english romanticism essay

Romanticism in Literature: Definition and Examples

Finding beauty in nature and the common man.

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B.A., English, Rutgers University

Romanticism was a literary movement that began in the late 18th century, ending around the middle of the 19th century—although its influence continues to this day. Marked by a focus on the individual (and the unique perspective of a person, often guided by irrational, emotional impulses), a respect for nature and the primitive, and a celebration of the common man, Romanticism can be seen as a reaction to the huge changes in society that occurred during this period, including the revolutions that burned through countries like France and the United States, ushering in grand experiments in democracy.

Key Takeaways: Romanticism in Literature

Romanticism is a literary movement spanning roughly 1790–1850.
The movement was characterized by a celebration of nature and the common man, a focus on individual experience, an idealization of women, and an embrace of isolation and melancholy.
Prominent Romantic writers include John Keats, William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Shelley.

Romanticism Definition

The term Romanticism does not stem directly from the concept of love, but rather from the French word romaunt (a romantic story told in verse). Romanticism focused on emotions and the inner life of the writer, and often used autobiographical material to inform the work or even provide a template for it, unlike traditional literature at the time.

Romanticism celebrated the primitive and elevated "regular people" as being deserving of celebration, which was an innovation at the time. Romanticism also fixated on nature as a primordial force and encouraged the concept of isolation as necessary for spiritual and artistic development.

Characteristics of Romanticism

Romantic literature is marked by six primary characteristics: celebration of nature, focus on the individual and spirituality, celebration of isolation and melancholy, interest in the common man, idealization of women, and personification and pathetic fallacy.

Celebration of Nature

Romantic writers saw nature as a teacher and a source of infinite beauty. One of the most famous works of Romanticism is John Keats’ To Autumn (1820):

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,– While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

Keats personifies the season and follows its progression from the initial arrival after summer, through the harvest season, and finally to autumn’s end as winter takes its place.

Focus on the Individual and Spirituality

Romantic writers turned inward, valuing the individual experience above all else. This in turn led to heightened sense of spirituality in Romantic work, and the addition of occult and supernatural elements.

The work of Edgar Allan Poe exemplifies this aspect of the movement; for example, The Raven tells the story of a man grieving for his dead love (an idealized woman in the Romantic tradition) when a seemingly sentient Raven arrives and torments him, which can be interpreted literally or seen as a manifestation of his mental instability.

Celebration of Isolation and Melancholy

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a very influential writer in Romanticism; his books of essays explored many of the themes of the literary movement and codified them. His 1841 essay Self-Reliance is a seminal work of Romantic writing in which he exhorts the value of looking inward and determining your own path, and relying on only your own resources.

Related to the insistence on isolation, melancholy is a key feature of many works of Romanticism, usually seen as a reaction to inevitable failure—writers wished to express the pure beauty they perceived and failure to do so adequately resulted in despair like the sort expressed by Percy Bysshe Shelley in A Lament :

O world! O life! O time! On whose last steps I climb. Trembling at that where I had stood before; When will return the glory of your prime? No more—Oh, never more!

Interest in the Common Man

William Wordsworth was one of the first poets to embrace the concept of writing that could be read, enjoyed, and understood by anyone. He eschewed overly stylized language and references to classical works in favor of emotional imagery conveyed in simple, elegant language, as in his most famous poem I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud :

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.

Idealization of Women

In works such as Poe’s The Raven , women were always presented as idealized love interests, pure and beautiful, but usually without anything else to offer. Ironically, the most notable novels of the period were written by women (Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and Mary Shelley, for example), but had to be initially published under male pseudonyms because of these attitudes. Much Romantic literature is infused with the concept of women being perfect innocent beings to be adored, mourned, and respected—but never touched or relied upon.

Personification and Pathetic Fallacy

Romantic literature’s fixation on nature is characterized by the heavy use of both personification and pathetic fallacy. Mary Shelley used these techniques to great effect in Frankenstein :

Its fair lakes reflect a blue and gentle sky; and, when troubled by the winds, their tumult is but as the play of a lively infant, when compared to the roarings of the giant ocean.

Romanticism continues to influence literature today; Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight novels are clear descendants of the movement, incorporating most of the characteristics of classic Romanticism despite being published a century and half after the end of the movement’s active life.

The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “Romanticism.” Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 19 Nov. 2019, https://www.britannica.com/art/Romanticism.
Parker, James. “A Book That Examines the Writing Processes of Two Poetry Giants.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 23 July 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/07/how-two-literary-giants-wrote-their-best-poetry/594514/.
Alhathani, Safa. “EN571: Literature & Technology.” EN571 Literature Technology, 13 May 2018, https://commons.marymount.edu/571sp17/2018/05/13/analysis-of-romanticism-in-frankenstein-through-digital-tools/.
“William Wordsworth.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-wordsworth.
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Romanticism

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Evening: Landscape with an Aqueduct

Alfred Dedreux (1810–1860) as a Child

The Start of the Race of the Riderless Horses

Horace Vernet

Jean-Louis-André-Théodore Gericault (1791–1824)

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Karl Blechen

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Mother and Child by the Sea

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Kathryn Calley Galitz Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2004

Romanticism, first defined as an aesthetic in literary criticism around 1800, gained momentum as an artistic movement in France and Britain in the early decades of the nineteenth century and flourished until mid-century. With its emphasis on the imagination and emotion, Romanticism emerged as a response to the disillusionment with the Enlightenment values of reason and order in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789. Though often posited in opposition to Neoclassicism , early Romanticism was shaped largely by artists trained in Jacques Louis David’s studio, including Baron Antoine Jean Gros, Anne Louis Girodet-Trioson, and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. This blurring of stylistic boundaries is best expressed in Ingres’ Apotheosis of Homer and Eugène Delacroix’s Death of Sardanapalus (both Museé du Louvre, Paris), which polarized the public at the Salon of 1827 in Paris. While Ingres’ work seemingly embodied the ordered classicism of David in contrast to the disorder and tumult of Delacroix, in fact both works draw from the Davidian tradition but each ultimately subverts that model, asserting the originality of the artist—a central notion of Romanticism.

In Romantic art, nature—with its uncontrollable power, unpredictability, and potential for cataclysmic extremes—offered an alternative to the ordered world of Enlightenment thought. The violent and terrifying images of nature conjured by Romantic artists recall the eighteenth-century aesthetic of the Sublime. As articulated by the British statesman Edmund Burke in a 1757 treatise and echoed by the French philosopher Denis Diderot a decade later, “all that stuns the soul, all that imprints a feeling of terror, leads to the sublime.” In French and British painting of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the recurrence of images of shipwrecks ( 2003.42.56 ) and other representations of man’s struggle against the awesome power of nature manifest this sensibility. Scenes of shipwrecks culminated in 1819 with Théodore Gericault’s strikingly original Raft of the Medusa (Louvre), based on a contemporary event. In its horrifying explicitness, emotional intensity, and conspicuous lack of a hero, The Raft of the Medusa became an icon of the emerging Romantic style. Similarly, J. M. W. Turner’s 1812 depiction of Hannibal and his army crossing the Alps (Tate, London), in which the general and his troops are dwarfed by the overwhelming scale of the landscape and engulfed in the swirling vortex of snow, embodies the Romantic sensibility in landscape painting. Gericault also explored the Romantic landscape in a series of views representing different times of day; in Evening: Landscape with an Aqueduct ( 1989.183 ), the dramatic sky, blasted tree, and classical ruins evoke a sense of melancholic reverie.

Another facet of the Romantic attitude toward nature emerges in the landscapes of John Constable , whose art expresses his response to his native English countryside. For his major paintings, Constable executed full-scale sketches, as in a view of Salisbury Cathedral ( 50.145.8 ); he wrote that a sketch represents “nothing but one state of mind—that which you were in at the time.” When his landscapes were exhibited in Paris at the Salon of 1824, critics and artists embraced his art as “nature itself.” Constable’s subjective, highly personal view of nature accords with the individuality that is a central tenet of Romanticism.

This interest in the individual and subjective—at odds with eighteenth-century rationalism—is mirrored in the Romantic approach to portraiture. Traditionally, records of individual likeness, portraits became vehicles for expressing a range of psychological and emotional states in the hands of Romantic painters. Gericault probed the extremes of mental illness in his portraits of psychiatric patients, as well as the darker side of childhood in his unconventional portrayals of children. In his portrait of Alfred Dedreux ( 41.17 ), a young boy of about five or six, the child appears intensely serious, more adult than childlike, while the dark clouds in the background convey an unsettling, ominous quality.

Such explorations of emotional states extended into the animal kingdom, marking the Romantic fascination with animals as both forces of nature and metaphors for human behavior. This curiosity is manifest in the sketches of wild animals done in the menageries of Paris and London in the 1820s by artists such as Delacroix, Antoine-Louis Barye, and Edwin Landseer. Gericault depicted horses of all breeds—from workhorses to racehorses—in his work. Lord Byron’s 1819 tale of Mazeppa tied to a wild horse captivated Romantic artists from Delacroix to Théodore Chassériau, who exploited the violence and passion inherent in the story. Similarly, Horace Vernet, who exhibited two scenes from Mazeppa in the Salon of 1827 (both Musée Calvet, Avignon), also painted the riderless horse race that marked the end of the Roman Carnival, which he witnessed during his 1820 visit to Rome. His oil sketch ( 87.15.47 ) captures the frenetic energy of the spectacle, just before the start of the race. Images of wild, unbridled animals evoked primal states that stirred the Romantic imagination.

Along with plumbing emotional and behavioral extremes, Romantic artists expanded the repertoire of subject matter, rejecting the didacticism of Neoclassical history painting in favor of imaginary and exotic subjects. Orientalism and the worlds of literature stimulated new dialogues with the past as well as the present. Ingres’ sinuous odalisques ( 38.65 ) reflect the contemporary fascination with the exoticism of the harem, albeit a purely imagined Orient, as he never traveled beyond Italy. In 1832, Delacroix journeyed to Morocco, and his trip to North Africa prompted other artists to follow. In 1846, Chassériau documented his visit to Algeria in notebooks filled with watercolors and drawings, which later served as models for paintings done in his Paris studio ( 64.188 ). Literature offered an alternative form of escapism. The novels of Sir Walter Scott, the poetry of Lord Byron, and the drama of Shakespeare transported art to other worlds and eras. Medieval England is the setting of Delacroix’s tumultuous Abduction of Rebecca ( 03.30 ), which illustrates an episode from Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe .

In its stylistic diversity and range of subjects, Romanticism defies simple categorization. As the poet and critic Charles Baudelaire wrote in 1846, “Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor in exact truth, but in a way of feeling.”

Galitz, Kathryn Calley. “Romanticism.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/roma/hd_roma.htm (October 2004)

Additional Essays by Kathryn Calley Galitz

Galitz, Kathryn Calley. “ The Legacy of Jacques Louis David (1748–1825) .” (October 2004)
Galitz, Kathryn Calley. “ Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) .” (May 2009)
Galitz, Kathryn Calley. “ The French Academy in Rome .” (October 2003)

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Home › Literature › Romanticism in England

Romanticism in England

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on November 29, 2017 • ( 9 )

In England, the ground for Romanticism was prepared in the latter half of the eighteenth century through the economic, political, and cultural transformations mentioned in the preceding chapters. The system of absolute government crumbled even earlier in Britain than elsewhere; nationalistic sentiment sharpened, imperialistic endeavors widened, and the century saw an increasing growth of periodical literature which catered to the middle classes. The ideals of neoclassicism, such as decorum, order, normality of experience, and moderation, were increasingly displaced by an emphasis on individual experience. The moral function of literature was increasingly counterbalanced by an emphasis on aesthetic pleasure and the psychology of the reader’s response to beauty and sublimity. An emphasis on originality and genius supplanted the primacy of imitation of classical authors or nature. Thinkers such as Locke , Hume , and Burke had been instrumental in these shifts of taste and philosophical orientation. Critics such as Edward Young , William Duff , and Joseph Warton produced influential treatises: Young’s Conjectures on Original Composition (1759) and Duff’s An Essay on Original Genius (1767) stressed the claims of originality, genius, and the creative imagination. Poets and critics of this period, such as Richard Hurd , idealized the Middle Ages and expressed an admiration for primitive societies and a native literary tradition, in which the figures of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare were accorded prominence. The artist Sir Joshua Reynolds praised the genius and sublimity of the Renaissance painter Michelangelo .

The early British practitioners of Romanticism included Thomas Gray , Oliver Goldsmith , and Robert Burns . The English movement reached its most mature expression in the work of William Wordsworth , who saw nature as embodying a universal spirit, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge who, drawing on the work of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling, gave archetypal formulation to the powers of the poetic imagination. Like their European counterparts, the English Romantics reacted at first favorably to the French Revolution and saw their own cultural and literary program as revolutionary. As many critics, ranging from Lukács to Abrams and Raymond Williams , have noted, the Romantics saw themselves as inheriting a world disfigured by the squalor of bourgeois economic and political practice, a world fragmented by dualisms such as individual and society, past and present, sensation and intellect, reason and emotion; their task was to seek once again a unifying vision, usually through the aesthetic and cultural realms.

Shelley ’s A Defence of Poetry is a powerful and beautifully expressed manifesto of fundamental Romantic principles, detailing the supremacy of imagination over reason, and the exalted status of poetry. Keats’ brief literary-critical insights are centered around the notion of “ negative capability .” In a letter to Benjamin Bailey , Keats suggests that, in poetic creation, the poet acts as a catalyst for the reaction of other elements, stating that “Men of Genius are great as certain ethereal Chemicals operating on the Mass of neutral intellect . . . they have not any individuality, any determined Character.”1 Writing to Richard Woodhouse , Keats distances himself from “the wordsworthian or egotistical sublime”: “the poetical Character . . . has no self – it is every thing and nothing – It has no character . . . A Poet . . . has no Identity – he is continually in for – and filling some other Body” ( Letters , 386–387). The idea behind this “annihilation” of character is that the poet’s mentality infuses, and is infused by, everything. Deploying what Keats calls the “negative capability” of abstaining from particular positions or dogmas, it loses itself wholly among the objects and events of the external world which are its poetic material ( Letters , 184, 386–387). The ego, then, should not interpose itself between the poet and his “direct” sensations. Keats ’ apparent identification of beauty with truth in his Ode on a Grecian Urn has received much critical attention. Though the Romantics are often viewed as writing confessional poetry and expressing personality, it is significant that both Keats and Shelley rejected this notion. Like Shelley, Byron rebelled against conventional beliefs, and in his poems such as Don Juan engaged in pungent satire of the hypocrisy and corruption of those in power. His stormy and eccentric life ended in the struggle for Greek independence.

