The Romantic Era in British literature lasted from 1780-1830. Writers during this period reacted against aristocratic society and rationalism, instead emphasizing emotions, nature, and common people. Some major literary trends included critiquing or invoking the past, speaking to common people, love of nature, and nationalism. Famous Romantic authors included Lord Byron, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Blake, Mary Shelley, John Keats, Percy Shelley, and Mary Shelley. Three important concepts were the sublime (passion, terror, infinity), beautiful (beauty with imperfections like love), and picturesque (having a painted quality, rough beauty).

1. Introduction to the British
Romantics

2. The Romantic Era
 Lasted from approximately 1780-1830
 A time of major changes and revolution
 Both the American and French Revolutions had a large impact
 A revolution of gender ideals was also arising
 Writers were resisting aristocratic society and the
politics of the Enlightenment
 They were also reacting to the rationalization of
nature.

3. Some Literary Trends
 Evoking or criticizing the past
 Speaking to the “common” people
 Love of nature
 Sense of nationalism and exoticism

4. Big Names in Literature
 Lord Byron
 William Wordsworth
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge
 William Blake
 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
 John Keats
 Percy Bysshe Shelley
 Mary Anne Radcliffe

5. 3 Major Buzzwords
Sublime
Beautiful
Picturesque

6. Sublime
 something that excites the ideas of pain and danger
or is associated with terror
 Produces the strongest emotions the mind is capable
of feeling
 Associated with: passion, terror, mystery, power,
vastness, infinity
 From Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful

7. Sublime

8. Beautiful
 A tactic allowance of imperfection; “beauty in
distress is the most affecting beauty”
 Has a lot to do with love; the feelings of love, etc.
 Smoothness, softness, neatness
 From Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful

9. Beautiful

10. Picturesque
 Having some quality of being illustrated in a painting
 Related to beauty, the more imperfect and distressed
kind
 Roughness, ruggedness
 Things that are picturesque have a sense of history
and use, almost a “lived-in” quality
 From William Gilpin’s “On Picturesque Beauty”

11. Picturesque

12. John Keats – “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.