English literature in the romantic period

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English literature in the Romantic period
Historical Events
The Industrial Revolution in 1769 and The American war of Independence in 1776, influenced England from a political and economic point of view; instead the French Revolution Influenced the ideology of the British.
The feelings caused by these three events are expressed in the Romantic period.
Etymology
Romanticism comes from the adjective “Romantic” used in the 17th century with a negative mean to indicate fantastic and unrealistic things.
In the 18th century with the revaluation of supernatural it acquires a positive mean in contrast with reason and rationality of the Enlightment.

Themes
The main themes of the author in this period are:
• Individual relation between Man and Nature
• Imagination as a way to escape from the real World
• Artist as an original creator, a natural genius free from any neo-classical rules
So the Romantic poets wrote poetry that expresses a feeling of nostalgia through introspection and melancholy.

The periods
We usually divided the Romantic poets in three different generations:
• The Early Romantic poets
They are: Thomas Chatterton (1752 – 1770)
Robert Burns (1759 – 1796)
William Blake (1757 – 1827)
• The First generation
They are: William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850)
Samuel T. Coleridge (1772 – 1834)
• The second generation
They are: Lord Byron (1788 – 1824)
Percy B. Shelley (1792 – 1822)
John Keats (1795 – 1821)

Important events:
In 1798 Wordsworth and Coleridge published “The Lyrical Ballads”, (manifesto of English Romanticism). In the preface of this opera Wordsworth established the basis of Romanticism; in particular he answered to these questions:
- What is poetry? “I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity”

- What is a poet? “He is a man speaking to men: a man, it true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul; a man with his own passions and volitions”
- What is the best language to describe both of them? “The principal object was to choose incidents and situations from common life in a selection of language really used by men to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination” “Low and rustic life was generally chosen, because in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil and speak a plainer and more emphatic language”

Some notices about W. Wordsworth
He was born in Cocker mouth, near Lake District, and in the peace and the beauty of this country he found inspiration for his poetry.
His works are: “The Prelude”; “Poems in two volumes”; “The excursion”.
His themes are:
• Nature as: Countryside opposed to the town
Active force
Source of feelings
• Child: according to Rousseau’s ideas he thought that during the childhood we can understand the preciousity of the natural world.
He wrote for everybody, but thought that no everybody can be a poet.
He was a democratic thinker, because he was convinced that everybody should read poetry to learn how to express feelings.
In this poetry we can find both the conception of nature as opposed to the town and as a source of feeling:

“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.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: -
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -and gazed -but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.

In this one the nature is an active force that rolled the dead woman “with rocks, stones and trees”:
“A slumber did my spirit seal”
A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
Some notices about S.T. Coleridge
He added to the classical romantic themes the emphasis of the supernatural and the mystery.
His most famous works are: “Kubla khan”; “The rime of the ancient mariner”.
Some kind of scoop about Coleridge: He could only write under the effect of drugs and in particular of opium. So he was ill and suffered a lot.
“Kubla khan” is probably a result of an opium dream. As a matter of fact it’s incomplete, because he never finished his dream.

This is a piece from the most famous ballad of Coleridge.
We can find both the personification of the nature that had a salvation function, and the visionary intent of the author.
“The rime of the ancient mariner”
Part I
“And now the storm-blast came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:
He struck with his o'ertaking wings,
And chased us south along.

With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe,
And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
And southward aye we fled.

And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.

And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken -
The ice was all between.

The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!

At length did cross an Albatross,
Thorough the fog it came;
As it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name. […]

Part II
The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.

Down dropped the breeze, the sails dropped down,
'Twas sad as sad could be;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!

All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the moon.

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.

About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white.

And some in dreams assured were
Of the Spirit that plagued us so;
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow.

And every tongue, through utter drought,
Was withered at the root;
We could not speak, no more than if
We had been choked with soot.

Ah! well-a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung."