BRITISH ROMATICS

1. “Rejecting the ordered rationality of the Enlightenment as
mechanical, impersonal, and artificial, the Romantics turned to the
emotional directness of personal experience and to the
boundlessness of individual imagination and aspiration.”

2. These values manifested themselves in literature in several important ways, listed
below. It is important to keep in mind that nothing on this list describes all Romantic
literature or all Romantic writers. These general ideas, however, provide a reasonable
description of tendencies which would have been fairly commonplace amongst
Romantics.
Art, as the product of individual creation, is highly prized. Many Romantics “found admirers read to hero-
worship the artist as a genius or prophet.”
Nature, rural life, and pastoral imagery make common subjects for poetry.
Individual achievements are highly prized. This notion applies both to actual people (artists, writers, military
heroes, explorers, etc.) and also to fictional characters. This tendency produces the notion of the “romantic
hero” and the “Byronic hero”.
Many Romantic writers, especially the poets, believed all people, regardless of wealth or social class, should
be able to appreciate art and literature, and artists should create art or literature accessible to everyone.

3. Famous Romantic Poets
William Blake (1757 – 1827)
William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834)
Lord Byron (1788 – 1824)
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822)
John Keats: (1795 – 1821)
Definitions of the canon of any period are constantly in flux, but for the Romantic Era in
England, there are six writers who will doubtless find their way into any such
definition. They are listed here in chronological order based on birth:

4. Blake is famous not only for his poems, but for the illuminated plates on
which he printed them. His poetry is highly visual. An excellent compilation of
these plates is available here: The William Blake Archive.
Blake’s personal spirituality and his views of theological issues frequently filter
into his work, perhaps most famously in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and
in Jerusalem. His most famous works are likely those in Songs of Innocence
and of Experience. The poems often function in pairs, one from the perspective
of childlike “innocence,” the other from the perspective of disillusioned
“experience.” Several of these poems, with the accompanying plates, appear on
this brief slideshow.
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5. Wordsworth is one of the domineering figures of British Romanticism. He was good friends with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and
the two of them settled in the Lake District in northwestern England. The group is often referred to as “the Lake Poets.”
In 1798, Wordsworth and Coleridge anonymously published a collection of poems entitled Lyrical Ballads. Many critics cite the
publication of this volume as the true beginning of the Romantic Period. In the 2nd edition of Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth added
a preface which outlines his aesthetic theory and his views on what makes for good poetry. This preface is often considered as a
manifesto of Romantic ideology.
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6. Coleridge’s role in Lyrical Ballads is often overshadowed by Wordsworth, but
Coleridge’s poetic skill stands on its own. Though not as prolific as Wordsworth,
many of Coleridge’s works resonate with readers in ways few other poets are able
to match. “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is a narrative poem that is a mix of
traditional ballad form, adventure story, and tale of spiritual redemption.
“Kubla Khan” is slightly less famous as a poem, but its backstory is notorious:
Coleridge fell asleep while high on Laudanum (which is basically opium dissolved
in alcohol), had a crazy dream in which he wrote a few hundred lines of poetry,
woke up claiming to remember everything he had written in the dream and
started writing it in real life, only to be interrupted by a knock on his door after
recording about 50 lines. The knock on his door caused him to forget everything
else. RETURN

7. Byron is one of the few British Romantic writers to achieve widespread fame during
his lifetime. Byron was good friends with Percy Shelley, but very much disliked by
Wordsworth and Coleridge.
In fact, Byron’s poetry bears little resemblance to that of the Lake Poets; it’s style and
form is much more similar to British poetry of the 18th century. His contribution to
the period comes in the form of the Byronic hero, a “boldly defiant but bitterly self-
tormenting outcast, proudly contemptuous of social norms but suffering for some
unnamed sin”. RETURN

8. Percy Shelley was in many ways a stereotypical degenerate artist. He was
constantly in debt (despite his family’s wealth), often on the move, and
deliberately provocative in the face of established traditions and social norms,
prizing artistry and social rebellion above stability and acceptance.
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9. Keats was the prodigy of the Romantics. Though dead at age 25, he was
enormously prolific. During his brief career, he was stubbornly (tough fairly
successfully) insistent on maintaining his artistic independence and
originally, even going so far as to refuse to befriend Percy Shelley out of fear
that the slightly older, more established poet might influence his writing.
As a result, Keats's poetry, though distinctly Romantic in
flavor, is unlike any of his contemporaries. He is best known
for his sonnets and odes, particularly "Ode to a Nightingale"
and Ode on a Grecian Urn." He is also well-known for his love
of the classics of antiquity, which often filters into his poetry.
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10. Last but not least . . .
CONCEPT OF
POETRY: THE
POET
 Poetry was seen as “the spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings”; the
essence of poetry was the mind,
emotions, and the imagination of
the poet (not the outer world).
POETIC
SPONTANEITY:
FREEDOM
 The initial act of poetic
composition must arise from
impulse, be free from rler
inherited from the past; and rely
on instinct, intuition and feelings.
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