Historical change
The Romantic Age developed amid major political and economic transformations. The American War of Independence and the French Revolution spread political change and ideals such as freedom and social justice. The Industrial Revolution transformed England from an agricultural society into an industrial one: people moved to factory towns, and urbanization brought poor, dangerous, and overcrowded living and working conditions. These changes helped shape writers’ responses to society and the environment.
The meaning of Romanticism
In literature, Romantic does not simply mean related to love. During the eighteenth century, the term became associated with emotion, feeling, and imagination, in contrast with reason. In German thought, it also acquired a spiritual dimension connected with humanity’s response to Nature and the Sublime, which combines greatness, fear, and awe. The political frame is associated with the American Revolution, while the English literary period is conventionally placed between 1798 and 1832.
The Romantic response
- The English Romantic Movement reacted against Augustan emphasis on rationality, strict rules, and classical models. It valued imagination, individual experience, and Nature as a living presence and a means of spiritual discovery. William Wordsworth and S.T. Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads (1798) is regarded as a key statement of the movement. In its 1802 preface, Wordsworth described poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.