The Romantic Period

1789 – 1832

Mary Shelley, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Williams Wordsworth

Poets of this time

1.  believed in the shift from faith in reason to faith in the senses, feelings, and imagination

2.  had an interest in the rural and natural

3.  had an interest in the mysterious and infinite

4.  believed in the importance of the individual, imagination and intuition.

In England, it was a time of optimism and revolution, revolt, and radical political thought.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth co-authored the Lyrical Ballads in 1798. Their lyric poems stressed the importance of the intensely intimate nature of having a 1st person speaker of the poem and celebrated emotions, imagination and nature.

The term “Romantic” was coined by historians 50 years after the literary movement.

They identified the following characteristics of the literary works of this period.

1.  a fascination with youth and innocence

2.  a trust in individual emotions (intuition and individualism)

3.  an idealism based in revolution; that the common man could question authority in order to imagine a better way to live.

Wordsworth said that all poetry should be “a spontaneous overflow of emotion.”

The emphasis here is on EMOTIONS over REASON.

Other miscellaneous notes:

These poets pursued the SUBLIME in their works. Their poetry is meant to elevate the reader from the mundane world and enable them to “see into the life of things.” This is ultimately a search for true identity. The meditative poems offer a source of serenity and tranquility that restores anxiety-filled, disillusioned, saddened mankind.

They saw an interrelationship between the mind of the poet, imagination and Nature which was deeply psychological.

The poem that embraces all these ideals best is Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.” The poem includes the following subjects (concepts): imagination, youth, loss, nature, experience and MOST IMPORTANTLY, the emotional power of MEMORY.

Viva La France!