What is Romanticism? - So when we discuss Romanticism, we are referring to literature that
- is written in the language of everyday people
- seeks to describe or imitate the sublime
- attempts to move away from rationality and towards aesthetic and artistic beauty
- focuses less on the society and more on the individual
Romantic Prose Writers - Novels, first developed in the 18th century, became more and more popular among both upper and middle class people in England.
- Some of the most famous English novelists emerged during the Romantic period, including Mary Shelley and Jane Austen.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) - Born Mary W. Godwin, the daughter of proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and Henry Godwin, leading political philosopher, Mary might have been most famous for marrying the author Percy Byshhe Shelley, had she not also composed one of the greatest thrillers of all time: Frankenstein.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) - Frankenstein was Mary’s only major success as a writer, but it’s popularity as a novel, and later as a stage play and film series, is nearly unparalleled.
Jane Austen (1775-1817) - The woman some have called “the female Shakespeare” authored six novels, including Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Pride and Prejudice, and Northanger Abbey.
The Romantic Poets - The Romantic Poets can be separated into three categories:
- Pre-Romantic (mid-to-late 1700’s)
- 1st Wave (late 1700’s to early 1800’s)
- 2nd Wave (early to mid 1800’s)
Pre-Romantics - The most influential of the Pre-Romantics are Thomas Gray, Robert Burns, and William Blake.
Thomas Gray (1716-1771) - Best know for his poem “Elegy in a Country Churchyard,” Gray’s work focused on individual experience and celebrated the lives of ordinary people, and so his work is said to be a precursor to the Romantics.
Robert Burns (1759-1796) - Burns’ pastoral poetry, written in Scottish dialect, inspired the later Romantics.
William Blake (1757-1827) - Many categorize Blake as a Romantic, though his writing predates the period by several years. He is most well know for his illuminated poems, which combined visual and written art in new and revolutionary ways.
1st Wave - William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, also known as the “lake poets,” because they lived in England’s lake district, are the two most well known of the first wave Romantics.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) - A rebellious youth, Wordsworth would eventually come to represent the establishment, as he grew older and more conservative in his opinions.
- Lyrical Ballads (1798), a collection he wrote with Coleridge, is considered by many to have sparked the Romantic movement.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) - Coleridge was Wordsworth’s good friend, until the former’s drug addiction came between the two; he is responsible for two of the most beloved poems of the era: “Kubla Khan” and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
2nd Wave George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) - Once described as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” Lord Byron embodied the dark, mysterious, brooding characters that he described in his poems, and which came to be known as “Byronic Heroes.”
- Byron’s most well known works are “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” “She Walks in Beauty,” and the mock epic Don Juan (pronounced joo-en), a parody of the traditional Don Juan tale.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) - Husband of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Percy was a popular (and sometimes notorious) figure of the era, whose political views caused scandals throughout England.
- Among his most brilliant poems are “Ozymandias,” “Ode to the West Wind,” and “To a Skylark.”
John Keats (1795-1821) - Not nearly as rich or as notorious as Shelley or Byron, Keats was a working class poet who spent years of his life fighting tuberculosis, which eventually caused his early death.
- His “Ode to a Grecian Urn,” and “When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be” are among the finest English poems ever written.
Legacy - The legacy of the Romantic writers is such that, even today, their work stands as some of the most inspirational, awe-inspiring, and revolutionary ever created.
- The Romantics rebelled against the establishment, interweaving art with revolutionary politics to create a bold new vision of the artist as a spokesperson for the common man.
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