Romantic age

 

The romantic period is the most fruitful period in the history of English literature. The period starts from 1798 with the publication of lyrical ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge and the famous preface which Wordsworth wrote as a manifesto of new form of poetry in opposition to classical poetry.

The first characteristic of romantic poetry which was focused by Wordsworth and Coleridge was simplicity and naturalness of its diction.Wordsworth chose the language of common people because it is the most sincere expression of deepest feelings.Wordsworth also wanted the poets to become interested in rural life and simple folk living in the lap of nature.

Romantics attached the supremacy of the heroic couplets as the only form of writing poetry and substituted it by simple and natural diction. Romantics diverted the attention from artificial town’s life to the life in the moods and religions and by emphasizing on imagination and emotions against dry intellectualism of classical school of thought.

 

POETS OF ROMANTIC AGE

1.   LAKE POETS

The lack poets formed a school in a sense that they worked in close cooperation and their lives were spent partly in the Lake District. Only Wordsworth was born there but all the three lived there for shorter or longer period.

a- Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Wordsworth was the greatest part of romantic period. The credit of originating Romantic Movement goes to him .he stood against the great poets and critics like Dryden, Pope and Johnson and made way for a new type of poetry.

By defining poetry as ‘the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling’, he revolted against the dry intellectuality of his predecessors.Wordsworth wrote a large number and variety of lyrics in which he can stern the deepest emotions by the simplest means. Besides lyrics Wordsworth also wrote a number of sonnets like ‘to Milton, the world is too much with us’, in which there is fine combination of dignity of thoughts and language. In his odes as ‘ode to duty, and ode to the intimations of immortality’, he gives expression to his high ideals and philosophy of life.Wordsworth is the poet of man, nature and of human life. He discovered that there is innate Harmony between nature and man .It is when man lives in the lap of nature, that he lives the right type of life. His longer poems are prosy. The Prelude, treating of the growth of the poet’s mind is the first long book. The Excursion is the second and the third one is Recluse which was never completed .According to Tennyson,’ Wordsworth uttered nothing base.’

b- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 The genius of Coleridge was complementary to that of Wordsworth. While Wordsworth dealt with naturalism Coleridge made the Supernatural his special domain .Coleridge was a man of gigantic genius but his lack of will power and addiction to opium prevented him from accomplishing much in the realm of poetry. Whatever he has written though of high quality is fragmentary. His best known poems are the Ancient Mariner, Christabel and Kubla Khan. The Ancient Mariner is a poetic Masterpiece in which Coleridge introduces The Reader to a Supernatural realm with a phantom ship, a crew of Dead Man, Curse of the Albatross and the major magic grease to create a sense of absolute reality concerning these manifest absurdities. In it the poet deals with the emotions of love, hate, pain and hope in a superb manner .This poem is the most representative of the romantic School of poetry .Christabel and Kubla Khan are fragment poems. Christabel deals with the story of a pure young girl who fell under the spell of a sorcerer in the shape of women Geraldine.Kubla khan, the poem came when he fallen asleep and upon awakening he began to write hastily, what was interrupted after 54 lines and it was never finished.

c- Robert Southey

 He was third of group of Lake poets .he lacked higher qualities of poetry but was a voracious reader and writer .his most ambitious poems “Thalaba, The Curse Of Kehama, Madoc and Roderick” are based on mythology of different nations .He wrote far better prose than poetry and his admirable ‘life of Nelson’ remains a classic .He was made Laureate in 1813 and after his death in 1843 Wordsworth held this title.

 

 2-The Scott group

 

2.   Sir Walter Scott

3.   Thomas Campbell

4.   Thomas Moore

 

 3-The younger group

 

a- Lord George Gordon Byron

 

During his time Byron was the most popular poet of all romantic poets. This was mainly due to the force of his personality and the glamour of his career but as his poetry does not possess the high excellence. He has a lower position in the hierarchy of romantic poems. He is the only romantic poet who showed the regard for the poets of 18th century and ridicule his own contemporary in his early satirical poems ‘English bard and Scottish reviewers’, that is why he is called the romantic Paradox .Byron captured the imagination of his readers by publication of childe Harold’s pilgrimage. He has also written two tragedies Manfred and Cain .He is famous for his heroes who were glamorous yet Sinister known as Byronic heroes .The greatness of Byron as a poet in his satire Beppo, the vision of judgment and Don juan.Don Juan is one of the greatest poems in English language. Byron was the most egoistical and attached greatest personality.

 

b- Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

 Shelley was a Revolutionary idealist, a prophet of hope and Faith. He was a visionary who dreamed of the Golden age in his early days .he came under the influence of William Godwin .he came to imagine a new world free from cruelty and injustice in his first long poem queen mab .he condemned Kings government, Church, marriage and Christianity .in 1820 he wrote ‘Prometheus unbound’ in which we find the finest Expression of Shelley’s faith and hope.Shelley’s reputation as a poet lies mainly in the lyric power. He is greatest lyrical poet of England. Shelley wrote a number of small lyrics such as Ozymandias, stanza written in dejection, Ode to west wind, cloud and skylark etc.

 

c-John Keats

 

Of all the romantic poets, Keats was the pure poet. He was not the last but the most perfect .he was devoted to poetry and had no other interest. Keats came of a poor family where his passion for writing poetry was aroused by Spencer Faerie Queene. In 1817 his first long poem Endymion appeared and was severely criticized by contemporary critics. After that the loss of his father, mother and brother was intensified by his disappointment in love for Fanny brawne and a deadly disease TB .but he remained undaunted and under the shadow of death, he brought out his last poem in 1880.They include the three narratives, Isabella, the eve of st.Agnes and Lamia, the unfinished Hyperion, the odes and a few sonnets.

Of the odes, ode to nightingale, on a Grecian and to autumn are among the masterpieces of keats.Though he died young, he attained much achievements barely at the age of 25.He was not an escapist who tried to run away from the harsh realities of life but came to the conclusion, that suffering plays great role in the development of human personality. He wanted to become the poet of human heart. For him the proper role of poetry is to be friend, to soothe and take care of lives. Taking his short span of life and his high ideals in consideration, it is no exaggeration to say that of all the English poets, he came nearest to Shakespeare.