Romantic Age in English Literature

The late 18th century through the middle of the 19th century, known as the Romantic Period in English literature, was a pivotal time marked by a significant shift in socioeconomic, philosophical, and artistic perspectives. The Enlightenment ideas and the rapid industrialization triggered an intense reaction that gave rise to this era.

The Romantics defended the superiority of passion, individuality, and imagination in opposition to the Enlightenment’s focus on reason, rationality, and empiricism. They looked for inspiration and insight by delving into the depths of human emotion, the mysteries of nature, and the capacity of the human imagination. This was a shift from the Enlightenment’s belief that reason and science were the main forces behind advancement in society.

Table of Contents

Historical and Cultural Background

The cultural and historical context of the Romantic Period in English literature was greatly affected by a number of important factors that helped to define this period.

The worldview of the Romantics was significantly influenced by the French Revolution and political instability. The turbulent events of the French Revolution in the late 18th century inspired political idealism, optimism, and revolt throughout Europe. The Romantics, which included writers like William Wordsworth and Lord Byron, were profoundly influenced by the revolutionary spirit and saw in it a chance for societal transformation and the emancipation of the individual from repressive structures. However, they also had to deal with the violence and despair that frequently followed revolutionary fervor, giving rise to complicated and even contradictory perspectives on political change.

Read More: Enlightenment in English Literature

Romanticism ‘s strong affinity for the sublime and the natural world developed in response to the era’s rapid industrialization and urbanization. The natural world was valued by the Romantics as a source of creativity, comfort, and spiritual regeneration. They saw the natural world as both a haven for the human spirit and a window towards the divine. The idea of the sublime, which included both the stupendous majesty of nature and the overwhelming strength of human emotions, also emerged as a major theme in Romantic literature. John Keats and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were two authors who explored the sublime in their writings, creating sensations of both transcendence and dread.

Read More: Romanticism in English Literature

The Romantic Period was greatly influenced by technological development and socioeconomic transformations, notably the rapid industrialization of society. Although these changes helped in economic development, they also brought about social inequality, labor exploitation, and environmental deterioration. The Romantics sharply criticized these unfavorable effects and frequently illustrated how industrialization caused alienation from and a loss of connection to nature. Their works represented a yearning for a life that was less complicated, more peaceful, and in harmony with the cycles of nature.

Literature of the Romantic Period

The literature of the Romantic Period was distinguished by a wide variety of subjects and genres, which captured the significant social and cultural transformations of the time.

Poetry of Nature and Emotion: The praise of the natural world and the exploration of profound human emotions were two of the most notable and enduring features of Romantic literature. William Wordsworth , Samuel Taylor Coleridge , and John Keats were among the poets of this time who focused on the splendor and grandeur of the natural world. They regarded nature as a way to connect with more profound emotional and spiritual truths as well as a source of aesthetic inspiration. Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” perfectly encapsulates this romanticism that is rooted in nature, while Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” explores the mystical and surreal facets of nature. In contrast, Keats wrote odes that praised love, beauty, and mortality, as shown in poems like “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”

Read More: Coleridge’s concept of imagination and fancy

Gothic Literature

As a result of the Romantic Era’s interest in the enigmatic, supernatural, and darker facets of human nature, Gothic literature developed into a unique and distinctive literary style. With frequent blending of the real and the supernatural, gothic literature tried to explore the eerie, the macabre, and the weird.

The ideas and aesthetic of Gothic literature from the Romantic Era are best exemplified in two classic works. The revolutionary book “ Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley, which was first published in 1818, examines the effects of scientific experimentation as well as the urge to go beyond natural limitations. Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” published in 1897, introduced readers to the iconic vampire Count Dracula and established many of the tropes associated with vampire lore. Immortality, sexuality, and the conflict between reason and the supernatural are some of the topics that are explored in the novel.

Prose and Essays

The prose and essays of the Romantic Era were distinguished by a rich tapestry of political and philosophical writings that captured the intellectual fervor of the time. The works of authors like Thomas De Quincey and William Hazlitt, who provided profound insights into the intellectual and political currents of their period, made a substantial contribution to this genre.

Read More: John Keats as a romantic poet

Thomas De Quincey is most known for his autobiographical work “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater,” in which he explored the nature of consciousness, dreams, and the human mind in addition to revealing his struggles with addiction. The essays of De Quincey were prime examples of Romanticism ‘s preoccupation with the inner workings of the human soul. The prolific essayist William Hazlitt, on the other hand, wrote essays like “Table-Talk” and “The Spirit of the Age,” which offered scathing comments on the literary figures and cultural trends of the day. Hazlitt became a recognized figure in both literary and political circles due to his essays which were distinguished by their eloquence and impassioned engagement with the events of the day.

Key Themes and Characteristics

The Romantic Period’s focus on individualism and the unrestrained power of the human imagination was one of its most important and enduring literary themes. Romantic authors fought for the idea that every person has a special inner world of emotions, creativity, and imagination that should be honored and expressed.

Romantic literature frequently explored the complexity of love, passion, sorrow, and wonder by delving into the depths of human emotions. John Keats’ poetry , for example, is a prime example of the Romantic movement’s preoccupation with the depth of human emotion. The Romantic confidence in the capacity of the individual imagination to handle life’s difficulties was typified by Keats’ discovery of the “negative capability,” the capacity to embrace doubt and uncertainty.

Read More: John Keats concept of negative capability

The Romantics also praised the power of unrestrained imagination and creativity as transformational forces that could shape the world and inspire social reform. For instance, William Blake’s poetry has a visionary aspect and envisioned a universe in which the human mind might go beyond the bounds of the real world.

Idealization of Nature

The Romantic Era was characterized by a deep and idealized relationship to nature, with poets and writers of the time praising nature as a source of creativity, consolation, and spiritual rejuvenation. This idealization of nature was a powerful response to the era’s rapid urbanization and industrialization.

Nature as a source of inspiration and solace: Romantic authors found in nature an endless fountain of inspiration for their imagination. They were inspired by the beauty, wonder, and amazement of the natural world. Poets like William Wordsworth saw nature as a living thing with profound significance rather than merely a picturesque backdrop. His well-known poem “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” examines the healing potential of nature and how it might help people feel more connected to a higher, more transcendent reality. Similar to this, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” investigates the spiritual aspects of nature by using the natural world as a setting for ethical and metaphysical exploration.

Rebellion Against Convention

The romantic era witnessed authors and artists resist against convention by criticizing society norms and institutions while promoting nonconformity and artistic independence.

Critique of societal norms and institutions: Romantics had an extremely critical view of the institutions and societal norms of their time. They questioned established religion’s restrictions, rigid social systems, and restrictions on personal freedom. For instance, Lord Byron’s poem “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” reflected a mood of discontent with the existing quo by expressing a sense of disappointment with the social and political order. The Romantics frequently disagreed with the established systems of society and expressed their dissatisfaction at the limitations imposed on free speech and creativity.

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s writings exhibit this attitude of defiance against tradition, notably in his poem “Ode to the West Wind,” in which he yearns for the wind’s ability to “Make me thy Lyre, even as the forests are.” The Romantic ideal of a more emancipated and harmonious existence is reflected in Shelley’s demand for a peaceful coexistence with nature’s powers.

Notable Figures of the Romantic Period

William Wordsworth is often regarded as one of the foundational figures of the Romantic movement. His poems emphasized the importance of individual experience and emotions in artistic creation while praising the splendor and strength of nature. His work on the “Lyrical Ballads” with Samuel Taylor Coleridge is regarded as a turning point in Romantic literature, and his poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” continues to be one of the most celebrated examples of the Romantic idealization of nature.

Wordsworth’s close friend and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge is renowned for his inventive and lyrical poetry. A masterwork of Romantic literature, his poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” explores themes of guilt, atonement, and the supernatural. Coleridge’s writings also explored the fields of philosophy and literary criticism, significantly enhancing the Romantic Era’s intellectual landscape.

Lord Byron was a well-known poet and leader of the Romantic movement. Byron, who was famous for his audacious and ferocious poems, frequently explored themes of love, revolt, and independence. Both his narrative poem “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” and his dramatic poem “Manfred” demonstrate his connection with Romantic ideals of individual independence and criticism of social norms.

John Keats had a profound impact on Romantic poetry despite having a brief life. His odes, such as “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” are praised for their examination of beauty, death, and the sublime force of art.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the Romantic Period in English literature is seen as a transformative and significant period that had a profound impact on both the literary world and the larger cultural consciousness. The writings of renowned figures like Wordsworth, Coleridge , Shelley, Byron, and Keats during this time were characterized by the flourishing of important topics like the celebration of individualism and imagination, the idealization of nature, revolt against convention, and the search for personal independence. The legacy of the Romantic Era stands as a tribute to the enduring human spirit, the limitless power of the imagination, and the ageless pursuit of freedom and self-expression. It is a significant and cherished chapter in the ever-evolving history of English literature and culture because its themes and values are still relevant in modern literature and art.

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200, 300, 350, & 400 Word Essay on Romanticism with Examples in English

Table of Contents

200 Words Argumentative Essay on Romanticism in English

Romanticism is a complex and multifaceted movement that has lasting impacts on literature and art worldwide. It is a movement that began in the late 18th century and continued into the 19th century. It is characterized by a focus on emotions, individualism, and nature. It was a reaction to the Enlightenment and neoclassical ideals of rationality and order.

Romanticism was a reaction to the Industrial Revolution and its effects on society. It was a celebration of the individual and a rejection of mechanization and commercialization. Romanticism saw nature as a refuge from modern artificiality and idealized the rural and the wilderness. Nature was seen as a source of inspiration, healing, and solace.

Romanticism also celebrated individualism and imagination. It encouraged people to explore their own feelings and emotions and express them creatively. It rejected the Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason and order, and instead embraced emotion and creativity. Romanticism also emphasized the power of the imagination to create new realities and shape the world.

Romanticism was a revolutionary and conservative movement. It was revolutionary in its rejection of traditional values and embrace of individualism and imagination. At the same time, it was conservative in its celebration of nature and rejection of the Industrial Revolution.

Romanticism profoundly affected literature and art. It is responsible for some of the greatest Romanticism literature works, such as William Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, and Lord Byron. It also had a major influence on art development, with painters such as Caspar David Friedrich and J.M.W. Turner creating works that embraced romantic ideals of emotion, nature, and individualism.

Romanticism was a movement of remarkable complexity and diversity. It celebrated individualism and imagination, rejected modern mechanization, and embraced nature. It was a movement that had a lasting impact on literature and art and continues to influence our worldview today.

300 Words Descriptive Essay on Romanticism in English

Romanticism was a major literary, artistic, and philosophical movement that began in the late 18th century and lasted until the mid-19th century. It was a period of intense creativity and imagination. It was characterized by a focus on personal expression and emotion, a celebration of nature, and a belief in the power of the individual.

Romanticism was a reaction to the rationalism of the Enlightenment. Instead of relying on reason and logic, Romanticism embraced emotion, intuition, and imagination. It was a celebration of individual and personal expression. Writers, poets, and artists were encouraged to explore their innermost feelings and express them freely.

Romanticism also celebrated nature. The Romantics believed that nature was a source of beauty and inspiration, and they sought to capture its beauty in their works. They wrote about nature in a passionate and spiritual way, expressing their awe and reverence for the natural world.

Romanticism also believed in the individual’s power. Rather than accepting the status quo, the Romantics sought to challenge society’s norms and create their own paths. They believed in the power of the individual to make a difference and shape the world.

Romanticism influenced literature, art, and philosophy. Writers like Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats utilized the romantic style to explore their innermost feelings and express their love for nature. Artists like Turner and Constable used the same style to capture the natural world’s beauty. Philosophers like Rousseau and Schiller used the romantic style to express their ideas about the power of the individual and the importance of personal expression.

Romanticism has lasting effects on the world. Its focus on emotion, imagination, and nature has inspired generations of writers, artists, and philosophers. Its celebration of the individual is a source of hope and strength for those who challenge the status quo. Romanticism has been a powerful force in shaping the world, and it will continue to be a source of inspiration for many years to come.

350 Words Expository Essay on Romanticism in English

Romanticism is an artistic and intellectual movement that began in the late 18th century and has had lasting impacts on literature, art, and culture. It was a reaction to the Enlightenment, which saw reason and science as the only valid forms of knowledge. The Romantics sought to focus on emotion, passion, and intuition as valid forms of knowledge and celebrate the power of the individual.

Romanticism emphasizes emotion, imagination, and individualism. It is associated with a deep appreciation for nature and a belief in the power of the individual to create art and beauty. It was a reaction to the Enlightenment’s rationalism, which sought to explain the natural world through science and reason.

Romanticism is often associated with the arts, particularly literature and music. Writers such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were some of the most influential figures in the Romantic era. Their poetry is still widely read and studied today. Similarly, composers such as Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert wrote works profoundly influenced by the Romantic spirit.

Romanticism also had a profound effect on visual art, with painters such as Eugene Delacroix and Caspar David Friedrich creating works inspired by Romantic ideals. These works often featured nature scenes and sought to evoke awe and wonder.

Romanticism is also associated with social and political movements, such as the French Revolution and slavery abolition. The Romantics saw these movements as a sign of hope and progress and sought to contribute to them through their art and writing.

In conclusion, Romanticism was a movement that had a profound impact on the arts, literature, and culture. It was a reaction to the Enlightenment and its focus on reason and science and sought to emphasize emotion, imagination, and individualism. The works of Romantic writers, painters, and musicians are still widely read and studied today, and their influence can be seen in many aspects of modern culture.

400 Words Persuasive Essay on Romanticism in English

Romanticism is a movement that deeply influences literature, music, and art throughout the centuries. It is an aesthetic sensibility that emphasizes the beauty and power of emotion, imagination, and nature. It is a passionate, emotive, and revolutionary style of art and expression.

Romanticism is a vital movement to understand to appreciate the literature, music, and art of the period. It is a style of writing characterized by personal experience and emotion. It is a reaction to the Enlightenment’s rationalism and the emphasis on reason and logic in the period’s work. Romanticism is a rebellion against the limits of the established order and a celebration of individualism and the potential of the human spirit.

Romanticism also emphasizes nature’s beauty and power. Nature is a source of inspiration and healing. This idea of nature as a source of solace and comfort can be observed in Romantic poets such as William Wordsworth and John Keats. Nature is seen as a reflection of the divine and a source of spiritual renewal.

Romanticism also focuses on the supernatural and the spiritual. It is an aesthetic that emphasizes the idea of the sublime, which is an experience of awe and wonder in the face of the infinite. This idea of the sublime can be seen in the work of Romantic painters such as Caspar David Friedrich and J.M.W. Turner.

Romanticism is an aesthetic sensibility that emphasizes emotion, imagination, and nature. It is a passionate, emotive, and revolutionary style of art and expression. It is a vital movement to understand to appreciate the period’s literature, music, and art. It is a rebellion against the limits of the established order and a celebration of individualism and the potential of the human spirit.

It is a source of solace, comfort, and spiritual renewal. It is an aesthetic that emphasizes the sublime, and it is an experience of awe and wonder in the face of the infinite. Romanticism is a movement that has deeply influenced literature, music, and art throughout the centuries, and it is still relevant today.

Romanticism and Art Characteristics

Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that emerged in the late 18th century and reached its peak during the 19th century. It was a reaction to the Enlightenment’s rationalism and order, emphasizing emotion, individualism, and nature. Romanticism greatly influenced various art forms, including painting, literature, music, and sculpture. Here are some key characteristics of Romanticism in art:

Emotion and Expression: Romantic artists sought to evoke deep emotions and feelings through their work. They aimed to move the viewer or audience emotionally, often focusing on themes such as love, passion, awe, fear, and nostalgia.
Individualism: Romantic artists celebrated the individual and emphasized the uniqueness of each person’s experiences and emotions. They often depicted heroic figures, outcasts, or individuals in moments of intense personal contemplation.
Nature: Nature played a significant role in Romantic art. Artists were fascinated by the beauty and power of the natural world, portraying landscapes, storms, mountains, and wild environments to evoke a sense of the sublime and the awe-inspiring.
Imagination and Fantasy: Romantic artists embraced the power of imagination and fantasy. They explored dreamlike and surreal scenes, mythological themes, and supernatural elements to create an otherworldly atmosphere.
Medievalism and Nostalgia: Many Romantic artists drew inspiration from medieval art and literature, seeing it as a time of heroism and chivalry. This longing for the past and a sense of nostalgia can be seen in their works.
Nationalism and Patriotism: In a time of political and social upheaval, Romantic artists often expressed a strong sense of national identity and pride in their works. They celebrated their native cultures, folklore, and history.
Exoticism: As travel and exploration expanded during the 19th century, Romantic artists became intrigued by foreign lands and cultures. This fascination with the exotic is evident in some of their works.
Symbolism and Allegory: Romantic artists frequently used symbols and allegorical elements to convey deeper meanings and hidden messages in their artworks.
Introspection and the Sublime: The Romantic movement encouraged introspection and contemplation of the human condition. They explored themes related to the human psyche, the sublime, and the vastness of the universe.
Emotional Intensity and Drama: Romantic artists often depicted dramatic and emotionally charged scenes, creating a sense of tension and intensity in their works.

Notable Romantic artists include J.M.W. Turner, Caspar David Friedrich, Francisco Goya, Eugène Delacroix, and William Blake. These artists, along with many others, left a profound impact on art development during the Romantic period.

Romanticism Examples

Certainly! Here are some notable examples of Romanticism in various art forms:

“Wanderer above the Sea of Fog” by Caspar David Friedrich: This iconic painting portrays a lone figure standing on a rocky precipice, gazing into a misty landscape, symbolizing the Romantic fascination with nature’s vastness and the individual’s contemplation.
“Liberty Leading the People” by Eugène Delacroix: This painting depicts a powerful and allegorical figure of Liberty leading the people during the July Revolution of 1830 in France. It represents the Romantic themes of liberty, nationalism, and political upheaval.
“Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley: This Gothic novel, published in 1818, explores themes of science, creation, and the consequences of playing god, while also delving into the complexities of human emotions and the darker aspects of human nature.
“Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë: A classic novel known for its passionate and intense depiction of love and revenge, set against the backdrop of the desolate and wild Yorkshire moors.
“Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125” (commonly known as “Choral Symphony”) by Ludwig van Beethoven: This monumental symphony is known for its final movement, featuring the “Ode to Joy,” expressing the ideals of universal brotherhood and joy, reflecting the Romantic emphasis on emotions and humanity.
“Nocturnes” by Frédéric Chopin: Chopin’s compositions, particularly his Nocturnes, are famous for their lyrical, emotional, and introspective qualities, capturing the essence of Romanticism in music.
“Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats: This poem explores themes of mortality, escape, and the beauty of nature, showcasing the Romantic fascination with the natural world and the expression of intense emotions.
“The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe: This Gothic poem is a haunting exploration of grief, loss, and the macabre, illustrating the darker side of Romanticism.

These examples provide a glimpse into Romanticism’s diversity and richness across different art forms. Each contributes to the movement’s lasting impact on the 19th-century cultural and artistic landscape.

Why is it called the Romantic period?

The term “Romantic period” or “Romanticism” refers to the artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that emerged in the late 18th century and reached its peak during the 19th century. The movement was given this name because of its association with the concept of “romance,” which, in this context, doesn’t refer to love stories as we commonly understand it today.

The word “romance” in this context has its roots in ancient literature, where “romances” were tales of heroism, chivalry, and adventure. Medieval romances focused on individual experiences, emotions, and wonderment. The Romantic movement drew inspiration from these medieval romances and embraced similar themes. However, it expanded them to include a broader range of emotions and experiences.

During the Romantic period, artists, writers, and intellectuals sought to break away from the rationalism and order of the Enlightenment era that came before it. They emphasized the importance of emotion, imagination, individualism, and nature in contrast to the Enlightenment’s focus on reason, science, and societal conventions.

As the movement gained momentum, critics and scholars called it “Romanticism” to capture its association with romance, individualism, and emotional expression. The term “Romantic period” has since become the standard way to describe this influential artistic and intellectual movement that left a profound impact on Western culture and shaped literature, art, and philosophy for years to come.

Romanticism Summary

Romanticism was a cultural, artistic, and intellectual movement that emerged in the late 18th century and flourished during the 19th century. It was a reaction to the Enlightenment’s rationalism and order, emphasizing emotion, individualism, nature, and imagination. Here’s a summary of Romanticism:

Emphasis on Emotion: Romanticism celebrated intense emotions and emotional expression. Artists, writers, and musicians sought to evoke deep feelings and moved away from the restrained and rational approach of the previous era.
Individualism: Romanticism celebrated the uniqueness and importance of the individual. It focused on the inner world of the human psyche and the expression of personal experiences and emotions.
Nature as a Source of Inspiration: Nature played a significant role in Romantic art and literature. Artists were captivated by the beauty, power, and mystery of the natural world, portraying landscapes and elements of nature to evoke a sense of awe and the sublime.
Imagination and Fantasy: Romantic artists embraced the power of imagination and explored fantastical and dreamlike elements in their works. They drew inspiration from myths, legends, and the supernatural, creating otherworldly and imaginative atmospheres.
Nationalism and Patriotism: In a time of political and social change, Romanticism fostered a sense of national identity and pride. Artists celebrated their native cultures, folklore, and history.
Medievalism and Nostalgia: Romantic artists looked back to the medieval era with a sense of nostalgia, seeing it as a time of heroism, chivalry, and simpler, more authentic values.
Symbolism and Allegory: Romantic artists often used symbols and allegorical elements to convey deeper meanings and messages in their artworks.
Rejection of Industrialization: With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, many Romantic thinkers criticized the negative impact of industrialization on nature, society, and the human spirit.
Contemplation of the Sublime: Romanticism explored the concept of the sublime—the overwhelming and awe-inspiring aspects of nature and human experience, which could be both beautiful and terrifying.
Interest in the Exotic: As travel expanded, Romantic artists were intrigued by foreign lands and cultures, and this fascination with the exotic is evident in their works.

The Romantic period produced some of the most influential and enduring works in literature, art, music, and philosophy. It challenged conventional norms and encouraged a more profound exploration of the human experience. This left a lasting impact on Western culture and artistic movements.

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200, 300, 350, 400, & 450 Word Essay on Uselessness of Science in English & Hindi

38 Literature and Philosophy

Tim Milnes is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of The Truth about Romanticism: Pragmatism and Idealism in Keats, Shelley, Coleridge (2010) and Knowledge and Indifference in English Romantic Prose (2003). He is also the co-editor (with Kerry Sinanan) of Romanticism, Sincerity, and Authenticity (2010). His new book The Testimony of Sense: Empiricism and the Essay from Hume to Hazlitt will be published by Oxford University Press.

Published: 09 October 2018
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This chapter proposes that our very notions of ‘literature’ and ‘philosophy’ are, to a great extent, forged in the Romantic era. The chapter surveys the eighteenth-century background to this issue in the sceptical empiricism of David Hume and the German transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant, F. W. von Schelling, and J. G. Fichte. In examining the writings of William Blake, Edmund Burke, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and William Hazlitt, it also charts the ways in which the revolutionary debates of the 1790s politicized the disciplines of philosophy and ‘theory’, leading to an anti-philosophical rhetoric in the work of writers such as Thomas Love Peacock, Charles Lamb, and Lord Byron. Finally, the chapter scrutinizes the boundaries between Romantic philosophy and the Scottish common-sense philosophy of Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart, before examining the philosophical significance of the idea of ‘Literature’ in the work of Romantic writers, particularly Percy Shelley and John Keats.

The relationship between literature and philosophy has formed an established part of the study of Romantic aesthetics since the work of René Wellek, Arthur O. Lovejoy, and M. H. Abrams in the early twentieth century. 1 Subsequent waves of theory and historicism have confirmed the importance of the topic to our understanding of the culture and politics of Romanticism. Yet the issue can be a confusing one for modern scholarship, not least because our very notions of ‘literature’ and ‘philosophy’ are, to a great extent, forged in the Romantic era itself. It is only during this period that the modern notion of ‘Literature’, with its aura of autonomy and profundity, comes to be distinguished from the more instrumental arts of rhetoric and belles lettres . In a related development, ‘philosophy’ begins to be divorced from ‘natural philosophy’, which in turn is reincarnated in the early nineteenth century as ‘science’.

Prior to these developments, it had been possible to conceive of progressive knowledge as a kind of unified commonwealth, evidenced by the founding of institutions such as the Lunar Society of Birmingham and the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, the image of a field of human knowledge bound together by a commanding intellect such as that of Isaac Newton came under pressure from the increasing diversity of scientific discoveries and a corresponding drive to divide philosophical labour. 2 At the same time, thinkers such as Dugald Stewart cast doubt on the Aristotelian idea that poetry’s cognitive status rested upon its status as a medium that grants access to general truths about human nature. For Stewart, poetic creativity is bought at the price of epistemological substance: while it is the privilege of the poet rather than the scientist ‘to produce something which had no existence before’, the creations of the poetic imagination, he maintains, are ‘not for the purpose of information, but to convey pleasure to the mind’. 3 This threat of epistemological disenfranchisement spurs Romantic writers such as Coleridge and Wordsworth to re-establish poetry’s cognitive pedigree, which in turn reignites an ancient quarrel between literature and philosophy.

From its inception, this quarrel was politically inflected. Romantic-period writers engage with philosophical ideas in the context of an antipathy in Britain towards philosophers that grows steadily from the mid-1790s onwards. Such misgivings were not entirely new: even during the Enlightenment, philosophy and philosophers had borne the brunt of the scepticism of David Hume in his Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), the satirical volleys of Voltaire in Candide (1759) and the Philosophical Dictionary (1764), Thomas Reid’s advocacy of common sense in An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764), and, more recently, the linguistic materialism of John Horne Tooke’s Diversions of Purley (1786, 1805). The counter-revolutionary rhetoric of Edmund Burke, however, created a politically urgent basis for British suspicions regarding philosophy. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) , Burke attacks not only the theory behind the French Revolution as a ‘barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings’, but also the very assumption that philosophical systems should be a basis for polity, adding, with regard to the latter, that ‘in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false’. 4 He continues:

What is the use of discussing a man’s abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician, rather than the professor of metaphysics. The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori . 5

Interestingly, Burke’s appeal to ‘experimental science’ would be matched by his radical opponents, such as Thomas Paine, who also based their ideas upon the empiricist methods and principles of Locke. However, in distinguishing ‘metaphysics’ from ‘science’, Burke is attempting to draw a more fundamental distinction between philosophy and life in general. In opposition to what he perceives to be the cold abstractions of the philosophy of the ‘rights of man’, he promotes other spheres of value, which, he believes, are more solidly grounded in the traditions, emotional attachments, and even the prejudices of a people. Accordingly, Burke’s ideal constitution is affectionate, filial, and partial, rather than enthusiastic, contractual, and rational. In this respect, literature boasts an advantage over philosophy, insofar as its privileged links with human affections mean that it is a ‘a better school of moral sentiments’. Unlike philosophers, he insists, poets, ‘who must apply themselves to the moral constitution of the heart’, could never find the spectacle of the French Revolution a source of ‘exultation’. 6 By appealing to the ‘moral constitution of the heart’, Burke attempts to wrest the language of poetic sensibility from the hands of the followers of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and enlist it in his defence of feeling against abstraction.

As passages such as these suggest, Burke’s style was as instrumental as his arguments in politicizing the discourse of philosophy during the Romantic period. The Reflections ’ self-consciously rococo rhetoric of chivalric honour forged a link between the high grounds of ‘elevated’ or poetic speech and anti-Jacobin politics, leaving the lowlands of ordinary language or ‘plain speaking’ to republican philosophers such as Paine and William Cobbett. This realignment would later be adopted by a political opponent, the essayist and philosopher William Hazlitt, who contrasted the ‘aristocratic’ imagination, an ‘exaggerating and exclusive faculty’, with the ‘republican’ and ‘distributive’ understanding. ‘The principle of poetry’, Hazlitt concluded, ‘is a very anti-levelling principle. It aims at effect, it exists by contrast.’ 7 Thus, Hazlitt, whose own career had begun with the radical philosophical treatise An Essay on the Principles of Human Action (1805), implies that, whereas ‘Poetry is right-royal’, philosophy is radical-republican.

