The Romantic Movement: sources, features, emotion vs reason
English Romanticism developed in response to a period of political and social upheaval. The American and French Revolutions spread ideas of freedom and change, while the Industrial Revolution transformed rural life through urban growth and factory work. Romantic writers often turned away from the industrial world towards Nature and human feeling.
From reason to imagination
Compared with the Augustan emphasis on reason, classical models, and literary rules, Romantic poetry gave greater importance to emotion, individual experience, and imagination. The publication of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and S.T. Coleridge is commonly treated as the movement’s starting point. Wordsworth’s Preface to its 1800 edition is regarded as a manifesto of English Romanticism; it defines poetry as the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”
Nature, the poet, and two generations
- Imagination enables the poet to go beyond material reality; the poet is an original creator rather than merely a follower of rules.
- Nature is a living presence, a source of joy and spiritual insight, and a refuge from industrial towns.
- Romantic poetry also explores the supernatural and the unknown.
- The First Generation, including Wordsworth and Coleridge, is associated with Nature, ordinary life, and the supernatural. Byron, Shelley, and Keats, commonly grouped as the Second Generation, are associated with political rebellion, freedom, and the beauty of art.