The document discusses the key figures of English Romanticism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It outlines the contributions and most famous works of William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Robert Burns, and Lord Byron. These poets are credited with launching the Romantic movement in England through works like Lyrical Ballads and poems such as "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "Kubla Khan", "Ozymandias", and "Auld Lang Syne". They emphasized emotion, nature, imagination, and everyday language in poetry, influencing generations of poets to come.

1. -William Wordsworth

2.  Why do we read poetry ?
 What should a reader get from poetry ?
 What kind of language should be used in poetry
?
 Which should be the topics of poetry ?

3.  Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, written by William Wordsworth,
is a landmark essay in the history of English Literature.
 Considered to be the Romantic Manifesto on poetry and
society, the Preface is a work that is crucial to our
understanding of the progress of the Romantic literary
thought, originating in 18th century Europe, which has been
immortalized in our view of poetry and how we think of it
today.

4. • The Preface to the Lyrical Ballads first
appeared in the 2nd edition of the poetry
collection Lyrical Ballads (1801) and later
expanded in the 3rd edition (1802). It
would be helpful for us to first familiarize
ourselves with this historical context of
18th century.
• Romanticism was a reaction to

5. During this period, London became the urban centre
of industrial development and huge masses of people
migrated to the cities in search of jobs.
Village/countrysides were neglected.

6. • Neoclassical works were known for their adherence to rules
and regulations of satire and their strict definitions of what is
poetry.
• The Subject of poetry were kings,queens,knights,high class
people.
• No room for common people and common ordinary subjects
• Their language was far from what people used in daily
conversations and they spoke of extraordinary subjects.

7. iii.) Rise of Romanticism –
• No scope for poet’s own views in poetry in Neoclassical
poetry.Poetry was not subjective but objective.
• No scope for imagination in Neo poetry.
• Romanticism is different from romanticism (notice the capital
‘R’ vs. the lower-case ‘r’)
• Romanticism was a movement which sought to break away
from old norms and beliefs by revolutionizing the way people
thought about society in 18th century Europe.

8. iv)Inspired by the ideals of the French
Revolution –
• French values - equality,liberty,brotherhood
to be reflected in poetry also.
• to shake up the foundations of old
hierarchical structures – and distressed by the
rise of the choking city life, the Romantic
Wordsworth set out to challenge old notions
regarding poetry.

9. PREFACE TO LYRICAL BALLADS
It simply means....Dos & Dont’s of Writing Poetry
It is a text of literary criticism
It is considered the
It deals with:
 The content of poetry
 The language of poetry
 The features of the poet
 The definition of poetry

10. Wordsworth and Coleridge set out to overturn what
they considered the priggish, learned, and highly
sculpted forms of 18th-century English poetry and to
make poetry accessible to the average person via
verse written in common, everyday language. These
two major poets emphasize the vitality of the living
voice used by the poor to express their reality. This
language also helps assert the universality of human
emotions. Even the title of the collection recalls rustic
forms of art – the word "lyrical" links the poems with
the ancient rustic bards and lends an air of
spontaneity, while "ballads" are an oral mode of
storytelling used by the common people.

11. • Wordsworth’s relation to Nature/Countryside Wordsworth is
celebrated as the nature poet because of his beautiful descriptions
of nature and rural/countryside areas. However, to reduce his work
to just an imitation of trees and flowers would be immature.
• Wordsworth admired nature/countryside not only because it looked
beautiful, but because of the simplicity and beauty that
nature/countryside provided allowed people to be in touch with their
soul and experience true beauty in life. Wordsworth believed that the
city life made the masses dull and stagnant – it had reduced them to
overworked machines who failed to appreciate the simple beauty of
life. He called this state of mental stagnancy as savage torpor.

12. • Tired of the highly elevated topics of neoclassical
poets and their over-complicated language,
Wordsworth wanted “to make the ordinary
extraordinary”. Wordsworth found inspiration
from everyday figures of everyday life.
• Whether it be the famous Solitary Reaper or the
Daffodils – Wordsworth’s poetry flows to admire
the simple beauty that exists in daily life.