Before Hazlitt appropriated Burke’s dichotomy between Jacobin philosophical prose and anti-Jacobin poetry, however, other writers had attempted to circumvent it. Wordsworth’s ‘Preface’ to Lyrical Ballads (particularly in its revised, 1802 version) attempts to radicalize Burke’s rhetoric of power by bridging the gap between partial and ‘exclusive’ homely feeling on one side and, on the other, republican common sense and plain speaking. By ‘fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation’, Wordsworth and Coleridge conduct an experiment that is at once aesthetic, philosophical, and political. 8 The attempt to marry the folk-authenticity of the ballad with the sincerity and spontaneity of the lyric is underpinned by the principle that poetry (rooted in ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’) is opposed not to prose, but to ‘Matter of Fact, or Science’. 9 For Wordsworth, it follows from this that ‘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’. 10 By associating poetic affect with plebeian emotions, Wordsworth attempts to outmanoeuvre Burke’s division between a powerful but partial poetic imagination and an egalitarian but abstract philosophical understanding. In this way, Lyrical Ballads redefines the epistemology and the politics of literary expression. For Wordsworth and Coleridge, true poetry is ‘philosophical’ precisely because it is not based in abstract rationality.

Nonetheless, due partly to Burke’s efforts and partly to subsequent wars with France, ‘philosophy’, natural and metaphysical, becomes a disreputable business in the eyes of a class of British readers for whom the abstract universalism adumbrated by Rousseau and Godwin is increasingly associated with the unflinching application of revolutionary principle by Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety. Following the Lyrical Ballads ’ attempt to explore the philosophical possibilities of poetry through quotidian forms of expression, Wordsworth and Coleridge turn their attention towards other, less politically contentious reserves of authenticity. Like many writers of the period who were repelled by Burke’s politics but drawn to his ideas regarding the links between poetry, power, and the imagination, they were particularly attracted to the notion of a mind ‘purified by terror’. 11

In Reflections , Burke had forged a connection between patriarchal norms and the aesthetics of the sublime, defending the irrational, affective bonds that bind families and societies as well as traditions inherited from ‘canonized forefathers’ through which freedom ‘is tempered with an awful gravity’ and ‘carries an imposing and majestic aspect’. 12 Such arguments echo aspects of Burke’s earlier work, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), in which he argued that ‘authentic histories’ documenting the ruin of empires and state catastrophes could be sources of sublime emotion. Indeed,

Our delight in cases of this kind, is very greatly heightened, if the sufferer be some excellent person who sinks under an unworthy fortune. … for terror is a passion which always produces delight when it does not press too close, and pity is a passion accompanied with pleasure, because it arises from love and social affection. 13

For the later Burke, it follows that the terrifying spectacle of the French Revolution can become, in an Aristotelian sense, a source of cathartic edification:

we are so made as to be affected at such spectacles with melancholy sentiments … because in those natural feelings we learn great lessons; because in events like these our passions instruct our reason; because … we behold such disasters in the moral, as we should behold a miracle in the physical order of things. We are alarmed into reflexion; our minds … are purified by terror and pity; our weak unthinking pride is humbled under the dispensations of a mysterious wisdom. 14

For others, however, the figure of the sublime offered the potential for revolutionizing both poetry and philosophy based on the elevation of dynamic energy over rational persuasion, of ‘mysterious wisdom’ over scientific knowledge. Accordingly, just as Burke adapted the affective vocabulary of the radicals for conservative ends, so his own distinction between the philosophical knowledge of prosaic reason and the ‘mysterious wisdom’ of the poetic imagination was appropriated by a generation of writers sympathetic to revolution but disenchanted with rationalism.

Nowhere is this enthusiasm expressed more forcibly than in Blake’s critique of pure reason, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–3), which depicts humanity’s fallen intellect, ‘clos’d by … senses five’, as incarcerated by empirical rationality. 15 Blake’s belief in the primacy of energy and his conviction that ‘Without Contraries is no progression’ (34) challenges the materialist and empiricist philosophies of the Enlightenment by depicting humanity as supernatural, dynamic, and imaginative, rather than as natural, static, and intellectual. Reason itself (and, by extension, philosophy), Blake suggests, is merely ‘the bound or outward circumference of Energy’ (34). Accordingly, the narrator of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell evinces a suspicion of rationalists and philosophers who speak ‘with a confident insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning’, concluding in his dialogue with the Angel that ‘it is but lost time to converse with you whose works are only Analytics’ (42).

Blake associates the ‘bound’ of reason with more concrete forms of intellectual, political, and sexual repression: thus, in The First Book of Urizen (1794), the eponymous ‘abstracted | Brooding’ figure (70) who most obviously encapsulates these themes punningly links rationality (‘your reason’) with limitation (‘horizon’). The sorry consequences of Urizen’s fall into abstraction and solipsism reveal Blake’s concern that philosophy’s edifice of systematic knowledge is merely a symptom of modern man’s stagnation and alienation. For Blake, seeing the world as it really is requires an unbinding of imaginative energy that counters Urizenic limit-horizons by pushing thought towards the sublime—in other words (as the etymology of the term implies), up to ( sub ) and beyond the limit ( līmen ) of what is conceivable according to empirical philosophy. It is this revolutionary act that Blake’s illuminated books instigate: like the ‘corroding fires’ (35) in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell , Blake’s plates of acid-rendered relief etchings attempt to cleanse the ‘doors of perception’ (39) by burning away the bounds of sense and empirical rationality.

Apocalyptic ideas such as these suggest the potential of human vision to cross the boundary between the finite and the infinite, with the result that revelatory moments in Romantic literature are frequently figured as forms of transgression, characterized by an ineffable awareness of a power in humanity that surpasses nature. ‘Vision’ in Blake’s universe entails a subliming of experience that exceeds intellectualization, and which can often only be expressed indirectly through an image of terror, such as the Tyger. Similarly, in the long poem to Coleridge that would posthumously become The Prelude , Wordsworth deploys tropes of terror as a way of intimating a level of philosophical wisdom that transcends the merely intellectual. In a celebrated passage in Book 5, the poet recounts an epiphanic episode from his childhood when he witnessed the body of a drowned man being recovered from Esthwaite Lake:

At length, the dead Man, ’mid that beauteous scene Of trees, and hills and water, bolt upright Rose with his ghastly face; a spectre shape Of terror even! and yet no vulgar fear, Young as I was, a Child not nine years old, Possessed me; for my inner eye had seen Such sights before among the shining streams Of Fairy Land, the Forests of Romance (1805: Book 5, lines 470–7).

Here, by adding a caveat infused with the more tranquil and conventional language of romance, Wordsworth attempts to contain the more radical aspects of his poetic enthusiasm. Elsewhere, however, Wordsworth’s dynamic consciousness, like Blake’s dialectical imagination, aspires to an apocalyptic insight that drives philosophical thought beyond the realm of abstraction. In ‘Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’, natural perception takes second place to the ‘sublime’ gifts of nature, chief among which is ‘that blessed mood, | In which the burthen of the mystery … | Is lightened’, so that

we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things. (lines 38–50)

For Blake and Wordsworth, seeing ‘into the life of things’ has less to do with knowledge as conceived by Enlightenment discourse, and more to do with ‘power’. Indeed, in the hands of some writers, Romantic poetry challenges one of the basic paradigms of Western philosophy since Descartes: the construction of the self upon the foundation of a knowing consciousness. Accordingly, poetry’s challenge to philosophy is not for the latter to demonstrate the validity of its truth-claims, but for philosophy to prove itself capable of capturing the ‘spots of time’ 16 that escape rationalization. And yet, while the apocalyptic crux of Romantic vision, the notion of an experience that crosses the threshold of the infinite, defied the largely empirical grid of understanding inherited by Blake and Wordsworth, the epistemological issue at the heart of this ideal had been a heated topic of philosophical debate in Germany for decades. For Kant and his successors, the possibility of the visionary imagination was bound up with the specific problem of intellectual intuition.

This brings us to Coleridge, who, more than any other British writer of this period, sees the relationship between literature and philosophy as central to the reorientation of aesthetics away from taste and receptivity and towards genius and productivity. As he declares in Biographia Literaria (1817), ‘in energetic minds, truth soon changes by domestication into power; and from directing in the discrimination and appraisal of the product, becomes influencive in the production’. 17 The notion of truth domesticated into power implied a new model of poetry (indeed, of art in general) based upon ideas of aesthetic autonomy and of the irreducibility of ‘poetic truth’. Although this model had already been suggested by Wordsworth in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads , Coleridge came to suspect that poetry’s independence from science could not be justified within the language of British empiricism, and that the inevitable tendency of the mechanical and empirical traditions of Newton and Locke was to reduce and marginalize the cultural significance of art, poetry, and the creative imagination. Moreover, in the aftermath of the French Revolution and the Terror, many of whose adherents claimed to base their thinking upon the ideas of Locke, Coleridge became concerned that the materialist philosophies of his youth presupposed no Christian theology and were compatible with atheism. Despite championing the materialist associationism of David Hartley and the scientific theories of Humphry Davy in the 1790s as models of human development and social progress, he became convinced that a more fundamental reorientation in the philosophical culture in Britain was required. This conviction hardened when, following a walking tour of Germany taken with William and Dorothy Wordsworth, he encountered a new current of thought influenced by the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant. The impact that this new philosophy would have on his thinking is evident in a letter he wrote to his friend and patron Thomas Poole soon after returning from mainland Europe:

The interval since my last Letter has been filled up by me in the most intense Study. If I do not greatly delude myself, I have not only completely extricated the notions of Time, and Space; but have overthrown the doctrine of Association, as taught by Hartley, and with it all the irreligious metaphysics of modern Infidels … 18

Coleridge’s boasts scarcely suggest the extent of his debts to his German sources. Nor was he the only British writer in this period to encounter the works of Kant and his followers: Henry Crabb Robinson had studied them while living in Germany; Hazlitt often cited Kant in support of his claims that the mind alone is formative; and Thomas De Quincey deployed German metaphysics in his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821). In addition, many readers in Britain would have been acquainted with Kant through Madame de Staël’s De l’Allemagne (1813) (see James Vigus, Chapter 44 in this volume). Nonetheless, Coleridge is the first British thinker to engage in a rigorous and searching way with the philosophical and cultural implications of German idealism. Consequently, the letter to Poole is as good a marker as any for the moment when the seeds of the new idealism are first firmly planted in an Anglophone culture. 19 Like Burke, Coleridge reviled the perceived atheism of the Jacobins, but while this revulsion prompted the former to attack metaphysics as such, it emboldened Coleridge to reconstruct philosophy from its foundations.

This reconstruction involved overturning the three main ‘isms’ that formed the backbone of the ‘irreligious metaphysics’ of modern thought: materialism (the ontological theory, defended by Hartley and Priestley, that all that exists is matter or energy); empiricism (the epistemological theory, defended by Locke, Hume, and Berkeley, that all knowledge is based upon experience); and associationism (the psychological theory, defended by Hartley and Hume, that human consciousness is determined by the connection of ideas according to contingent principles of association). As Coleridge discovered, basing a critique of associationism upon the principles of transcendental idealism meant rethinking the relationship between literature and philosophy. That this was the case was largely due to the peculiar role that aesthetics came to play within the philosophy of Kant and German idealism.

In the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Kant departs from empiricism in two fundamental ways: first, by thinking about knowledge transcendentally rather than causally; second, by treating mediation as a precondition, rather than as an obstacle to valid experience. In the first of these innovations, Kant discards the inductive method of Locke and Hume, which attempted to establish Descartes’ sapient being or cogito in the data of sense perception. If Hume had shown the impotence of reason in living a human life, Kant concluded, then philosophy must take the form of a critique of reason’s limits. Rather than asking, what causes my experience, the transcendental method begins with the question: what are the conditions of the possibility of experience? Unlike the empiricist, Kant argues, the transcendental philosopher will find that there are necessary conditions to experience which can only be known a priori. In turn, Coleridge saw in Kant’s inauguration of a transcendental (rather than dogmatic) a priori the re-establishment of a link between the human mind and a universal order that transcended the purely inductive, naturalistic, and ‘irreligious’ metaphysics of a generation of thinkers inspired by Locke, Hume, and Hartley. Transcendental method becomes crucial to Coleridge’s attempts to move beyond what both he and Kant see as the paradoxes of empiricism, materialism, and associationism. Accordingly, in Biographia Literaria , he asks: ‘How can we make bricks without straw? Or build without cement? We learn all things indeed by occasion of experience; but the very facts so learnt force us inward on the antecedents, that must be pre supposed in order to render experience itself possible.’ 20

Kant’s own pursuit of the transcendental method triggers his second departure from empiricism—namely, idealism. By thinking about knowledge in terms of the conditions of experience, Kant argues, we come to see that the world as we experience it is fundamentally ordered by mental intuitions and concepts. It is a transcendental condition of experience, and consequently of knowledge, that the mind partly creates the world that it experiences. As Kant puts it, ‘we ourselves bring into the appearances that order and regularity in them that we call nature’. 21 One important corollary of Kant’s position is the impossibility of knowing the world outside the mediation of these ideal forms of experience. Since ‘[s]ensibility and its field, namely that of appearances … do not pertain to things in themselves, but only to the way in which … things appear to us’, reality as it is in itself and to itself, unmediated by the forms of intuition and understanding, is inaccessible. 22 For Kant, the loss of the Ding an sich (‘thing-in-itself’) is the price of defeating a scepticism engendered by empiricism. This in turn means understanding that ideas such as ‘infinity’, ‘God’, even the ‘self’ have no constitutive role to play within human knowledge. Such things, while they may be conceivable, lie outside our possible experience; they are what Kant terms ‘noumenal’, as distinct from the ‘phenomenal’ world of our perceptual experience. Although we may (indeed, in certain cases, must) think such ideas, we cannot have knowledge of their objects. To know the self, for instance, in an unmediated way would involve a very exotic kind of non-spatial, non-temporal intuition, or what Kant calls ‘intellectual intuition’, which ‘lies absolutely outside our faculty of cognition’. 23

Kant’s conservatism regarding intellectual intuition foregrounds the mixed legacy of the critical philosophy for Coleridge, as the latter strove to develop a philosophical vocabulary that might vindicate the visionary imagination of Wordsworth. On the one hand, Kant’s depiction of the human mind as both receptive (empirical) and spontaneous (transcendental) in its operations provides Coleridge with grounds for defending the authenticity of poetic creativity against critics who shared Stewart’s conviction that such mental creations were, epistemologically speaking, foundationless. Furthermore, Kant’s articulation of aesthetic judgement as reflective (spontaneous) and therefore disinterested (i.e. directly adding neither to the knowledge nor to the pleasure of the subject) provided Coleridge with a justification of aesthetic experience as autonomous. On the other hand, Kant’s methods were for Coleridge merely an initial step towards a more fundamental rethinking of the relationship between knowledge and existence. As he declares in Biographia Literaria , ‘The term, Philosophy, defines itself as an affectionate seeking after the truth; but Truth is the correlative of Being. This again is no way conceivable, but by assuming as a postulate, that both are—ab initio, identical and co-inherent; that intelligence and being are reciprocally each other’s Substrate.’ 24 In passages such as these, Coleridge draws heavily upon thinkers such as F. W. von Schelling and J. G. Fichte, both of whom attempt to bridge the Kantian chasm between the phenomenal and the noumenal, between subjective and objective reality.

