Romantic period in English Literature. Focuses on romantic poets like Blake, Wordsworth, Colridge, Shelly, Keats, Byron. Includes a brief history and meaning of Romanticism.

1. An age of Poetry
Richa Shrivastava
M.A previous
English
Romanticism

2. The Romantic Movement
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven
-Wordsworth
As defined by Merriam Webster, dictionary.
2
A literary, artistic, and philosophical movement originating in the 18th
century, characterized chiefly by a reaction against neoclassicism and
an emphasis on the imagination and emotions, and marked especially
in English literature by sensibility and the use of autobiographical
material, an exaltation of the primitive and the common man, an
appreciation of external nature, an interest in the remote, a
predilection for melancholy, and the use in poetry of older verse forms.

3. 3
The age of Romanticism
https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-
victorians/articles/the-romantics
During the Romantic period major transitions took place in society, as dissatisfied
intellectuals and artists challenged the Establishment. In England, the Romantic
poets were at the very heart of this movement. They were inspired by a desire for
liberty, and they denounced the exploitation of the poor. There was an emphasis on
the importance of the individual; a conviction that people should follow ideals
rather than imposed conventions and rules. The Romantics renounced the
rationalism and order associated with the preceding Enlightenment era, stressing
the importance of expressing authentic personal feelings. They had a real sense of
responsibility to their fellow men: they felt it was their duty to use their poetry to
inform and inspire others, and to change society.
‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.’
-1762 Jean-Jacques Rousseau declared in The Social Contract

4. Features
Nature is visible spirit; spirit is invisible nature.
- Friedrich Schelling
• The Romantics changed reason and diction defining style of
Age of Reason to a imaginative and emotional style which
emphasized on nature.
• Philosophy of Kant and Schelling became prime reason of
the development of Romantic movement.
• The essence of Romanticism; literature must reflect all that
is spontaneous and unaffected in nature and in man.
• The absence of satiric tone in Romantics marks them
contrast to the poets of 18th centaury.
• Interest in ‘Primitive’ forms of art, like ancient ballads,
Folklores, Greek and Roman mythology and medieval
period.
4

5. The second creative
period of English
Literature
Influenced by the poets of Transition
period.
The poets like James Thomson, William
Collins, Thomas Grey, Thomas Percy,
James Macpherson, Blake, Burns all paved
the way for Romantic poetry which
attained its with the publication of Lyrical
Ballads by William Wordsworth and S.T
Coleridge in 1798.
5
Fig; Depiction of the storming of the Bastille, Paris - the event that triggered the French Revolution
“The principal object, proposed in these poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate
or describe them, throughout, as far as possible in a selection of language really used by men, and, at the same time, to
throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an
unusual aspect”
- Preface to the second edition of the lyrical Ballads, 1800

6. Fig1; first page of Lyrical Ballads, source- google
Fig2; Preface to Lyrical Ballads, source- British Library, site
6
Age characterized in
5 ‘I’s
• Imagination
• Idealism
• Intuition
• Inspiration
• Individuality
In the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth writes that he
has ‘taken as much pains to avoid [poetic diction] as others
ordinarily take to produce it’, trying instead to ‘bring [his]
language near to the language of men’.

7. Pre
Romantic
poets
1
st
Generatio
n of
Romantic
poets
2n
d
Generation
of
Romantic
poets
William Blake (1757-1827)
Robert Burns (1759-1796)
Walter Scott (1771-1832)
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
S.T Coleridge(1772-1834)
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Lord Byron ( George Gordon)(1788-1824)
P.B Shelly (1792-1822)
John Keats (1795-1821)
Also known as the Lake poets
Poets of the Romantic
Era

8. Romantics
8
Fig; Keats, shelly, Byron, Blake, and Coleridge

9. 9
Epitomes of
the Era
The poets who are milestones, in the
journey of Romantic Era
• William Blake
• William Wordsworth
• S.T Coleridge
• Lord Byron
• P.B Shelly
• John Keats
Fig; Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog,
by German Romantic artist Caspar David
Friedrich.

10. 10
William Blake
Born- 28th November 1757, Soho,
London, England
Died-12th August 1827, Charring Cross,
London, England
Occupation- Poet, Painter, Printmaker
Famous Poems-
• Songs of Innocence and Experience
• The Tyger
• The Lamb
• A Poison Tree
• London
• The Chimney Sweeper.

11. 11
If the doors of perception were cleansed,
everything will appear to man as it is; infinite.
• A visionary poet who was also an artist and
engraver, with a particular interest in
childhood and a strong hatred of mechanical
reason and industrialization.
• Had a reliance on the imagination,
idealization of childhood, freedom of thought
and expression, and an idealization of nature.
• Of all romantic poets of 18th century, Blake
was the most independent and most original.
• His poems were of pure fancy, mystery and
transcendental.

12. 12
William
Wordsworth
Born- 7 April 1770, Cockermouth,
Cumberland, England
Died- 23 April 1850, Rydal,
Westmorland, England
Alma mater- St. John’s College,
Cambridge
Occupation- Poet
Famous Works-
• The Prelude
• Tintern Abbey
• Daffodils
• Ode on Intimations of Immortality
• The Lucy Poems

13. 13
William J.Long, p- 393-399
Wordsworth gives you the bird and the flower, the
wind and the tree and the river, just as they are, and is
content to let them speak their own message
- W.J Long
• With ST Coleridge, formed deliberate purpose to make
literature ‘ adapted to interest mankind permanently.
( William J Long)
• Wordsworth was the greatest nature poet.
• Wordsworth was sensitive to every change around him.
• Among all the poets of Nature, no one compares with
him in truthfulness of his representation.
• He penetrates to the heart of things and always finds
some exquisite meaning that is not written on the
surface
• As a child Wordsworth considered natural objects like
the streams, the hills, the flowers, even the winds as his
companions and believed that all nature is reflection of
God.