13. • For Wordsworth, a poet is simply “a man speaking to men” –
a fellow human just like all of us trying to communicate his
perception and experience of truth and beauty.
• However, the poet differs from regular people because of his
higher sensitivity to the happenings around him and a deeper
connection with his own feelings, moods and emotions as
they arise in response to these outer happenings.

14. • Wordsworth famously defined poetry as “a
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings
which are recollected in tranquillity”.
• Simply speaking, the highly sensitive poet is
able to experience the beauty of ordinary life,
capture his own emotions as they arise and is
finally able to sit in a calm, peaceful space to
use his imagination to recollect these
emotions and finally write about them.

15. • Wordsworth believed that the “real
language of men” – ordinary daily language
– should be used to write poetry.
• However, Wordsworth refined this common
language to a purer form without losing the
essence of its simplicity.

16. • The Egotistical Sublime is a concept which simply
means that a poet’s own subjective view of truth and
beauty is extremely attached to his work.
• The poems they produce are filled with their own
imagination and perspective on how they perceive
things around them. Wordsworth’s works are often
said to be examples of the Egotistical Sublime since
his own experience of things is what he believes to
be everyone’s experience of things.

17. THE CONTENT OF POETRY
 The poet chooses to relate and to describe
incidents and situations from common life.
 Everything expressed implies the use of the
imagination.
 Interest is added by tracing events and
situations in the way people associate ideas
in a state of excitement.
 Common/ordinary and rustic life is chosen.
 Poetry should present ordinary things in an
unusual way.

18. THE LANGUAGE OF POETRY
 The poet should use a selection of language
really used by men and women.
 The language has to be familiar, plain and
simple.
 The poet should convey feelings and notions in
simple and unelaborated expressions.
 The language of common people should be
purified from defects and pretentions.

19. THE FEATURES OF THE POET
 He is a man speaking to men.
 He has a more lively sensibility, enthusiasm and
tenderness than common men.
 He has got a greater knowledge of human nature
and a more comprehensive soul.
 He contemplates volitions and passions in the
Universe.
 He creates passions where he does not find them.

20. THE DEFINITION OF POETRY
 It is a spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings.
 It is originated from emotion recollected in
tranquility.
 Its ultimate goal is pleasure.
 It is based on experience.

21. Preface to the Lyrical Ballads
• The principal object, then, proposed in these Poems was
to choose incidents and situations from common life, and
to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was
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; and,
further, and above all, to make these incidents and
situations interesting by tracing in them, truly though not
ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature: chiefly, as
far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in
a state of excitement.

22. Preface to the Lyrical Ballads
• Humble and rustic life was generally chosen, because, in that
condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil
in which they can attain their maturity, are less under
restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language;
because in that condition of life our elementary feelings
coexist in a state of greater simplicity, and, consequently, may
be more accurately contemplated, and more forcibly
communicated; because the manners of rural life germinate
from those elementary feelings, and, from the necessary
character of rural occupations, are more easily comprehended,
and are more durable; and, lastly, because in that condition
the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and
permanent forms of nature.

23. Preface to the Lyrical Ballads
• The language, too, of these men has been adopted
(purified indeed from what appear to be its real defects,
from all lasting and rational causes of dislike or disgust)
because such men hourly communicate with the best
objects from which the best part of language is originally
derived; and because, from their rank in society and the
sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse, being
less under the influence of social vanity, they convey
their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated
expressions.

24. Preface to the Lyrical Ballads
• Accordingly, such a language, arising out of repeated
experience and regular feelings, is a more permanent,
and a far more philosophical language, than that which is
frequently substituted for it by Poets, who think that
they are conferring honour upon themselves and their
art, in proportion as they separate themselves from the
sympathies of men, and indulge in arbitrary and
capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish food
for fickle tastes, and fickle appetites, of their own
creation.

25. English Romanticism tends to be dominated
by a few names:
 William Wordsworth,
 S.T.Coleridge,
 Lord Byron,
 P.B. Shelley,
 John Keats.

