more potential than any English writer before or after. His potential is given the supremely rare compliment: if he lived a full life, he would have surpassed the work of Shakespeare.

To Keats it was possible, though difficult, to find happiness in human life. It could be found in art and in aesthetic appreciation of the universe, in the pursuit of knowledge, and best of all, in a sincere love of humanity.

Source: Anthology of Romanticism. E. Bernbaum

What to look for in Romantic Poetry

- Natural imagery redeems the imagination of the individual stuck in the crowded, industrial torment of the city. See Wordsworth’s I wandered Lonely as a Cloud, where the speaker, on a couch, imagines floating above a chorus of daffodils.

- The human imagination empowers the individual to escape from society’s strictures, established authority, and even from fear of death. Think about how Whitman’s (American Romantic Movement) speaker in When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer needs to leave the room where the lecture is happening in order to better understand the perfect silence of the stars.

- The sublime (impressively big, obscure, or scary) is the main descriptive mode, rather than the “merely beautiful.” Look at how the speaker in Shelley’s Ozymandias relies on words such as “vast,” “colossal,” and “boundless” to create a sense of how intimidating the statue must have been, and actually is.

- Transcendence is the ultimate goal of all the romantic poets. Wordsworth turns a city into a beating heart in Composed Upon Westminster Bridge Sept. 3, 1802; Shelley in Ode to the West Wind turns the wind into poetic inspiration; Keats turns an old urn into meditation on life and death in his Ode on a Grecian Urn; Whitman in his Noiseless Patient Spider turns a spider into a human soul surrounded by a vacant, vast expanse, yearning to be connected. What do all these poems have in common? Each finds transcendence in the ordinary.

Main British Romantic Poets: William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron (George Gordon), Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats.

Main American Romantic Poets: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman.

Related European Prose: Sir Walter Scott, Victor Hugo.

Related American Prose: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau.

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