The Romantic Period: 1798–1832

Fast Facts

Literary Highlights

• Romanticism arises as a response to social and economic changes caused by the Industrial Revolution.

• Wordsworth and Coleridge publish Lyrical Ballads in 1798. Thus starting the Romantic Era.

• Keats, Byron, and Shelley write their greatest poems in the early nineteenth century.

Key Concept: Revolution Spreads

History of the Times

• Because the French king has been overthrown

by a democratic mob, the French Revolution is

radical and frightening to English ruling classes.

• English conservatives worry that revolutionary fever will cross the Channel to England.

• Until the violence and terror escalate, English liberals support the French Revolution’s ideals of “liberty, fraternity, equality.”

Key Concept: Conservatives Clamp Down

Literature of the Times

The Romantic poets

• were dedicated to political and social change • believed in the power of literature • thought imagination—not reason—was the best response to forces of change • created private, spontaneous lyric poetry

Key Concept: Conservatives Clamp Down

Some Romantic Poets

William Blake George Gordon, Lord Byron But to the eyes of the man of imagination nature is imagination itself. As a man is, so he sees. . . . To me this world is all one continued vision of fancy or imagination.

—William Blake John Keats Percy Bysshe Shelley

Themes of Romantic Poetry

Influences on Romantic Poetry

• Spread of democratic ideals through the American and French Revolutions and disillusionment after failure of French Revolution • Reactions against harsh living and working conditions created for urban poor by the Industrial Revolution • Fascination with nature and country life, which seemed a blissful retreat from city slums

Themes of Romantic Poetry

A New Focus in Poetry

• Invited readers to feel power and passion • Tried to capture personal experience

Restoration Era

• Order had just been

restored.

• Poets celebrated order,

hierarchy, and enlightened rule.

Romantic Period

• • Society needed social change.

Poets wrote about personal feelings, supported individual rights, and used everyday language.

Themes of Romantic Poetry

A New Focus in Poetry

Romantic poets • embraced imagination and naturalness instead of reason and artifice • wrote about personal experiences and emotions, often using simple language • saw nature as transformative; focused on the ways nature and the human mind mirrored each other’s creative properties Percy Bysshe Shelley

Themes of Romantic Poetry

Imagination: The Inspired Guide

• Many say the Romantic movement began in 1798 when Wordsworth and Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads. • The Romantics are often considered nature poets. • However, they are really “mind poets” who sought to understand the bond between humans and the world of the senses.

Forms of Romantic Poetry

Characteristics of Romantic Poetry

• Expresses the emotions and concerns of an individual as well as of society • Varies the structure of traditional forms to suit a poem’s purpose • Focuses on a poet’s personal connection to nature

Forms of Romantic Poetry

Function over Form

The Romantics took poetry in a new direction.

18th Century Poets

• Poetry was a strictly

defined literary genre.

• Poets used formal

language and structured traditional forms such as odes and sonnets.

• Form seems more

important than function.

Romantic Poets

•

Poetry was a playground of feelings.

•

Poets experimented with forms and expressed feelings in natural language.

•

Function seems more important than form.