British literature

Romanticism: 1798-1837

Main articles: Romanticism § English literature, Romantic literature in English, and Romanticism in Scot­land

Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual
William Blake's 'The Tyger", published in his Songs of Inno­cence and of Experience is a work of Romanticism

movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century. Various dates are given for the Ro­mantic period in British literature, but here the publish­ing of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 is taken as the beginning, and the crowning of Queen Victoria in 1837 as its end, even though, for example, William Wordsworth lived un­til 1850 and William Blake published before 1798. The writers of this period, however, “did not think of them­selves as 'Romantics’ ", and the term was first used by critics of the Victorian period.^[75]

The Romantic period was one of major social change in England, because of the depopulation of the country­side and the rapid development of overcrowded indus­trial cities, that took place in the period roughly between 1750 and 1850. The movement of so many people in England was the result of two forces: the Agricultural Revolution, that involved the Enclosure of the land, drove workers off the land, and the Industrial Revolution which provided them employment, “in the factories and mills, operated by machines driven by steam-power".^[76] In­deed, Romanticism may be seen in part as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution,^[77] though it was also a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age
of Enlightenment, as well a reaction against the scientific rationalisation of nature.^[78] The French Revolution was an especially important influence on the political thinking of many of the Romantic poets.^[79]

The landscape is often prominent in the poetry of this period, so that it the Romantics, especially perhaps Wordsworth, are often described as 'nature poets’. How­ever, the longer Romantic 'nature poems’ have a wider concern because they are usually meditations on “an emo­tional problem or personal crisis”.^[80]

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   William Blake is considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age