UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE TACNA

FECH – IDEX ENGLISH LITERATURE 4th Year

THE ROMANTIC AGE (1789 – 1832)

Setting the scene

The Romantic period lasts about forty years, from the French Revolution in 1789 to the Reform Act
of 1832, It sometimes called The Age of Revolutions: The American Revolution of 1776, and the
spirit of “Liberty, equality and fraternity” of The French Revolution made it a time of hope and
change.
William Wordsworth in The Prelude (introduction) wrote “bliss was it in that dawn to be alive“ (bliss
= great pleasure). This shows the hope for the future when French politics changed and many
writers like Wordsworth hoped the same would happen in Britain.
But The Reign of Terror began in 1793, the period of Napoleon followed rapidly, and by the early
1800s most of Europe was at war against France.
So the poetry of the romantics, from Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads (1798) is in many
ways poetry of war. Society was changing, becoming industrial rather than agricultural as towns
and cities developed; the government encouraged free trade; the new middle class became
powerful, and there were moves towards voting reform and greater democracy. But change was
slow , and there was a lot of suffering , especially among the poor : they had to move from the
country to the city ; the soldiers who returned after Napoleon ‘s final defeat at Waterloo in 1815
found themselves unemployed , there were many social and political problems , the worst example
of which was the Peterloo massacre of 1819, when Government soldiers attacked a large group
of protesters, killing eleven people and injuring about four hundred. (the name Peterloo (after
Waterloo) was given by supporters of free speech.) War abroad was followed by war between
social classes at home.
In Literature, Romantic writing is mostly poetry: Wordsworth and Coleridge wanted a revolution too,
in poetic language and in themes which contrasted with the earlier Augustan Age. Then the head
controlled the heart; now the heart controlled the head. For Augustans, feelings and imagination
were dangerous; for Romantics, reason and the intellect were dangerous. The individual spirit
rather than an ordered society became important. The Government did not like this spirit – many of
the writers went abroad because their spirit was too dangerous, and many were not recognized in
their own lifetimes. In fact the name Romantic was only given to the period later, when its spirit of
freedom and hope could be recognized as different, as an important moment of change. In Europe,
Romanticism was different: music and art, politics and philosophy were all stirred by the Romantic
spirit. In Britain it was limited to a few poets, but they changed the face of English Literature for
ever.
UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE TACNA
FECH – IDEX ENGLISH LITERATURE 4th Year

BLAKE.-
William Blake had a very individual view of the world, and his poetic style and ideas contrast with
the order and control of The Augustan world. Blake’s best known collection of poetry “Songs of
Innocence and experience” was published in 1794. His poems are simple but symbolic - the lamb
is the symbol of innocence, the tiger the symbol of mystery:

Little lamb, who made thee?

Dost thou know who made thee?
(The Lamb)

Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright

In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
(The Tyger)

Blake’s later poems are very complex symbolic texts, but his voice in the early 1790s is the
conscience of the Romantic age. He shows a contrast between a world of nature and childhood
innocence and a world of social control. Blake saw the dangers of an industrial society in which
individuals were lost, and in his famous poem “London” he calls the systems of the society “mind
forged manacles“. For Blake, London is a city in which the mind of everyone is in chains and all
individuals are imprisoned. Even the river Thames has been given a royal charter (charter’d =given
rights) so that it can be used for commerce and trade:

I wander thro1 each charter’d street

Near where the charter’d Thames does flow

And mark2 in every face I meet
Marks of weakness , marks of woe3

In every cry of every Man,

In every Infant’s4 cry of fear

In every voice , in every ban5

The mind-forg’d manacles6 I hear

1
through 2notice 3sadness 4very small child’s 5law to stop something 6chains around the
hands, which are made in the brain
UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE TACNA
FECH – IDEX ENGLISH LITERATURE 4th Year

“London” contrasts with Wordsworth’s “Sonnet composed upon Westminster

Bridge“ (composed=written ) (1802, published 1807): “Earth has not anything to show more fair”
Wordsworth wanted always to see the positive side, where Blake’s vision is more social and
political.

WORDSWORTH.-

William Wordsworth’s poetry looks inward rather than outward, and in “The prelude”, his long
autobiographical poem, we read how an individual’s thoughts and feeling are formed. Wordsworth
is the main character in most of his poems. He wants “to see into the heart of things,” as he says in
“Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey”. He considers in “Daffodils”, for instance, how the past relates
to the present, and The prelude takes that as its main theme . He continued to write The Prelude
for many years. It is a psychological poem in which the individual searches for personal
understanding, in a manner which has become a main theme of modern literature.
When Wordsworth wrote that the “child is father if the man “ he means that adults can learns from
children. However, the Augustans believed that children should be controlled as soon as possible.
Augustan writers believed that an ordered society was important, whereas Romantic writers
believed that the life of the individual spirit was important. These different ideas resulted in different
styles of writing and different uses of language. For example, Augustan poets often use a special
poetic language and a special poetic pattern of heroic couplets.
Here is a section from the Preface to Lyrical ballads in which Wordsworth states that he wanted to
write in a clear and simple way about everyday life and people:
The principal object in these poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and
to relate or describe them throughout, as fair as it was possible, in a selection of language really
used by men.

Sometimes Wordsworth does indeed write in simple direct language which is close to the spoken
language of ordinary people. For example:

A slumber1 did my spirit seal;2

I had no human fears;
She seemed a thing that would not feel

The touch of earthly years

(“A slumber Did my Spirit seal”)
1 2
sleep close tightly
UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE TACNA
FECH – IDEX ENGLISH LITERATURE 4th Year

However, sometimes he uses more difficult grammar and vocabulary, and seems a long way from
his poetic ideals.
Wordsworth writes frequently about nature and about ordinary people such as “The old
Cumberland Beggar” and “The Leech Gatherer” (Leech=blood sucking worm) who live against the
background of the world of nature. Later in his life he stated that he wanted his poetry to show that
men and women “who do not wear fine clothes can feel deeply”, and to praise those who olive
close to nature. Above all, Wordsworth wanted to show the importance of the human memory,
because it is the memory which continues to give life to our major experiences . the memory
allows us to keep our understanding of the world fresh and alive, although there is a despair in
Wordsworth ‘s later poetry when the imagination fails and memory no longer works . In this section
from “Line written above Tintern Abbey” Wordsworth praises the power of his memory and the
pictures which his memory can recreate:

But oft1 in lonely rooms and ‘mid the din2

Of towns and cities , I have owed to them
In hours of weariness ,3 sensation sweet,
Felt in the blood and felt along the heart.

1
often 2among the noise 3
tiredness

These lines also stress the importance of the feelings and show the power of nature, rather than
“towns and cities”, to lift the imagination.
UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE TACNA
FECH – IDEX ENGLISH LITERATURE 4th Year

ACTIVITY:

Look for information about the following writers:

 Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 John Keats

 Percy Bysshe Shelley

 Mary Shelley -- Frankenstein

 Lord Byron

 Robert Burns

 Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice