Romanticism; Romantic movement; Romantic poetry.

1. Romanticism
Romance

2. Romanticism

3. Romanticism
1770 - 1850

4. Romanticism

5. Romanticism

6. The World Is Too Much With Us
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune,
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
William Wordsworth

7. So We'll Go No More A-roving
So we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart still be as loving,
And the moon still be as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul outwears the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.
Lord Byron

8. Bright Star
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.
John Keats

9. A Broken Friendship
Alas! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love,
Doth work like madness in the brain.
And thus is chanced, as I divine,
With Roland and Sir Leoline.
Each spake words of high disdain
And insult to his heart's best brother:
They parted - ne'er to meet again!
But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from painting -
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;
A dreary see now flows between; -
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once hath been
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

10. 1. Emotions over reason - Wordsworth:
“Spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions.”
2. Creativity and Imagination - Coleridge:
‘Intellectual Intuition’.
3. Love of Nature
Romanticism

11. 1. Emotions over Reason
• As a reaction to Renaissance / Neo-classicism
• Reason & Rationality v/s Feelings & Intuition
• Objectivity v/s Subjectivity
• Intellect v/s Emotions & Instinct
• Social norms v/s Inner voice
• Rejection of religion and other absolute systems
Romanticism

12. 2. Creativity & Imagination
• Imagination is supreme.
• Romanticism does not completely reject reason, but elevates
the status of imagination.
• Imagination is a liberating force.
• Allows the poet to travel through time & space.
• Allows the exploration of alternate realities.
Romanticism

13. 3. Love of Nature
• The healing force of nature.
• The spiritual values of nature.
• A reaction against industrialization & urbanization.
• Idealized country life.
• Nature as inspirational force.
Romanticism

14. The Precursors
Romanticism
Robert Burns William Blake

15. A Red Red Rose
O my Luve's like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June;
O my Luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly play'd in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry:
Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun:
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.
And fare thee well, my only Luve
And fare thee well, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile.
Robert Burns

16. The Angel
I dreamt a dream! What can it mean?
And that I was a maiden Queen
Guarded by an Angel mild:
Witless woe was ne'er beguiled!
And I wept both night and day,
And he wiped my tears away;
And I wept both day and night,
And hid from him my heart's delight.
So he took his wings, and fled;
Then the morn blushed rosy red.
I dried my tears, and armed my fears
With ten-thousand shields and spears.
Soon my Angel came again;
I was armed, he came in vain;
For the time of youth was fled,
And grey hairs were on my head.
William Blake

17. Gothicism

18. Gothicism
• In 1816 Lord Byron hosted a ghost story writing contest involving himself, Percy
Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley and John William Polidori.
• Percy Bysshe Shelley (1810). St. Irvyne or the Rosicrucian, a Romance.
• Mary Shelley (1818). Frankenstein.
• Robert Louis Stevenson (1886). The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde.
• Bram Stocker (1897). Dracula.
• Edgar Allan Poe: American Romanticism.