14. Fig; Samuel Tylor Coleridge
14
S.T Coleridge
Born- 21 October 1772, Ottery St Mary,
Devon, Great Britain
Died- 25 July 2834, Highgate, Middlesex,
United Kingdom
Alma mater- Jesus College, Cambridge
Occupation- Poet, Critic, Philosopher
Famous Works-
• The Rime of Ancient Mariner
• Kubla Khan
• Frost at Midnight
• Dejection; An ode
• Fears in solitude

15. 15
William J Long. P-404-410
A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear,
A Stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,
In word, or sigh or tear. – ‘Ode to Dejection’
• The poet had only grief and remorse for himself, but
for his readers he had a cheering message.
Coleridge, a man of grief who makes the world glad.
• His works are divided into three parts- the poetic,
the critical and the philosophical.
• His early poems shows the influence of Blake.
Difference; in Blake’s we have only a dreamer, in
Coleridge we have a combination of dreamer and
scholar. E.g. – ‘A Day Dream’
• In his later poems his imagination bridled by
thought and study. E.g.- Kubla Khan, Christabel,
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Fig; A Walking Tour of Cumbria, by S.T
Coleridge

16. 16
George Gordon(Lord
Byron)
Born- 22 January 1788, London, England
Died- 19 April 1824, Missolonghi, Aetolia,
Ottoman Empire. ( present day Aetolia-
Acarnania)
Alma mater- Trinity college, Cambridge
Occupation- Poet, Politician
Famous poems-
• Don Juan
• She walks in beauty
• Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
• The Corsair

17. 17
William J Long and https://learnodo-
newtonic.com/lord-byron-famous-poems
I love not man the less, but Nature more.
- Lord Byron
• His initial poems were in general known to be
shallow and insincere in thought, and,
Declamatory or bombastic in expression.
• His meeting with Shelly after exile, brought a
good change in his writing style.
• His poems were filled with poetic feelings for
nature. E.g. Childe Harold
• Known for his Byronic heroes, like Don Juan.
• Lord Byron is often described as the most
flamboyant and notorious of the major
Romantics.
• He was the most expressive writer of his age in
voicing the discontent and motivated failures of
the French Revolution.

18. 18
Percy Bysshe
Shelly
Born- 4 August 1792, Horsham Sussex,
England
Died- 8 July 1822, Gulf of La Spezia,
Kingdom of Sardinia ( now Italy)
Alma mater- University of Oxford
Occupation- Poet, politician
Famous Poems-
• Ozymandias
• Ode to the West Wind
• To a Skylark
• Alastor
• Mont Blanc

19. 19
William J Long p- 429-431
“A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and
sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Shelly’s own spirit of nature is reflected in his
poetry.
• As a lyric poet. Shelly is one of the supreme
geniuses of our literature.
• His poems have two different moods. One is of
violent reformer as portrayed in Queen Mab,
Revolt of Islam, Hellas and The Witch of Atlas.
The other one is forever sad and unsatisfied
wanderer, as in Alastor, and Adonais.
• In his interpretation of nature Shelly suggests
Wordsworth both by resemblance and by
contrast.
• To both poets all objects of nature are symbol of
truth.

20. 20
John Keats
Born- 31 October 1795, Moorgate,
London, England
Died- 23 February 1821, Rome, Papal
States
Alma mater- King’s College London
Occupation- Poet
Famous poems-
• Ode to Nightingale
• Ode on a Grecian urn
• To Autumn
• When I Have Fears
• The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy

21. 21
William J Long
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,'--that is all Ye
know on earth, and all ye need to know.
- Ode to a Grecian Urn
• He was the last and most perfect of the
Romanticists.
• He lived apart from men and political
discontent, worshiping beauty like a devotee
and content to write what was in his heart.
• In all his works there is impression of his
loyalty to art; he lived for poetry and poetry
alone.
• Keats sought to express beauty for its own sake.
• His letters indicates strong and noble manhood.
• All his works were done in four or five years, as
he died at the age of 25.
• Belonged to Cockney school of poetry . His
poems were criticized for being difficult to
common man.
Fig; manuscript of, Ode on Gracian Urn

22. Timeline
1660-
1700
Age of
Restoration
1700-
1760
Augustan Age
- American
Revolution, 1776
1760-
1798
Age of Johnson.
- French
Revolution, 1789
1798-
1850
Publication of
Lyrical Ballads
by William
Wordsworth
and S.T
Coleridge.
Beginning of
Romantic Age.
≈186
0End of
Romantic Age.
22
Neo- Classical Age
What chains can hold belongs to men. The rest is Gods.”
― James Byron Huggins,

23. Reference
• English Literature; its history and significance on , by William J. Long
• English literature, by Arihant
• https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-romantics
• https://crossref-it.info/articles/361/romantic-poetry
• http://www.sturgeonenglish.com/uploads/1/3/6/0/13602064/rom.lit.c
har.pdf
• https://www.jstor.org/stable/901360?read-
now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
• http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/nc/ncintro.html
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Fig; Painting by Albert Birstadt