The document discusses Pre-Romanticism through analyzing key figures and trends that preceded and helped establish Romanticism. It outlines that Jean-Jacques Rousseau's ideas influenced both the French Revolution and Romanticism. Pre-Romanticism began in the 1740s and prepared the way for Romanticism through an emphasis on individual feeling, primitivism, and interest in nature, emotion, and the supernatural. Thomas Gray, William Blake, William Cowper, Robert Burns, and James Thomson are highlighted as important Pre-Romantic poets and artists.

1. Pre-Romanticism
Indranil Sarkar
Contact: 9859945270

2. Pre-Romanticism
Rousseau’s ideas of ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’
were not only the key-terms of the ‘French Revolution',
these were the life-force behind Romanticism also.
Russoue gave his messege to the world in the 1870s
which is now called ‘Pre-Romantic’ period in English

3. Pre-Romanticism
Pre-Romanticism is a cultural movement in Europe
from about the 1740s onward. It succeeded Neo-
Classicism and preceded and presaged Romanticism
which officially began in 1798 with the publication of
“The Lyrical Ballads” by Wordsworth and Coleridge.

4. Pre-Romanticism
Pre-Romanticism is thought to have prepared the
ground for Romanticism in its full sense. In various
ways, these are all departures from the orderly
framework of neoclassicism and its authorized
genres.
Marshall Brown, Preromanticism (1991).
From: preromanticism in The Oxford Dictionary of Literary

5. Pre-Romanticism
The most important constituents of preromanticism are the Sturm und Drang
phase of German literature; the primitivism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and
of Ossianism; the cult of sensibility in the sentimental novel; the taste for the
sublime and the picturesque in landscape; the sensationalism of the early
Gothic novels; the melancholy of English graveyard poetry; and the revival
of interest in old ballads and romances. These developments seem to have
helped to give a new importance to subjective and spontaneous individual
feeling.
Marshall Brown, Preromanticism (1991).

6. Pre-Romantics
Thomas Grey; William Cowper; William Blake; Robert Burns
and James Thomson are considered as the most noted Pre-
Romantic poets, painters and litterateurs .

7. Pre-Romanticism
Thomas Gray (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771)
Although Thomas Gray was one of the least productive poets
(his collected works published during his lifetime amount to
fewer than 1,000 lines), he is regarded as the foremost Pre-
Romantic poet. Gray was so self-critical and fearful of failure
that he published only thirteen poems during his lifetime.
Thomas Gray was a poet, letter-writer, classical scholar and
professor at Cambridge University. Link: wikipedia.org

8. Pre-Romantics

9. Pre-
Romanticism
“Elegy written in a Country Churchyard” (1751) is
Gray’s masterpiece and he is remembered to day for
this immortal elegy.
He is often classed as a ‘Graveyard Poet’ for his
‘melancholic’ notes.
Link: wikipedia.org

10. WWilliam Blake
William Blake
Hardly there exist a single English knowing man who has not
read Blake’s ‘Tyger, Tyger, burning bright’ or ‘Little Lamb! Who
made thee? But, this was certainly not the case when Blake
wrote these poems. He was held mad by his contemporaries
and had to suffer extreme hardship and die as an unsung poet
cum painter of his country.
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) is
recognized today as a precursor of Romantic literature and
painting.
William Rossetti characterized him as a "glorious luminary”.

11. William Blake
In 2002,BBC Poll review found Blake in No.38 among all
great Britons of all ages.
He is held in high regard for his expressiveness and
creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical
undercurrents within his work.
His paintings and poetry possess an undertone of
‘Romanticism’ and as such he is called a "Pre-Romantic".
Link: Wikipedia.org

12. William Cowper
William Cowper(26 November 1731 – 25 April 1800)
William Cowper was a poet and hymnodist. One of
the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed
the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing
of everyday life and scenes of the English
countryside. Samuel Taylor Coleridge called him "the
best modern poet”.
Link: wikipedia.org

13. William Cowper
William Cowper
His poem “Light Shining out of Darkness” gave the English
language the phrase:
"God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform”.
In Olney Hymns (1779),'Walking with God’, he wrote:-
‘God made the country, and man made the town’.
This sentence has become a slogan for the
environmentalists and naturalists of the late 20th century.

14. Robert Burns
(1759–1796 )
Robert Burns recorded and celebrated aspects of farm life, regional
experience, traditional culture, class culture and distinctions, and religious
practice and belief in such a way as to transcend the particularities of his
inspiration, becoming finally the national poet of Scotland.(poet’s corner)
"Ye Banks And Braes O'Bonnie Doon” is a Scottish song. The tune of this inspired
Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore to compose his song" Phule Phule Dhole Dhole”.
Robert Burns composed the original lyric. The song immortalized both Robert
Burns and Rabindranath Tagore. It is popular all over the globe.
Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon,
How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?
How can ye chant ye little birds,
And I sae weary, fu' o' care?