Accordingly, for Fichte and Schelling, philosophy’s most fundamental questions relate not so much to the possibility of experience as they do to the possibility of intellectual intuition . The two thinkers address this issue by expanding different components of Kant’s architectonic. Fichte sets out from Kant’s argument that in behaving morally we think practically rather than cognitively, acting in accordance with an ideal moral law of which we can have no knowledge, but which, nonetheless, regulates our dealings with other persons. Fichte takes this argument a step further by making selfhood itself dependent upon the activity of practical reason, arguing that we are never more ourselves than when we are exerting our wills in self-reflection. As he puts it in his ‘Second Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre ’ (1797–8), the only way that ‘ belief in the reality of this intellectual intuition … can be accomplished is by exhibiting the ethical law within us … It is in this way that the I becomes characterized as something absolutely active.’ 25 Fichte’s emphasis on the constitutive nature of will chimed with Coleridge’s Christian voluntarism, and reinforced the latter’s conviction that ‘as philosophy is neither a science of the reason or understanding only, nor merely a science of morals, but the science of being altogether, its primary ground can be neither merely speculative or merely practical, but both in one’. 26

However, Fichte’s attempt to build a system of truth from within consciousness proved to be too ego-centred for Coleridge. More attractive, at least during the period when he was writing Biographia Literaria , was the philosophy of F. W. J. Schelling. Where Fichte builds upon Kant’s critique of practical reason, Schelling’s departure point is Kant’s account of aesthetic freedom and the productivity of artistic genius. The chief merit of artistic genius for Kant is that, by exceeding the cognitive measures of understanding, it can ‘animate the mind by opening up for it the prospect of an immeasurable field of related representations’. 27 Schelling develops Kant’s account of genius into a system of reality as self-reflective productivity, or consciousness. In his System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), he agrees with Kant that the act of intuiting oneself intellectually (i.e. to be at once subject and object for oneself) is impossible, but argues that it remains possible for the self to intuit itself aesthetically , for ‘the aesthetic intuition simply is the intellectual intuition become objective’. 28 In this way, subject and object can be united through artistic activity, and ‘[t]hat which the philosopher allows to be divided … comes, through the miracle of art, to be radiated back from the products thereof’. 29 Schelling’s conclusion that ‘art is at once the only true and eternal organ and document of philosophy’ not only underpins Coleridge’s declaration that the poet ‘brings the whole soul of man into activity’, it also justifies Biographia ’s own blending of philosophical reflection and literary productivity. 30 Consequently, it is only in the context of Biographia ’s total performance that Coleridge’s defence of Wordsworth as a ‘philosophical poet’ makes sense: namely, that the philosophical basis of Wordsworth’s poetry lies in the way in which his genius aesthetically completes the task of philosophy.

Yet even Kant’s relatively conservative and quietist concerns with transcendental harmonies were viewed with mistrust in some quarters in Britain. Coleridge’s attempts in Biographia Literaria and elsewhere to leaven his German idealist sources with Neoplatonic and other, more arcane authorities did little to alleviate British readers’ suspicions of modern philosophers. Moreover, such misgivings were not confined to the anti-Jacobin tendency, as is illustrated by Byron’s mocking depiction of Coleridge in the Dedication to Don Juan as a ‘hawk encumber’d with his hood, | Explaining metaphysics to the nation’ (stanza 2). 31 The feeling among a younger generation of writers that transcendentalism was reactionary obscurantism is further evident in Thomas Love Peacock’s satirical portrait of Coleridge as ‘Mr Flosky’ in his novel Nightmare Abbey (1818). Recanting his youthful support for the French Revolution, Flosky ‘plunged into the central opacity of Kantian metaphysics, and lay perdu several years in transcendental darkness, till the common daylight of common sense became intolerable to his eyes’. 32

Peacock’s antithesis of ‘transcendental darkness’ and ‘the common daylight of common sense’ highlights the fact that, despite Coleridge’s exertions, German idealism never quite grips the Romantic imagination in Britain. In alluding to the dominant philosophical trend at this time (the ‘common sense’ theory of Thomas Reid, James Beattie, and Dugald Stewart), it also reminds us of the considerable influence exerted by the Scottish Enlightenment over British Romantic culture. The mock-debate that takes place between Shelley’s Defence of Poetry (1821) and Peacock’s Four Ages of Poetry (1820), for example, extends an earlier dispute between the scepticism of Hume and the historiography of William Robertson. Thus, Shelley’s declaration that only poetry can free us from the illusions of objectivity by enabling us ‘to imagine that which we know’, offers a Humean-sceptical rebuttal of Peacock’s Scottish-Enlightenment narrative of the historical decline of imaginative poetry and the rise of empirical knowledge. 33 Indeed, Shelley’s claim that poetry is socially progressive in turn highlights another Scottish legacy in the form of Hume’s utility-based moral philosophy. Shelley’s poetic utilitarianism, however, like that of his early mentor Godwin, avoids the reductive hedonic calculus of Jeremy Bentham and his followers in favour of a more qualitative understanding of the well-being that might be promoted by human actions.

Furthermore, although they arrive at very different conclusions, both Shelley and Peacock deploy methods originally developed by thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment. In particular, they incorporate elements of what Dugald Stewart termed ‘ Theoretical or Conjectural History ’, a method that combines narratives of social progress with imagined models of past, present, and future communities. 34 Pioneered by Robertson, Rousseau, and Lord Kames as a way of bridging narratives of historical progress with (often sketchy) historical detail, ‘theoretical history’ becomes a literary genre in its own right in the novels of Scottish author John Galt, particularly Annals of the Parish (1821) and The Provost (1822), each of which is intended, in Galt’s words, to represent a ‘kind of treatise on the history of society’. 35 In Galt’s work as well as in Walter Scott’s Waverley novels, one can see the emergence of a distinctly British-Romantic form of historical epistemology, whereby the historical narrative displays a reflexive awareness of its own role in structuring past events.

Once the boundaries between the cultures of Romanticism and the Scottish Enlightenment are seen to blur in these ways, the role played by ‘common sense’ within Romantic writing appears more complicated. On the one hand, the term was firmly linked to the earnest philosophizing of the Scots, to which Charles Lamb offers an ironic rebuttal in his essay ‘Imperfect Sympathies’ (1821) by celebrating an ‘essentially anti-Caledonian’ order of ‘imperfect intellects’, the owners of which ‘have minds rather suggestive than comprehensive’. 36 Though playfully exaggerated, Lamb’s resistance to ‘Caledonian’ styles of thought is unsurprising: a common-sensism rooted in an Enlightenment discourse of sociability and intersubjectivity was unlikely to retain its appeal for early nineteenth-century writers who increasingly venerated imagination, consciousness, and individuality. Thus, for Coleridge, common sense was merely a form of linguistic residue that passed for folk wisdom, as ‘what was born and christened in the schools passes by degrees into the world at large, and becomes the property of the market and the tea-table’. 37

On the other hand, Reid’s original defence of common sense appears more ‘Romantic’ when considered as part of a broader, counter-philosophical impulse running through the long eighteenth century. The Cartesian demand for a ‘first’ philosophy disappears, Reid argues, when we exchange the picture of a mind that uses ideas to represent reality for one in which sensation produces belief through ‘simple and original, and therefore inexplicable acts of the mind’. 38 This fundamentally non-intellectual, instinctive image of the mind at work is shared by Hazlitt’s otherwise very different conception of ‘ common sense ’ as synonymous with ‘ natural feeling , which … lies between the two extremes of absolute proof and the grossest ignorance’. 39 Admittedly, Hazlitt’s use of common sense to describe the active but inchoate realm of ‘urgent, but undefined impressions of things upon us’ engages more with Burke’s notion of prejudice than it does with Reid’s ideas. Nonetheless, it indicates how vital the vocabulary of empiricism remained to writers during this period, particularly those who found that the new aura of autonomy surrounding literary and other art works offered a form of engagement with the world which unburdened the modern self of knowingness. In some writers, such concerns produce an indifference to knowledge that rejects both empirical rationalism and the metaphysics of imagination. This perspective is most memorably expressed by Keats’s defence of ‘ Negative Capability ’ as the poetic capacity for existing ‘in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason’. 40 In its elevation of emotional paradox, indeterminacy, and the unparaphrasable quickness of experience over cognition, Keats’s ‘negative capability’, like Lamb’s ‘imperfect’ sympathy, suggests a deeper suspicion of reflective thought, whether abstract, empirical, or transcendental.

By contrast, transcendentalist aesthetics transforms the relationship between literature and philosophy by theoretical means. For idealists it seemed that, if literature (and by extension, art in general) could noncognitively approach a ‘Truth’ that philosophy could not grasp, it followed that Schelling’s ‘miracle of art’ signalled the end of literature’s subservience to philosophy. Indeed, it could be argued that one corollary of the new aesthetics is the inauguration of ‘Literature’ itself, distinguished from its lower-case forebear by virtue of its reflexive power to embody intellectual intuition and unify subject and object. Rather than seeing poetry as the dress of thought, the ornamentation of just representations of philosophical truths, post-Kantian aesthetics postulates a ‘Literary Absolute’, through which art and literature alone can produce representations that accommodate the philosophical impossibility of mirroring an Absolute Truth that is itself constituted by those representations. 41 In other words, through Romanticism, ‘Literature’ becomes not just a genre in itself, but also (since it escapes all attempts at formal classification and determination) the genre of Romantic writing.

This inauguration and elevation of ‘Literature’ instigates a paradigm shift whereby the neoclassical model of literature as exemplum whose meaning might be paraphrased into the language of reason and general truth is supplanted by one of literature as autotelism, in which the relationship between a work’s form and content are dictated by ideas of essence and growth rather than by convention. Aspiring to the condition of a symbol that, in the words of Coleridge’s The Statesman’s Manual (1816), ‘partakes of the Reality which it renders intelligible’, 42 Romantic poems such as his ‘Kubla Khan’ self-consciously embody the relationship between the creative imagination and an unattainable Absolute in the indeterminate form of the fragment. Accordingly, behind Coleridge’s and (to a lesser extent) Wordsworth’s literary ambitions to produce a ‘genuine philosophical poem’ at the turn of the century is less a desire to emulate the early eighteenth-century theodicies of Alexander Pope, Mark Akenside, and James Thomson by testing ‘literary’ thoughts and emotions against general philosophical truths, and more a determination to write poetry that achieves the condition of being simultaneously philosophy as literature and literature as philosophy.

There remains, however, an ambivalence within this Janus-faced ideal. On the one hand, transcendental aesthetics can be seen as the culmination of Enlightenment system-building, insofar it installs an organic universalism that attempts to accommodate the subtle interpenetration of part and whole, particle and absolute, that Enlightenment thinkers such as Hume had found so troublesome. Much of the work of Schelling and Coleridge, for example, reflects their concern with establishing a nonreductive but philosophical principle of unity. This preoccupation informs Coleridge’s development of a theory of organic literary form and his insistence that ‘all Method supposes a principle of unity with progression’ which ‘can never in the sciences of experiment or in those of observation be adequately supplied by a theory built on generalization’. 43 For Friedrich Schlegel, on the other hand, philosophy’s representational limitations themselves become the precondition and organizing principle of a kind of poetry that transcends philosophy. Thus, while Schlegel’s ‘romantic’ poetry embodies the reflexivity of the dialectic of consciousness described by Fichte and Schelling, it remains ironic rather than apodictic in outlook. As Schlegel puts it in his ‘Critical Fragments’ (1797), irony

contains and arouses a feeling of indissoluble antagonism between the absolute and the relative, between the impossibility and the necessity of complete communication. It is the freest of all licences, for by its means one transcends oneself; and yet it is also the most lawful, for it is absolutely necessary. 44

Human life is philosophically ironic for Schlegel because the self is perpetually caught between ‘the impossibility and necessity’ of self-identification, of complete communication with itself. Romantic or ‘transcendental’ poetry, he argues, expresses this condition more effectively than philosophy because of its resistance to closure and determination and its self-conscious engagement with the necessity and impossibility of arriving at Absolute Truth. Accordingly, in his ‘Athenäum Fragments’ (1798), Schlegel describes ‘romantic’ poetry (and by extension, poetry in general) not as a product, but as a process that

is still in the state of becoming; that, in fact, is its real essence: that it should forever be becoming and never be perfected. It can be exhausted by no theory and only a divinatory criticism would dare try to characterize its ideal … The romantic kind of poetry is the only one that is more than a kind, that is, as it were, poetry itself: for in a certain sense all poetry is or should be romantic. 45

Schlegel’s manifesto joins Shelley’s claim that poets are the ‘unacknowledged legislators of the World’ in setting a high-water mark for the Romantic faith in the power of literature to restore a unity and purpose to consciousness that had been lost by Enlightenment philosophy. 46 In Germany, philosophy would return in the shape of Hegel’s historical dialectic, subsuming Romantic aesthetics within ‘the prose of life’, while in Britain the explosion of print culture and the rise of the realist novel undermined Coleridge’s idea of the literary work as autotelism. As Romantic tropes and ideas became increasingly anthologized and commoditized, the challenge facing later nineteenth-century writers attracted to such notions would be to defend Literature’s newly won autonomy in the absence of transcendental assurances.

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121 Romanticism Essay Topics & Examples

In a romanticism essay, you can explore a variety of topics, from American literature to British paintings. For that task, these ideas of romanticism collected by our team will be helpful!

🏆 Best Romanticism Ideas & Essay Examples

⭐ Simple & Easy Romanticism Essay Titles

📌 Most Interesting Romanticism Essay Topics

👍 good research ideas on romanticism, ❓ essay questions on romanticism.