26. Poems in the first edition (1798)
Poems marked "(Coleridge)" were written by Coleridge; all the other poems were written by
Wordsworth. In the first edition (1798) there were nineteen poems written by Wordsworth and
four poems by Coleridge.
• The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere (Coleridge)
• The Foster-Mother’s Tale (Coleridge)
• Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree which stands near the Lake of Esthwaite
• The Nightingale, a Conversational Poem (Coleridge)
• The Female Vagrant
• Goody Blake and Harry Gill
• Lines written at a small distance from my House, and sent by my little Boy to the Person to
whom they are addressed
• Simon Lee, the old Huntsman
• Anecdote for Fathers
• We are seven
• Lines written in early spring
• The Thorn
• The last of the Flock
• The Dungeon (Coleridge)
• The Mad Mother
• The Idiot Boy
• Lines written near Richmond, upon the Thames, at Evening
• Expostulation and Reply
• The Tables turned; an Evening Scene, on the same subject
• Old Man travelling
• The Complaint of a forsaken Indian Woman
• The Convict
• Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey

27. My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die …

28. I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze …

29. The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry
Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully …

30. My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease …

31. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE-
Along with William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge is credited with
founding the Romanticism movement in England. In 1797, the two
friends broke the decorum of neoclassical verse with daring original
poetic works which laid emphasis on emotion and glorification of nature.
The following year their collection of poetry Lyrical Ballads was
published. Though the immediate reaction to Lyrical Ballads was
modest, it is now considered a landmark work which changed the course
of English literature and poetry by launching the influential Romantic
movement. Coleridge is one of the most important figures in English
poetry who deeply influenced the major poets of his era including
Wordsworth. Among other things, he is credited with utilizing everyday
language to express profound poetic images and ideas.
FAMOUS POEMS:-
POEM PUBLISHED
• Kubla Khan 1816
• Christabel 1816
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner 1798

32. was one of the leading “second generation”
Romantic poets and he created some of the best known works of the
movement. He was a controversial writer whose poems are marked by
uncompromising idealism and great personal conviction. Though he
produced works throughout his life, most publishers and journals
declined to publish them for fear of being arrested for either blasphemy or
sedition. As a result Shelley couldn’t gather a mainstream following during
his lifetime. However, his popularity grew steadily following his death and
ultimately he achieved worldwide fame and acclaim. Apart from being an
idol for later generation of poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley also exerted
influence on such prominent figures as the German philosopher Karl Marx
and the Indian freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi. He is considered one of
the greatest poets in the English language.
FAMOUS WORKS:-
POEM PUBLISHED
• Ozymandias 1818
• Ode to the West Wind 1820
• Prometheus Unbound 1820

33. Also known as the Bard of Ayrshire and the
Ploughman Poet, Robert Burns is widely regarded as the national poet of
Scotland. He is considered a pioneer of Romanticism who had a major
influence on the movement. The poetic style of Burns is marked by
spontaneity and sincerity; and it ranges from love to intensity to humour
and satire. His best known works include Scots Wha Hae, which served
as an unofficial national anthem of Soctland for many years; A Red, Red
Rose, among the best known love poems; and Auld Lang Syne, which is
widely sung in the western world at the stroke of midnight on New Year.
Robert Burns is the most widely read Scottish poet and he is celebrated
not only in his country but around the world. He remains a cultural icon in
his nation and in 2009, he was voted as the greatest Scot by the Scottish
public in a vote run by Scottish television channel STV.
FAMOUS POEMS:-
POEM PUBLISHED
• Auld Lang Syne 1788
• To a Mouse 1785
• A Red, Red Rose 1794

34. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, was one of the
most prominent figures of the second generation of English Romantic poets. Keats
died due to tuberculosis in 1821 at the age of only 25. His work was in publication for
only four years and it was not generally well received by critics during his lifetime.
However, his reputation grew after his death and by the end of the 19th century, he
became one of the most beloved of all English poets. The most famous and
acclaimed poems of Keats are a series of six odes known as the Odes of 1819. The
most highly regarded among these is To Autumn, which has been called one of the
most perfect short poems in the English language. Through his 1819 odes, Keats
created a new type of short lyrical poem, which influenced later generations.
FAMOUS POEMS:-
POEM PUBLISHED
• Ode to a Nightingale 1819
• To Autumn 1820
• Ode on a Grecian Urn 1820

35. , 6th Baron Byron, commonly known as just Lord
Byron, was one of the leading figures of the Romantic Movement in early 19th
century England. Byron first achieved fame with the publication of the first two
cantos of his narrative poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage in 1812 and his reputation
further enhanced with his four highly successful poems referred to as the “Oriental
Tales”. Lord Byron is often described as the most flamboyant and notorious of the
major Romantics due to his indulgent life and numerous love affairs. Many of his
poems are autobiographic in nature and much of his work is pervaded by the
Byronic hero, an idealised but flawed character capable of great passion and talent
but rebellious, arrogant and self-destructive. Lord Byron is considered the leading
second generation Romantic poet and he continues to be influential and widely
read.
FAMOUS POEMS:-
POEM PUBLISHED
Don Juan 1824
She Walks in Beauty 1813
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage 1818

36. along with Coleridge, launched the Romantic Age in English
literature with the publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798. From 1799 to 1808, he
lived at the Dove Cottage in the village of Grasmere in the Lake District of England.
Here he became friends with another prominent poet, Robert Southey.
Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey were the three main figures of the group
known as Lake Poets, as they all lived in the Lake District. The years 1797 to 1808
are now recognized as the best years of Wordsworth and are known as his Great
Decade. After struggling initially, Wordsworth became one of the most renowned
poets in his later years and was appointed Poet Laureate of Britain in 1843. The
Prelude, an autobiographical epic, is widely regarded by critics as his greatest work
though his most popular poem is perhaps I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, commonly
known as Daffodils. William Wordsworth is considered a pioneer of Romanticism
and one of the greatest poets in English literature.
FAMOUS POEMS:-
POEM PUBLISHED
Daffodils 1807
Tintern Abbey 1798
The Prelude 1850

37. Widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States,
is one of the most influential and famous figures of American
literature. His poems appear throughout popular culture and lines from them are
often quoted. Poe is celebrated as the supreme exponent of Dark Romanticism, a
genre which focuses on human fallibility, self-destruction, judgement, punishment
and the demonic; as well as the psychological effects of guilt and sin. One of the
prominent theme in his poems is the death of a young, beautiful and dearly loved
woman; which he called “the most poetical topic in the world”. The best known
poem of Poe is The Raven. It influenced numerous later works including the famous
painting Nevermore by Paul Gauguin. Apart from being one of the most famous
poets, Edgar Allan Poe is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and
an important contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction.
• FAMOUS POEMS:-
• POEM PUBLISHED
• The Raven 1845
• Annabel Lee 1849
• A Dream Within a
Dream 1849

38. remained largely unknown during his lifetime but rose to
prominence after his death and is now considered a highly influential figure in the
history of poetry and one of the greatest British artists. Blake’s most renowned work
in poetry is Songs of Innocence and of Experience, considered one of the leading
poetic works of the Romantic era. The collection often contains poems with similar
themes, and at times the same title, to contrast the innocent world of childhood in
Songs of Innocence with the corruption and repression of the adult world in Songs of
Experience. Blake claimed to experience visions throughout his life. He revered the
Bible but was hostile to the Church of England and organized religion in general. His
poetry and art often created mythical worlds full of gods and powers, and sharply
criticized industrial society and the oppression of the individual. Blake is considered
a key figure in Romanticism for his emphasis on subjective vision and the power of
the imagination. He is also highly regarded for his expressiveness and creativity as
well as for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents in his work. In 2002, William
Blake was placed 38 in BBC’s poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.
FAMOUS POEMS:-
POEM PUBLISHED
The Tyger 1794
London 1794
And did those feet in ancient time 1808