15. Robert Burns
[1759–1796]
Ye'll break my heart, ye warbling birds,
That wanton through the flow'ry thorn,
Ye 'mind me o' departed joys,
Departed never to return.
Oft hae I rov'd by bonnie Doon,
To see the rose and woodbine twine;
And ilka bird sang o' its love,
And fondly sae did I o' mine.

16. Robert Burns
(1759–1796 )
Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose,
Fu' sweet upon its thorny tree;
And my fause lover stole my rose,
But ah! he left the thorn wi' me.
Robert Burns is also remembered for his beautiful song ‘My Luve is
like a Red, Red Rose’.
Tagore heard the Scottish song ‘"Ye Banks And Braes O'Bonnie
Doon” as a young man of 21,on his first visit to England. He,later
adapted it in Bengali for his work “The Fatal Hunt” or “(Kalmrigaya)”.
It was used for the goddess’ song as ‘Phule Phule Dhole Dhole’ in
Scene 2 (The flowers! They slumber).The song was composed by
Rabindranath at the age of 21 and was set to Taal "Khemta”.

17. Robert Burns
"A Red, Red Rose" is a 1794 song in Scots by Robert Burns based on traditional
My luve is like a Red,Red
Rose
 O my Luve is like a red, red rose
 That’s newly sprung in June;
 O my Luve is like the melody
 That’s sweetly played in tune.

So 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 love thee still, my dear,
 While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve!
 And fare thee weel awhile!
 And I will come again, my luve,
 Though it were ten thousand
mile.
sources.

18. James Thomson
James Thomson (11 September 1700 – 27 August 1748) was a Scottish
and British Pre-Romantic poet and playwright. He is known to day for his
masterpiece The Seasons and the lyrics of “Rule, Britania!".
Thomson studied at Edinburgh University. Thomson became a member of
the Grotesque Club, a literary group there, and he met his lifelong friend
David Mallet.
His famous works are The Seasons; To the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton;
Liberty (1734);Rule Britania; The Castle of Indolence etc.

19. James Thomson
Thomson published his masterpiece, a long, blank verse poem in four
parts, called The Seasons: Winter in 1726, Summer in 1727, Spring in
1728, and the whole poem, including Autumn, in 1730.
The Seasons was the first sustained nature poem in English and
concludes with a “Hymn to Nature.” The work was a revolutionary
departure; its novelty lay not only in subject matter but in structure. What
was most striking to Thomson’s earliest readers was his audacity in
unifying his poem without a “plot” or other narrative device, thereby defying
the Aristotelian criteria revered by the Neoclassicist critics.
Link: Encyclopedia Britannica

20. The Seasons by James Thomson

21. Summer

22. Pre-Romanticism
An Outline of Trends in Pre-Romanticism through Romanticism:
Faith in the instinctive goodness of human beings: Anthony Ashley Cooper,
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, "An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit“;
Faith in the relatively high moral and religious value of sympathy or
benevolence (School of Sensibility): Steele, Careless Husband (drama);
Geo. Akenside, The Pleasures of Imagination; Samuel Rogers, The
Pleasures of Memory; Richardson, Pamela; Stern, Tristram Shandy.

23. Pre-Romanticism
Interest in humanitarian movements and reforms (origin of
labor standards, child labor laws, slave trade, mental health,
and penal reform
Accurate observation of nature, though without mysticism,
sometimes with the suggestion that nature has a religious
significance (Thomson, the Seasons
Elegiac interest: in death, mutability, mourning, melancholy
(Graveyard School): Blair’s "The Grave"; Gray’s "Elegy in a
Country Churchyard”.
Link: http://theliterarylink.com/prerom.html

24. Pre-Romanticism
Interest in kindness toward animals
A democratic attitude: insistence on the rights and dignity of
man, and on the freedom of the individual socially and
politically
Attacks upon wrongs in the established order or in
conventional usages: political, economic, social, or
educational.
Interest in the state of nature: the "noble savage" preference
for the simple life of earlier ages, primitive religions, folk-poetry.
Source:/Link: http://theliterarylink.com/prerom.html

25. Pre-Romanticism
Interest in the medieval period as a age of faith, chivalry, and poetry
Attacks on Pope and other neo-classical authors
Revival or imitation of older forms of verse: ballads, sonnets, blank verse,
Spenserian stanzas etc.
Use of local dialects and colour.
Translation or imitation of Oriental tales, Scandinavian, or old Celtic tales or
literature.
Development of the historical novel, the Gothic school, and the School of
Terror.
Source:/Link: http://theliterarylink.com/prerom.html

26. Pre-Romanticism
Development of literary theories and literary criticism,
stressing the relatively greater importance of the
imaginative, emotional, intuitive, free, individual, and
particular over the rational, formal, and general.
Exaltation of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton
Period of violent and Revolutionary spirit, especially in
America and France.
Source:/Link: http://theliterarylink.com/prerom.html