Wordsworth’s Romanticism in Tintern Abbey Poem The tone of the poem is calm and meditative and Wordsworth describes the “landscape” and compares it to the “quiet” of the sky: “The landscape with the quiet of the sky”..
Romanticism in Frankenstein: The Use of Poetry in the Novel’s Narrative Although the dark and horrific motifs of Frankenstein may appear to contrast with the bright tones and subjects of such poetry, there is a clear connection, as established in the text, between the poetry of […]
Between Romanticism and Modernism The first of the modernists in music sought to begin new dimensions and depths in music through the use of non-conventional instruments and novel sounds.
Romanticism in Wolfgang Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther It is the fruitless reconciliation of the impulsive and sensitive to the society that makes Young Werther’s journey so powerful. What is even more interesting is that this general tone is what led to the […]
Romanticism and Victorian Literature Comparison In this respect, literature can be proud of the Romanticism and Victorian literature, because of their gradual framework and applicable emergence due to the significant events, such as the French Revolution, American Revolution, the defeat […]
Romanticism, Realism, and Modernism in Literature Romantic literature is characterized by several key traits, such as a love of nature, an emphasis on the individual and spirituality, a celebration of solitude and sadness, an interest in the common man, an idealization […]
Ethnocentrism, Romanticism, Exoticism, and Primitivism as Depicted in James Cameron’s “Avatar” Ethnocentrism is depicted in most scenes of Avatar; the film outlines Na’vi’s ways of life and the way the protagonist is forced to profess the culture before being admitted into the community.
The French Revolution: Romanticism Period Romanticism was anchored in the work of the poets which was evident in the daily lives of the society. Besides, the role of women in romantic literature was significant, thus; they were greatest poets and […]
Nature in 18th Century and Romanticism Literatures The anxiety inherent in a sketch – the feeling of being unsettled – leads Goldsmith to other stylistic choices, most notably the creation of illusions and the reliance upon sentiment, both of which smooth away […]
Restoration Literature and Romanticism: Common Facts All in all, the period of Restoration in the English literature can be described as the vindication of mind, intellectual values and political interests. The diction of this period is soft, inspiring, light and moving.
Romanticism in Seascape Painting by Jules Dupre In particular, it is important to examine the stylistic peculiarities of this artwork and the way in which it reflects the cultural trends that emerged in the nineteenth century.
Romanticism as an Ideological and Artistic Trend Romanticism in painting rejected the rationalism of classicism and reflected the attention to the depths of the human personality characteristic of the philosophy of the Romantics.
Features of French Romanticism in Camille Saint-Saens’s Music It is important to analyze Camille Saint-Saens’s works in the context of French Romanticism because the composer often combined the elements of French Romanticism with features typical of other movements and music styles like habanera.
Gothic Romanticism in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Nathaniel Hawthorn’s “The Birthmark” In the film “The Black Swan” directed by Darren Aronofsky, Nina struggles to fit into the ultimate role of the play “The Swan Lake”, as the Black Swan, even though she is comfortable playing the […]
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Poetry: British Romanticism There can be no doubt as to the fact that Romantic writers and poets strongly opposed the ideals of the French Revolution; however, this was not due to these ideals’ rational essence, but because, during […]
Romanticism Period in Art 3 It is against this scope that this paper aims to explore the aspect of romanticism in the history of painting by considering the works of artists such as Kauffmann, David, Delacroix and Gros.
Nature as the Mean of Expression in Romanticism The period of Romanticism is characterized by its address to nature, in other words, the world was perceived through the nature.”It is characterized by a shift from the structured, intellectual, reasoned approach of the 1700’s […]
Romanticism of Blake’s and Ghalib’s Poems In this journal, I will look at how Blake and Ghalib exemplify the Romantic movement, how their works differ from those of the Enlightenment, and the significance of their democratic and accessible writing style.
Romanticism: Beethoven’s Pathétique and Douglass’ The Narrative Two such examples of Romanticism works are Beethoven’s piano sonata, Pathetique, and Frederick Douglass’s The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
Researching of Musical Romanticism The critical characteristics of musical Romanticism could be seen in the stress on uniqueness and individuality, the expression of one’s emotions, and freedom of form and experimentation.
Renaissance and Romanticism: Concepts of Beauty Titian, as a representative of the Renaissance, depicted a portrait of a girl in compliance with all the canons of his time.
Romanticism in Modern Ecological Literature The current efforts by humans to safeguard the environment, coupled with the onset of ecological literature, not only indicates that romanticism never disappeared but also proves that the romantics were right. The artists were critical […]
Neo-Classicism, Romanticism, and Rococo Thus, in the second half of the eighteenth century, the neoclassical style was widely popular in Europe. This style contradicted the coldness and simplicity of neoclassicism.
Romanticism. Artists Associated With the Movement Art dealt mostly with issues of motive and realism while other forms of art dealt with the darkness of the community on one hand and its magnificence on the other.

⭐ Simple & Easy Romanticism Essay Titles

Gothic Romanticism of Edgar Allen Poe When the thought of today, the nineteenth-century writer Edgar Allan Poe is remembered as the master of the short story and the psychological thriller.
Revolution and Romanticism in Europe and America The analysis of romanticism presentation on the basis of Rousseau’s theory is to be reflected through the atmosphere of French revolution period. Romanticism of Rousseau appeared to be close to the approach of ‘primitivism’, characterizing […]
Romanticism: Paintings by Francisco Goya The first painting depicted a nude woman in the Western art and the second painting was painted after controversial thoughts from the Spanish society over the meaning of The Nude Maja.
Tristan and Isolde Opera Romanticism The Tristan and Isolde drama is influenced by a wide range of things. Wagner uses the voices to show what is in the thoughts of Isolde and her attendant.
British Romanticism and Its Origins It was partially a rebellion against aristocratic social and political standards of the Age of Enlightenment and a response against the scientific explanation of nature and was exemplified most powerfully in the visual arts, music, […]
Romanticizing Literature, Visual Arts and Music During Romanticism 1800-1850 As “it emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental”, the Romanticism period inspired many artists in the field of literature, painting, music, […]
Enlightenment and Romanticism: Comparison In the wake up of the feminist and historicist takes to pieces of the older Romanticism, particularly Bloom’s “creative thinker corporation” and the Wordsworth-centered verse of consciousness and the natural world, one has to inquire […]
American Romanticism of “The Minister’s Black Veil” In the story Hawthorne pondered upon the three ways of making God’s word clearer to people. The author himself and his main hero saw the mission of a clergyman in explaining the Bible to the […]
Chopin: Musician Who Had Effect Romanticism Music At the beginning of the musical period known as Romanticism Frederic Chopin was born in Poland. The piano was his chosen instrument and one that he mastered at a very young age.
The Age of Romanticism and Its Factors Characteristics of the genre identified by Welleck include a “revolt against the principles of neo-classicism criticism, the rediscovery of older English literature, the turn toward subjectivity and the worship of external nature slowly prepared during […]
Neoclassicism and Romanticism: Comparison They were the two poles of architectural thinking on the side of Neoclassicism was a rational, objective, almost scientific method of thought, which put reason in the first place among human abilities.
Romanticism. Hawthorne’s “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” One of the most typical traits of romantic literature is the prevalence of emotions, setting the natural world above the created world, and the most important, freedom of an individual.
Gustave Courbet: Revolutionary Artist of Romanticism While the clergy is visible from the background of the work, the decision by the painter to focus on the dog in the foreground was even more appalling.
Baroque and Romanticism Art Periods and Influences The above two works of art depict great disparities in art as a result of communal, political, and economic factors of mankind during the periods.
American Industrialization, Romanticism and Civil War In the article, the Romantic Movement Romantic impulse meant the liberation of the Americans to a point of freedom regarding respect and love.
The Age of Romanticism: Dances Articles Analysis On the one hand, it seems that these two writings have nothing in common except the intentions of the authors to make contributions to the field of dance and choose the theme of ballet for […]
Edgar Allan Poe, an American Romanticism Writer Poe’s three works “The fall of the house of Usher”, “the Raven” and “The Masque of the Red Death” describe his dedication to literature and his negative attitudes towards aristocracy.
Nineteenth Century Romanticism The works of early composers, writers, painters, and poets evolved from the onset, and in the increased quest for perfection, a spirit of romanticism was born.
Romanticism, Baroque and Renaissance Paintings’ Analysis It is possible to focus on such artworks as the Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar Friedrich, The Taking of Christ by Caravaggio, and Raphael’s The School of Athens.
Romanticism and the Modern Theatre The statement by the Romantic writer confirms the need to involve ordinary people in the theatre. The relationship between Faust and the devil in Goethe’s play is different from that in the traditional myth.
Art influences Culture: Romanticism & Realism In addition, the paper also highlights issues of the time and influences of the later works on the art world. Realism presented events of the society as they happened in reality.
Feminism Builds up in Romanticism, Realism, Modernism Exploring the significance of the theme as well as the motifs of this piece, it becomes essential to understand that the era of modernism injected individualism in the literary works.
The History of the Romanticism Period Romanticism refers to the period of intellectual, artistic and literary movement in Europe in the first half of nineteenth century. The supporters of the Romantic Movement point to the spontaneous and irrational display of powerful […]
Light vs. Dark Romanticism As the narration continues and Katrina is wooed by Crane, Irving interrupts and expresses his imagination about the challenging and admirable nature of women.
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Romanticism
The Three Different Features of Romanticism in The World is Too Much With Us, a Poem by William Wordsworth
Romanticism And Realism: Examples Of Mark Twain And Herman Melville Novels
William Cullen Bryant and American Romanticism
The American Renaissance: Transcendentalism, Romanticism and Dark Romanticism
The Influence Of The French Revolution Upon British Romanticism
The Relationship Between Romanticism And Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism: Principal Expression of Romanticism in America
Socialism And Ideas Associated With The Movement In Relation To Those Of Romanticism
Women’s Self-Discovery During Late American Romanticism
The French Romanticism Of Moliere And Shakespeare ‘s Midsummer Night ‘s
The Role of Romanticism and Realism in the Development of Art
The Historical Development of Literature from the Enlightenment through Romanticism to Modernism
The Characteristics of the Romanticism in Wordsworth
The Influence of Romanticism on People as Demonstrated in the Story of Madam Bovary
Realism and Romanticism: Similarities and Differences
The Romanticism Movement in the Novel The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff
Varieties Of Romanticism In The Poetry Of Blake Shelly And Keats
Walt Whitman And The Romanticism Movement
Sexism, Romanticism, and the Portrayal of Women in Eighteenth Century Art
The Shift from Romanticism to Realism in Mark Twain’s Satire Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences
The Washington Irving’s Romanticism
The Categorization of Romanticism and Realism at the End of the Baroque Period in the 18th Century
The Theme of Nature in Frankenstein as a Representation of the Effect Romanticism Had on Mary Shelley
The Key Tensions in Romanticism in Coleridge’s Kubla Khan and Keat’s Ode to a Nightingale
Tom Sawyer as a Representation of Walter Scott’s Romanticism and Tradition in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a Novel by Mark Twain
The Use of Romanticism in The Raven, a Poem by Edgar Allan Poe
William Wordsworth’s Daffodils and Negative Romanticism
The Use of Romanticism by Different Literary Authors
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – An Obvious Depiction of Romanticism and Realism
What Is The Romanticism Of Johnathan Keats And Wordsworth
The Romanticism Of The 19th Century
The Tables Turned’ by William Wordsworth and Romanticism
Use Of Romanticism In Development Of Characters In The Scarlet Letter
The Similarities Between Romanticism And Modernism
The Effect of Romanticism, Nationalism, and Communism in Shaping the European Nations
The Progression of Knowledge Between the 18th-Century Neoclassicism and 19th-Century Romanticism
The Origins, Spirit, Style, Themes, and Decline of the Romanticism Movement in Literature
The Elements of Romanticism in the Short Story, The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
The Symbols of Romanticism in the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Characteristics Of Romanticism Found In The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner
The Romanticism and Realism in Art and Literature
The Themes of Guilt, Suffering, and Experience in Literature During the Romanticism and Victorian Era
What Is the Difference Between Romanticism and Postmodernism?
How Does William Wordsworth’s Poetry Fit Into the Literary Tradition of Romanticism?
What Are the Differences Between Romanticism and Classicism?
How Did Romanticism and Photography Shape Western Modernity?
What Is the Opposite of Romanticism?
Is Nature a Dominant Theme in Romantic Poetry?
What Were the Material Causes of the Rise of Romanticism?
How Did Romanticism Change Society’s Way of Thinking?
What Are the Similarities Between Romantic Literature and Early Victorian Literature?
How Has Romanticism Diminished Throughout Popularity?
What Are the Main Features of Romantic Poetry?
How Did Romanticism Influence American Architecture?
What Are the Four Basic Tenets of Romanticism?
How Did Romanticism Kill Love?
What Did the Romantics Revolt Against, and What Did They Revive?
How Do Romantics Emphasize Individuality?
What Were the Characteristic Features of Poetry During the Romantic Movement?
Why Did Romantic Writers Reject Rationalism?
What Are Some Characteristics of Romantic Poetry?
Why Is Imagination Closely Linked With Romanticism?
What Is the Contribution of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley to the Romanticism?
Why Is the Prometheus Myth Important for Romanticism?
What Is Romantic Language and Style?
Who Were the Most Famous Writers During the American Romantic Era?
What Are Some Short Notes on Romanticism?
Why Should a Student Study Romantic Poetry?
What Is the Importance of 3 Major Concepts of Romanticism?
How Does Romantic Writing Differ From the Early American Writings Done by the Puritans?
What Are the Salient Features of Romanticism?
What Inspired Poets of Romantic Era to Write Poems?
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10 of the Best Poems by English Romantic Poets

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

English Romanticism tends to be dominated by a few names: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats. Here, we’ve tried to strike a balance and offer ten of the very best Romantic poems from English literature, which ensures that these canonical figures are well-represented, while also broadening that canon to include some important but slightly less famous voices.

We hope you like this short introduction to Romanticism told through ten classic Romantic poems…

1. William Wordsworth, ‘ My heart leaps up ’.

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 …

This simple nine-line poem describes how the poet is filled with joy when he sees a rainbow, and how he hopes he will always keep that sense of enchantment with the natural world. Wordsworth observes a rainbow in the sky and is filled with joy at the sight of a rainbow: a joy that was there when the poet was very young, is still there now he has attained adulthood, and – he trusts – will be with him until the end of his days.

If he loses this thrilling sense of wonder, what would be the point of living? In summary, this is the essence of ‘My heart leaps up’.

