UNIT 5 : ROMANTIC

POETRY
LECTURE 1
The Romantic period 1770- 1850
Romanticism (18th century movement)
WILLIAM BLAKE:
‘The Chimney Sweeper’
‘London’
‘The Lamb’
THE ROMANTIC PERIOD
• The Romantic Period began roughly around 1770s and lasted until 1850.
• Political and economic atmosphere at the time
• 1780s-1840s: The Industrial Revolution. ...
• 1789: The French Revolution. ...
• the 1789 French revolution upheld the ideals of those related to rebellion who
fought against oppressive rule and conditions, the call for renewal - political,
social, loss of ideal life -rural and organic as well as innocent childlike life - in the
face of industrializing Europe)
• French Revolution - ideals:Liberté, égalité, fraternité
• Abolition of slavery
• The Agricultural Revolution
• Romanticism was a reaction against this spread of industrialism
• The arrival of women
THE START OF ROMANTICISM
• Robert Burns is considered the pioneer of the Romantic Movement.
• His death in 1796 precedes what many consider the start of Romanticism
• His lyricism and sincerity mark him as an early Romantic writer.
• His most notable works are “Auld Lang Syne” (1788) and “Tam o’ Shanter” (1791).
• Burns inspired many of the writers during the Romantic Period.
• William Blake was one of the earliest Romantic Period writers.
• Blake believed in spiritual and political freedom
• His works, Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794), are two of
his most significant.
• These collections of poetry are some of the first to romanticize children
• He was also known for his beautiful drawings, which accompanied each of these
poems.
Romantic poetry
• The poetry of this era focused on the freedom of the individual and the imaginative world
• “The most notable feature of the poetry of the time is the new role of individual thought and personal feeling.”
• Romantic Period began with the publishing of Lyrical Ballads (1798) by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge.
• One of the first collections of poems that strayed from the more formal poetic diction of the Neoclassical Period.
• Poets of the period
• This also aided in expressing human emotion.
• Wordsworth primarily wrote about nature.
• One of Wordsworth’s well-known works is “The Solitary Reaper” (1807).
• This poem praises the beauty of music and shows the outpouring of expression and emotion that Wordsworth felt was
necessary in poetry.
• His greatest piece is The Prelude (1850), a semi-autobiographical, conversation poem that chronicles Wordsworth’s
entire life.
• Major poets of the time: William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• (Robert Barnard’s A Short History of English Literature, Stephen Coote’s The Penguin Short History of English
Literature, Andrew Sanders’ The Short Oxford History of English Literature)
Major characteristics of the era
• 1. Glorification of Nature
• 2. Awareness and Acceptance of Emotions
• 3. Celebration of Artistic Creativity and Imagination
• 4. Emphasis on Aesthetic Beauty
• 5. Themes of Solitude
• 6. Focus on Exoticism and History
•  7. Spiritual and Supernatural Elements
• 8. Vivid Sensory Descriptions
• 9. Use of Personification
• 10. Focus on the Self and Autobiography
• (From Kate Miller-Wilson (2016))
William Blake
•Born Nov. 28, 1757, London, Eng.—died Aug. 12, 1827, London.
•English engraver, artist, poet, and visionary, author of exquisite lyrics
in Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs
of Experience (1794) and profound and difficult “prophecies,” such as Visions of the Daughters of
Albion (1793), 
•These works he etched, printed, coloured, stitched, and sold, with the assistance of his devoted wife,
Catherine.
•Among his best known lyrics today are “The Lamb,” “The Tyger,” “London,” and the “Jerusalem” lyric
from Milton, which has become a kind of second national anthem in Britain.
•In the early 21st century, Blake was regarded as the earliest and most original of the Romantic poets, but in his
lifetime he was generally neglected or (unjustly) dismissed as mad.
•Best known in his time as a painter and engraver, William Blake is now known as a major visionary poet
whose expansive style influenced 20th-century writers and musicians as varied as T.S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg,
and Bob Dylan.
•Blake’s body of work is large and sometimes extremely dense, often fusing complicated writing with awe-
inspiring illustrations.
•Though many readers may be familiar with his lyric poems from Songs of Innocence and of Experience, such
as “The Tyger,” Blake was an active political poet who later produced ambitious, radical works that depict a vast
mythology of figures and fantastical entities in response to the sociopolitical climate of his day.
•From his small, popular lyrics to his sprawling, obscure epics, Blake’s works remained rich and subversive.
•Major romantic poet who was brought up in an industrialising England and Europe and witnessed the French
revolution
•Influenced by the notion of the renewal of personal freedoms, freedom from oppression and the return to
innocence at an imaginative level
•(http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/)