The Romanticism movement began around 1770 and was at its peak from 1800 to 1850. This was a literary, artistic, and musical movement that shifted the way of thinking from the essence of groups of people and things towards the individual; a conviction that people should follow ideals rather than imposed conventions and rules. In 1762, Jean-Jacques Rousseau put forth The Social Contract and declared that “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chain.” The Romantic period saw major shifts and transitions in society as dissatisfied artists and intellectuals challenged the Establishment. The Romantics renounced the rationalism and order with the preceding Enlightenment, stressing the importance of expressing authentic feelings.
The Romantics were inspired by the environment and encouraged exploration, literally and figuratively. A key idea in Romantic poetry is the concept of sublime. This conveys the feelings after experiences seeing landscapes, or in situations of admiration or fear. For example, Percy Bysshe Shelley describes his reaction to overwhelming scenery in “Mont Blanc” (1816). Romantic ideals concerned the preference of nature of are, primitivity over sophistication, and the idea that classic art is limited but romantic art is infinite. Imagination fits into this infinite romantic art. The Romantics highlight the healing power of imagination, especially Keats, because they believed it could enable people to transcend beyond their troubling circumstances. Even though the Romantics had many common ideas, they did not agree on everything.
The Romantic poets can be separated between “first generation” and “second generation” poets. The first generation was largely concerned with developing a new mode of thought, and the second generation was more concerned with poetry exploring imagination. Writing against the background of the French Revolution, many of their ideas had to do with the individual’s free-will. Nature became an escape from the real world’s problems, which generated the large shift to imagination, as a gateway, literally and within poetry.
Romantic Poets:
First Generation – William Wordsworth, William Blake, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Second Generation – Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats.
Resources
Bernbaum, Ernest. “The Romantic Movement.” The English Journal, vol. 18, no. 3, 1929, pp. 221–230. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/804012.
Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, 2021, poets.org/text/brief-guide-romanticism.
“The Romantic Period.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2021, www.britannica.com/art/English-literature/The-Romantic-period.
Stafford, Fiona. Reading Romantic Poetry, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucb/detail.action?docID=871504.
Watson, J.R. (1992). English Poetry of the Romantic Period 1789-1830 (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi-org.colorado.idm.oclc.org/10.4324/9781315844831.