The poem contains Wordsworth’s famous declaration, ‘The Child is father of the Man’, highlighting how important childhood experience was to the Romantics in helping to shape the human beings they became in adult life. ‘My heart leaps up’ is a small slice of Romanticism which says more about that movement than many longer poems do.

2. William Wordsworth, ‘ I wandered lonely as a cloud ’.

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 …

Often known simply as ‘The Daffodils’ or ‘Wordsworth’s daffodils poem’, this is also one of the most famous poems of English Romanticism, and sees Wordsworth (1770-1850) celebrating the ‘host of golden daffodils’ he saw while out walking. The poem was actually a collaboration between Wordsworth, his sister Dorothy (whose notes helped to inspire it), and Wordsworth’s wife, Mary.

On 15 April 1802, Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy were walking around Glencoyne Bay in Ullswater when they came upon a ‘long belt’ of daffodils, as Dorothy put it memorably in her journal.

Dorothy Wordsworth wrote of the encounter with the daffodils , ‘I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about & about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness & the rest tossed and reeled and danced & seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the Lake, they looked so gay ever dancing ever changing.’

The influence of this passage from Dorothy’s journal can be seen in Wordsworth’s poem, which he did not write until at least two years after this, in 1804

3. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ‘ Frost at Midnight ’.

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 …

So begins this great meditative poem. Wordsworth’s great collaborator on the 1798 collection Lyrical Ballads was Coleridge.

Written in 1798, the same year that Coleridge’s landmark volume of poems, Lyrical Ballads (co-authored with Wordsworth), appeared, ‘Frost at Midnight’ is a night-time meditation on childhood and raising children, offered in a conversational manner and focusing on several key themes of Romantic poetry: the formative importance of childhood and the way it shapes who we become, and the role nature can play in our lives.

4. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner .

‘God save thee, ancient Mariner! From the fiends, that plague thee thus!— Why look’st thou so?’—With my cross-bow I shot the ALBATROSS …

Written in 1797-8, this is Coleridge’s most famous poem – it first appeared in Lyrical Ballads . The idea of killing an albatross bringing bad luck upon the crew of a ship appears to have been invented in this poem, as there is no precedent for it – and the albatross idea was probably William Wordsworth’s, not Coleridge’s (Wordsworth got the idea of the albatross-killing from a 1726 book, A Voyage Round The World by Way of the Great South Sea , by Captain George Shelvocke).

The poem is one of the great narrative poems in English, with the old mariner recounting his story, with its hardships and tragedy, to a wedding guest.

Variously interpreted as being about guilt over the Transatlantic slave trade, about Coleridge’s own loneliness, and about spiritual salvation, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner remains a challenging poem whose ultimate meaning is elusive.

5. Charlotte Smith, ‘ Sonnet on being Cautioned against Walking on a Headland ’.

Is there a solitary wretch who hies To the tall cliff, with starting pace or slow, And, measuring, views with wild and hollow eyes Its distance from the waves that chide below …

English Romanticism wasn’t entirely dominated by men, although it’s true that names like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and so on tend to dominate the lists. But as Dorothy Wordsworth’s role in inspiring ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ demonstrates, Romanticism wasn’t quite an all-male affair.

This poem by Charlotte Turner Smith, a pioneer of Romanticism in England who was born before Wordsworth or Coleridge, is that rarest of things: a Gothic sonnet. This needn’t surprise when we bear in mind that the sonnet’s author, Charlotte Turner Smith (1749-1806) was associated with English Romanticism and was also a key figure in the revival of the English sonnet.

6. John Clare, ‘ The Yellowhammer’s Nest ’.

Just by the wooden brig a bird flew up, Frit by the cowboy as he scrambled down To reach the misty dewberry—let us stoop And seek its nest—the brook we need not dread, ’Tis scarcely deep enough a bee to drown, So it sings harmless o’er its pebbly bed …

John Clare (1793-1864) has been called the greatest nature poet in the English language (by, for instance, his biographer Jonathan Bate), and yet his life – particularly his madness and time inside an asylum later in his life – tends to overshadow his poetry.

Like Charlotte Turner Smith, Clare is still a rather overlooked figure in English Romanticism and nature poetry, but he’s been called England’s greatest nature poet and the best poet to have written about birds.

‘The Yellowhammer’s Nest’, although not Clare’s best-known poem, shows his wonderful sensitivity to vowel sounds, as he explores the patterns found within nature by focusing on the nest of the bird, which is described as ‘poet-like’.

7. Percy Shelley, ‘ Mont Blanc ’.

The everlasting universe of things Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom— Now lending splendour, where from secret springs The source of human thought its tribute brings Of waters …

The Romantics were greatly interested in a quality that Edmund Burke called ‘the Sublime’: that peculiar mixture of awe and terror we feel when confronted with great forces of nature. Percy Shelley’s poem about Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps, is a classic example of Romantic poetry about the Sublime – an ode to nature as a powerful and beautiful force.

Shelley composed ‘Mont Blanc’ during the summer of 1816, and it was first published in Mary Shelley’s History of a Six Weeks’ Tour through a Part of France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland (1817), which – beating Frankenstein by a year – was actually Mary’s first book .

Immediately in the first two lines of ‘Mont Blanc’, Shelley foregrounds the key thrust of the poem: the relationship between the natural world and the human imagination. The ‘everlasting universe of things’, which recalls Wordsworth’s talk of the ‘immortality’ of the earth in his ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality’ (which we’ve analysed here ); Shelley notes that this ‘universe of things’ flows through the (mortal) mind. These external influences are variously light and dark, vivid and obscure.

8. Percy Shelley, ‘ To a Skylark ’.

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from Heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art …

Shelley completed this, one of his most famous poems, in June 1820. The inspiration for the poem was an evening walk Shelley took with his wife, Mary, in Livorno, in north-west Italy.

Mary later described the circumstances that gave rise to the poem: ‘It was on a beautiful summer evening while wandering among the lanes whose myrtle hedges were the bowers of the fire-flies, that we heard the carolling of the skylark.’ The opening line of the poem gave Noel Coward the title for his play Blithe Spirit .

Shelley asks the bird to teach him just half the happiness the bird must know, in order to produce such beautiful music. If the skylark granted the poet his wish, he – Shelley – would start singing such delirious, harmonious music that the world would listen to him, much as he is listening, enraptured, to the skylark right now. We have analysed this poem here .

9. John Keats, ‘ Ode to a Nightingale ’.

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 …

From its opening simile likening the poet’s mental state to the effects of drinking hemlock, to the poem’s later references to ‘a draught of vintage’ and ‘a beaker full of the warm South’, Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ is one of the most drink-sodden poems produced by the entire Romantic period.

‘Ode to a Nightingale’ is about the poet’s experience of listening to the beautiful song of the nightingale. Keats has become intoxicated by the nightingale’s heartbreakingly beautiful song, and he feels as though he’d drunk the numbing poison hemlock or the similarly numbing (though less deadly) drug, opium. He is forgetting everything: it’s as though he’s heading to Lethe (‘Lethe-wards’, as in ‘towards Lethe’), the river of forgetfulness in Greek mythology.

The contrast between mortality and immortality, between the real world and the enchanted world the nightingale’s song seems to open a window onto (like one of those magic casements Keats refers to), is a key one for the poem. We have analysed this poem here .

10. Lord Byron, ‘ Darkness ’.

This poem was inspired by a curious incident: the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, which drastically altered the weather conditions across the world and led to 1816 being branded ‘the Year without a Summer’. The same event also led to Byron’s trip to Lake Geneva and his ghost-story writing competition, which produced Mary Shelley’s masterpiece Frankenstein .

For Byron, the extermination of the sun seemed like a dream, yet it was ‘no dream’ but a strange and almost sublimely terrifying reality. Another example of the Romantic concept of the Sublime, brought to us by one of English Romanticism’s best-known figures. It begins:

I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day …

10 thoughts on “10 of the Best Poems by English Romantic Poets”

There are several I need to read among these. I would add the Solitary reaper, by Wordsworth, and his sonnet Calm is all nature… (but really, selecting just a few of his is difficult – same as for Keats), Coleridge’s Dejection and some of keats’s sonnets, maybe What the lark said.

All excellent suggestions – this needs to be a top 20 list rather than top 10! I must blog about ‘The Solitary Reaper’ soon.

Byron’s ghost story competition produced not only ‘Frankenstein’ but ‘The Vampyre’ a novella by Dr John William Polidori (Byron’s personal physician) which if it did not invent,certainly introduced the Romantic Vampire (based on Lord Byron) to English literature, and was the origin of ‘Carmilla’, ‘Dracula’ and even possibly, sadly, Edward. I mention it because I feel poor Polidori never get the credit that was his due.

Indeed. I talk about Polidori’s short novel in my book, The Secret Library. One of a number of Gothic horror classics that have been somewhat written out of the history of the genre.

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I do so love “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”! My fav Keats poem is “Ode on a Grecian Urn”. It’s a fun one to teach.

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The selection is an interesting one but Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn would have been more representative entry of him. I like this blog for a fair and easy touch with literature.

Just want to tell everyone the rainbow is what God made for Noah as a token that he promised noah that he would never destroy the world by flood ever again

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Crossing Frontiers: English Romanticism and Sufism as Literary Movements

First Online: 15 June 2018

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Mustapha Bala Ruma 3

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Comparative studies as a discipline provides tools for the critical and cross-cultural analysis of social phenomena, processes, and experiences. For this reason, it has become an important component of literary studies, especially where the analysis aims to look for parallels and divergences across different countries, cultures, and historical periods. This chapter is an attempt in that direction because it seeks to understand two seemingly dissimilar groups of people and their expressions—Sufism and English Romanticism—with the intention of bringing their commonalities into sharp focus. It looks at how both originated as protest movements against the dominant ideology of their times.

Comparative studies
English romanticism
Protest poetry

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Ruma, M.B. (2018). Crossing Frontiers: English Romanticism and Sufism as Literary Movements. In: Gabriel, S., Pagan, N. (eds) Literature, Memory, Hegemony. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-9001-1_3

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English Romanticism — Poets

William Blake

Biographical Info Born: 1757 Died: 1827

Essay: The "Mind-forg'd Manacles" of Blake's Poetr

Blake's Illustrations

Major Works

"The Lamb" (1789)
"The Little Black Boy" (1789)
"The Chimney Sweeper" (1789)
"Infant Joy" (1789)
"Earth's Answer" (1794)
"The Chimney Sweeper" (1794)
"The Sick Rose" (1794)
"The Tyger" (1794)
"London" (1794)
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793)
The The Four Zoas (1793)
Anthropic Principle
Poets View The Industrial Revolution
Poets and The Industrial Revolution
An American Revolution
Godwin & Wollstonecraft

Other Sources: Selected Bibliography

William Wordsworth

Biographical Info Born: 1770 Died: 1850

Tintern Abbey"
"We Are Seven"
"Lines Written In Early Spring"
The Prelude (1799, 1805, 1850)
Resolution and Independence (1807)
Ode: Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood (1807)
Breaking Frame
Coleridge and Newton

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Biographical Info Born: 1772 Died: 1834

"Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
"The Eolian Harp" (1795)
"This Lime-tree Bower My Prison" (1797)
"Frost At Midnight" (1798)
Kubla Khan (1798)
Christabel (1801)
Dejection: An Ode (1802)
Measuring a Genie
Intellectual Kinship
What is a Masterpiece?
A Fine Madness: Sanity and Creativity

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Biographical Info Born: 1792 Died: 1822

Mont Blanc (1817)
Hymn To Intellectual Beauty (1817)
Prometheus Unbound (1820)
Ode To The West Wind (1820)
To A Skylark (1820)
Ozymandias (1818)
Epipsychidon (1821)
Adonais: An Ellegy on the Death of John Keats (1821)
The Triumph of Life (1824)
A Defence of Poetry (1821 / 1840)
Frankenstein
Frankenstein (2)
Poets View the Industrial Revloution
Poets and the Industrial Revolution
Moonfall: 1969

George Gordon, Lord Byron

Biographical Info Born: 1788 Died: 1824

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1818)
Manfred (1817)
Don Juan (1824)
She Walks In Beauty (1815)
Memorization

Biographical Info Born: 1795 Died: 1821

Endymion: A Poetic Romance (1818)
Hyperion (1820)
The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream (1820)
The Eve of St. Agnes (1820)
La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1820)
Ode to A Nightingale (1820)
Ode on a Grecian Urn (1820)
Lamia (1819 / 1856)
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The Case for Marrying an Older Man

A woman’s life is all work and little rest. An age gap relationship can help.

In the summer, in the south of France, my husband and I like to play, rather badly, the lottery. We take long, scorching walks to the village — gratuitous beauty, gratuitous heat — kicking up dust and languid debates over how we’d spend such an influx. I purchase scratch-offs, jackpot tickets, scraping the former with euro coins in restaurants too fine for that. I never cash them in, nor do I check the winning numbers. For I already won something like the lotto, with its gifts and its curses, when he married me.

He is ten years older than I am. I chose him on purpose, not by chance. As far as life decisions go, on balance, I recommend it.

When I was 20 and a junior at Harvard College, a series of great ironies began to mock me. I could study all I wanted, prove myself as exceptional as I liked, and still my fiercest advantage remained so universal it deflated my other plans. My youth. The newness of my face and body. Compellingly effortless; cruelly fleeting. I shared it with the average, idle young woman shrugging down the street. The thought, when it descended on me, jolted my perspective, the way a falling leaf can make you look up: I could diligently craft an ideal existence, over years and years of sleepless nights and industry. Or I could just marry it early.

So naturally I began to lug a heavy suitcase of books each Saturday to the Harvard Business School to work on my Nabokov paper. In one cavernous, well-appointed room sat approximately 50 of the planet’s most suitable bachelors. I had high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out. Apologies to Progress, but older men still desired those things.

I could not understand why my female classmates did not join me, given their intelligence. Each time I reconsidered the project, it struck me as more reasonable. Why ignore our youth when it amounted to a superpower? Why assume the burdens of womanhood, its too-quick-to-vanish upper hand, but not its brief benefits at least? Perhaps it came easier to avoid the topic wholesale than to accept that women really do have a tragically short window of power, and reason enough to take advantage of that fact while they can. As for me, I liked history, Victorian novels, knew of imminent female pitfalls from all the books I’d read: vampiric boyfriends; labor, at the office and in the hospital, expected simultaneously; a decline in status as we aged, like a looming eclipse. I’d have disliked being called calculating, but I had, like all women, a calculator in my head. I thought it silly to ignore its answers when they pointed to an unfairness for which we really ought to have been preparing.

I was competitive by nature, an English-literature student with all the corresponding major ambitions and minor prospects (Great American novel; email job). A little Bovarist , frantic for new places and ideas; to travel here, to travel there, to be in the room where things happened. I resented the callow boys in my class, who lusted after a particular, socially sanctioned type on campus: thin and sexless, emotionally detached and socially connected, the opposite of me. Restless one Saturday night, I slipped on a red dress and snuck into a graduate-school event, coiling an HDMI cord around my wrist as proof of some technical duty. I danced. I drank for free, until one of the organizers asked me to leave. I called and climbed into an Uber. Then I promptly climbed out of it. For there he was, emerging from the revolving doors. Brown eyes, curved lips, immaculate jacket. I went to him, asked him for a cigarette. A date, days later. A second one, where I discovered he was a person, potentially my favorite kind: funny, clear-eyed, brilliant, on intimate terms with the universe.

I used to love men like men love women — that is, not very well, and with a hunger driven only by my own inadequacies. Not him. In those early days, I spoke fondly of my family, stocked the fridge with his favorite pasta, folded his clothes more neatly than I ever have since. I wrote his mother a thank-you note for hosting me in his native France, something befitting a daughter-in-law. It worked; I meant it. After graduation and my fellowship at Oxford, I stayed in Europe for his career and married him at 23.

Of course I just fell in love. Romances have a setting; I had only intervened to place myself well. Mainly, I spotted the precise trouble of being a woman ahead of time, tried to surf it instead of letting it drown me on principle. I had grown bored of discussions of fair and unfair, equal or unequal , and preferred instead to consider a thing called ease.

The reception of a particular age-gap relationship depends on its obviousness. The greater and more visible the difference in years and status between a man and a woman, the more it strikes others as transactional. Transactional thinking in relationships is both as American as it gets and the least kosher subject in the American romantic lexicon. When a 50-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman walk down the street, the questions form themselves inside of you; they make you feel cynical and obscene: How good of a deal is that? Which party is getting the better one? Would I take it? He is older. Income rises with age, so we assume he has money, at least relative to her; at minimum, more connections and experience. She has supple skin. Energy. Sex. Maybe she gets a Birkin. Maybe he gets a baby long after his prime. The sight of their entwined hands throws a lucid light on the calculations each of us makes, in love, to varying degrees of denial. You could get married in the most romantic place in the world, like I did, and you would still have to sign a contract.

Twenty and 30 is not like 30 and 40; some freshness to my features back then, some clumsiness in my bearing, warped our decade, in the eyes of others, to an uncrossable gulf. Perhaps this explains the anger we felt directed at us at the start of our relationship. People seemed to take us very, very personally. I recall a hellish car ride with a friend of his who began to castigate me in the backseat, in tones so low that only I could hear him. He told me, You wanted a rich boyfriend. You chased and snuck into parties . He spared me the insult of gold digger, but he drew, with other words, the outline for it. Most offended were the single older women, my husband’s classmates. They discussed me in the bathroom at parties when I was in the stall. What does he see in her? What do they talk about? They were concerned about me. They wielded their concern like a bludgeon. They paraphrased without meaning to my favorite line from Nabokov’s Lolita : “You took advantage of my disadvantage,” suspecting me of some weakness he in turn mined. It did not disturb them, so much, to consider that all relationships were trades. The trouble was the trade I’d made struck them as a bad one.

The truth is you can fall in love with someone for all sorts of reasons, tiny transactions, pluses and minuses, whose sum is your affection for each other, your loyalty, your commitment. The way someone picks up your favorite croissant. Their habit of listening hard. What they do for you on your anniversary and your reciprocal gesture, wrapped thoughtfully. The serenity they inspire; your happiness, enlivening it. When someone says they feel unappreciated, what they really mean is you’re in debt to them.

When I think of same-age, same-stage relationships, what I tend to picture is a woman who is doing too much for too little.

I’m 27 now, and most women my age have “partners.” These days, girls become partners quite young. A partner is supposed to be a modern answer to the oppression of marriage, the terrible feeling of someone looming over you, head of a household to which you can only ever be the neck. Necks are vulnerable. The problem with a partner, however, is if you’re equal in all things, you compromise in all things. And men are too skilled at taking .

There is a boy out there who knows how to floss because my friend taught him. Now he kisses college girls with fresh breath. A boy married to my friend who doesn’t know how to pack his own suitcase. She “likes to do it for him.” A million boys who know how to touch a woman, who go to therapy because they were pushed, who learned fidelity, boundaries, decency, manners, to use a top sheet and act humanely beneath it, to call their mothers, match colors, bring flowers to a funeral and inhale, exhale in the face of rage, because some girl, some girl we know, some girl they probably don’t speak to and will never, ever credit, took the time to teach him. All while she was working, raising herself, clawing up the cliff-face of adulthood. Hauling him at her own expense.

I find a post on Reddit where five thousand men try to define “ a woman’s touch .” They describe raised flower beds, blankets, photographs of their loved ones, not hers, sprouting on the mantel overnight. Candles, coasters, side tables. Someone remembering to take lint out of the dryer. To give compliments. I wonder what these women are getting back. I imagine them like Cinderella’s mice, scurrying around, their sole proof of life their contributions to a more central character. On occasion I meet a nice couple, who grew up together. They know each other with a fraternalism tender and alien to me. But I think of all my friends who failed at this, were failed at this, and I think, No, absolutely not, too risky . Riskier, sometimes, than an age gap.

My younger brother is in his early 20s, handsome, successful, but in many ways: an endearing disaster. By his age, I had long since wisened up. He leaves his clothes in the dryer, takes out a single shirt, steams it for three minutes. His towel on the floor, for someone else to retrieve. His lovely, same-age girlfriend is aching to fix these tendencies, among others. She is capable beyond words. Statistically, they will not end up together. He moved into his first place recently, and she, the girlfriend, supplied him with a long, detailed list of things he needed for his apartment: sheets, towels, hangers, a colander, which made me laugh. She picked out his couch. I will bet you anything she will fix his laundry habits, and if so, they will impress the next girl. If they break up, she will never see that couch again, and he will forget its story. I tell her when I visit because I like her, though I get in trouble for it: You shouldn’t do so much for him, not for someone who is not stuck with you, not for any boy, not even for my wonderful brother.

Too much work had left my husband, by 30, jaded and uninspired. He’d burned out — but I could reenchant things. I danced at restaurants when they played a song I liked. I turned grocery shopping into an adventure, pleased by what I provided. Ambitious, hungry, he needed someone smart enough to sustain his interest, but flexible enough in her habits to build them around his hours. I could. I do: read myself occupied, make myself free, materialize beside him when he calls for me. In exchange, I left a lucrative but deadening spreadsheet job to write full-time, without having to live like a writer. I learned to cook, a little, and decorate, somewhat poorly. Mostly I get to read, to walk central London and Miami and think in delicious circles, to work hard, when necessary, for free, and write stories for far less than minimum wage when I tally all the hours I take to write them.

At 20, I had felt daunted by the project of becoming my ideal self, couldn’t imagine doing it in tandem with someone, two raw lumps of clay trying to mold one another and only sullying things worse. I’d go on dates with boys my age and leave with the impression they were telling me not about themselves but some person who didn’t exist yet and on whom I was meant to bet regardless. My husband struck me instead as so finished, formed. Analyzable for compatibility. He bore the traces of other women who’d improved him, small but crucial basics like use a coaster ; listen, don’t give advice. Young egos mellow into patience and generosity.

My husband isn’t my partner. He’s my mentor, my lover, and, only in certain contexts, my friend. I’ll never forget it, how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: This is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it, and I did. Adulthood seemed a series of exhausting obligations. But his logistics ran so smoothly that he simply tacked mine on. I moved into his flat, onto his level, drag and drop, cleaner thrice a week, bills automatic. By opting out of partnership in my 20s, I granted myself a kind of compartmentalized, liberating selfishness none of my friends have managed. I am the work in progress, the party we worry about, a surprising dominance. When I searched for my first job, at 21, we combined our efforts, for my sake. He had wisdom to impart, contacts with whom he arranged coffees; we spent an afternoon, laughing, drawing up earnest lists of my pros and cons (highly sociable; sloppy math). Meanwhile, I took calls from a dear friend who had a boyfriend her age. Both savagely ambitious, hyperclose and entwined in each other’s projects. If each was a start-up , the other was the first hire, an intense dedication I found riveting. Yet every time she called me, I hung up with the distinct feeling that too much was happening at the same time: both learning to please a boss; to forge more adult relationships with their families; to pay bills and taxes and hang prints on the wall. Neither had any advice to give and certainly no stability. I pictured a three-legged race, two people tied together and hobbling toward every milestone.

I don’t fool myself. My marriage has its cons. There are only so many times one can say “thank you” — for splendid scenes, fine dinners — before the phrase starts to grate. I live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that shapes the freedom with which I can ever be angry with him. He doesn’t have to hold it over my head. It just floats there, complicating usual shorthands to explain dissatisfaction like, You aren’t being supportive lately . It’s a Frenchism to say, “Take a decision,” and from time to time I joke: from whom? Occasionally I find myself in some fabulous country at some fabulous party and I think what a long way I have traveled, like a lucky cloud, and it is frightening to think of oneself as vapor.

Mostly I worry that if he ever betrayed me and I had to move on, I would survive, but would find in my humor, preferences, the way I make coffee or the bed nothing that he did not teach, change, mold, recompose, stamp with his initials, the way Renaissance painters hid in their paintings their faces among a crowd. I wonder if when they looked at their paintings, they saw their own faces first. But this is the wrong question, if our aim is happiness. Like the other question on which I’m expected to dwell: Who is in charge, the man who drives or the woman who put him there so she could enjoy herself? I sit in the car, in the painting it would have taken me a corporate job and 20 years to paint alone, and my concern over who has the upper hand becomes as distant as the horizon, the one he and I made so wide for me.

To be a woman is to race against the clock, in several ways, until there is nothing left to be but run ragged.

We try to put it off, but it will hit us at some point: that we live in a world in which our power has a different shape from that of men, a different distribution of advantage, ours a funnel and theirs an expanding cone. A woman at 20 rarely has to earn her welcome; a boy at 20 will be turned away at the door. A woman at 30 may find a younger woman has taken her seat; a man at 30 will have invited her. I think back to the women in the bathroom, my husband’s classmates. What was my relationship if not an inconvertible sign of this unfairness? What was I doing, in marrying older, if not endorsing it? I had taken advantage of their disadvantage. I had preempted my own. After all, principled women are meant to defy unfairness, to show some integrity or denial, not plan around it, like I had. These were driven women, successful, beautiful, capable. I merely possessed the one thing they had already lost. In getting ahead of the problem, had I pushed them down? If I hadn’t, would it really have made any difference?

When we decided we wanted to be equal to men, we got on men’s time. We worked when they worked, retired when they retired, had to squeeze pregnancy, children, menopause somewhere impossibly in the margins. I have a friend, in her late 20s, who wears a mood ring; these days it is often red, flickering in the air like a siren when she explains her predicament to me. She has raised her fair share of same-age boyfriends. She has put her head down, worked laboriously alongside them, too. At last she is beginning to reap the dividends, earning the income to finally enjoy herself. But it is now, exactly at this precipice of freedom and pleasure, that a time problem comes closing in. If she would like to have children before 35, she must begin her next profession, motherhood, rather soon, compromising inevitably her original one. The same-age partner, equally unsettled in his career, will take only the minimum time off, she guesses, or else pay some cost which will come back to bite her. Everything unfailingly does. If she freezes her eggs to buy time, the decision and its logistics will burden her singly — and perhaps it will not work. Overlay the years a woman is supposed to establish herself in her career and her fertility window and it’s a perfect, miserable circle. By midlife women report feeling invisible, undervalued; it is a telling cliché, that after all this, some husbands leave for a younger girl. So when is her time, exactly? For leisure, ease, liberty? There is no brand of feminism which achieved female rest. If women’s problem in the ’50s was a paralyzing malaise, now it is that they are too active, too capable, never permitted a vacation they didn’t plan. It’s not that our efforts to have it all were fated for failure. They simply weren’t imaginative enough.

For me, my relationship, with its age gap, has alleviated this rush , permitted me to massage the clock, shift its hands to my benefit. Very soon, we will decide to have children, and I don’t panic over last gasps of fun, because I took so many big breaths of it early: on the holidays of someone who had worked a decade longer than I had, in beautiful places when I was young and beautiful, a symmetry I recommend. If such a thing as maternal energy exists, mine was never depleted. I spent the last nearly seven years supported more than I support and I am still not as old as my husband was when he met me. When I have a child, I will expect more help from him than I would if he were younger, for what does professional tenure earn you if not the right to set more limits on work demands — or, if not, to secure some child care, at the very least? When I return to work after maternal upheaval, he will aid me, as he’s always had, with his ability to put himself aside, as younger men are rarely able.

Above all, the great gift of my marriage is flexibility. A chance to live my life before I become responsible for someone else’s — a lover’s, or a child’s. A chance to write. A chance at a destiny that doesn’t adhere rigidly to the routines and timelines of men, but lends itself instead to roomy accommodation, to the very fluidity Betty Friedan dreamed of in 1963 in The Feminine Mystique , but we’ve largely forgotten: some career or style of life that “permits year-to-year variation — a full-time paid job in one community, part-time in another, exercise of the professional skill in serious volunteer work or a period of study during pregnancy or early motherhood when a full-time job is not feasible.” Some things are just not feasible in our current structures. Somewhere along the way we stopped admitting that, and all we did was make women feel like personal failures. I dream of new structures, a world in which women have entry-level jobs in their 30s; alternate avenues for promotion; corporate ladders with balconies on which they can stand still, have a smoke, take a break, make a baby, enjoy themselves, before they keep climbing. Perhaps men long for this in their own way. Actually I am sure of that.

Once, when we first fell in love, I put my head in his lap on a long car ride; I remember his hands on my face, the sun, the twisting turns of a mountain road, surprising and not surprising us like our romance, and his voice, telling me that it was his biggest regret that I was so young, he feared he would lose me. Last week, we looked back at old photos and agreed we’d given each other our respective best years. Sometimes real equality is not so obvious, sometimes it takes turns, sometimes it takes almost a decade to reveal itself.

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