The Romantic Revival

Revolutions represented a challenge to the 18th century political, social, religious,

philosophical and artistic ideals that were no longer considered adequate. The balance and
symmetry of the early 18th century society was in danger of collapsing under the weight of
new ideas about man and nature, freedom and democracy, art and literature. By the end of the
century, many poets and artists had started reacting against the suppression of human nature.
They refused to treat man as a "social animal" and believed in the importance of the
individual and his creative potential. These artists were called Romantics.

Historical Context

The second half of the 18th century witnessed the rise of political, economic and
social forces that produced some of the most radical changes ever known in history. The age
of revolution began in America and swept across Western Europe. The thirteen American
colonies broke from the British Empire and formed the independent nation, the United States
of America.

The American Revolution was a political upheaval that started in 1765 as the Americans
rejected the authority of Parliament to tax them without elected representation. The protests
culminated in the Boston Tea Party of 1773, when the entire supply of tea sent by the East
India Company was destroyed by the demonstrators in Boston Harbor. In 1774 the Patriots
suppressed the Loyalists and expelled all royal officials. Each colony now had a new
government that took control. The British responded by sending combat troops to re-establish
royal control. Through the Second Continental Congress (a convention of delegates from the
13 colonies that started meeting in the summer of 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) the
Thirteen Colonies fought the British in the American Revolutionary War, or the American
War of Independence, 1775–83. As a result European powers recognized the independence
of the United States.

The French Revolution started on July 14, 1789, with the storming of the Bastille. The
Bastille was a fortress in Paris, known formally as the Bastille Saint-Antoine. It was used as a
state prison by the kings of France. It was stormed by a crowd on 14 July 1789 in the French
Revolution, becoming an important symbol for the French Republican movement, and was
later demolished and replaced by the Place de la Bastille (a square in Paris). It was a mass
uprising against the absolute power of the king and the privileges of the upper classes. The
rebellion was carried out in the name of liberty, equality and fraternity. In reality it led to the
loss of liberty, dictatorship and nationalism. To crush the resistance to the new order
thousands of people were executed. France was governed under a dozen of different
constitutions as a republic, a dictatorship, a constitutional monarchy, and two different
empires. Subsequent events caused by the revolution included the Napoleonic wars and the
restoration of the monarchy. Britain waged the war against Napoleon. Napoleon’s navy was
defeated by England at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. In 1815 Napoleon’s armies were
beaten by British forces at Waterloo, Belgium.

Many changes in the English life were caused by the Industrial Revolution.
By 1800 Britain was the most industrialised country in the world. Various factors contributed
to this success: cheap raw materials were brought from the colonies; the Bank of England
started to operate around the country; the transport system was developed; coal provided a
cheap source of energy. Factories sprang up all over the country. Different cities specialised
in certain goods - Manchester produced cotton, Sheffield concentrated on steel cutlery and
Birmingham became the centre of light engineering.

The cities became overcrowded. Despite the economic improvements most people continued
to live and work in dreadful conditions. The majority of workers, including women and
children, slaved for long hours on miserable pay. They lived in overcrowded slums where
sanitation was poor or non-existent. Diseases and epidemics became a common feature of
everyday life. The social and economic difficulties were neglected by the government. Those
who were troubled by the exploitation of workers and the degradation of the cities
sympathized with the ideals of the American and French Revolutions. They often supported
the workers’ protests. From 1811 to 1817, textile artisans came together to destroy the
machines which were threatening their livelihood in what were known as the ‘Luddite’ riots.
An agricultural variant of Luddism, centering on the breaking of threshing machines,
occurred during the widespread Swing Riots of 1830 in southern and eastern England.
Although the origin of the name Luddite is uncertain, a popular theory is that the movement
was named after Ned Ludd, a youth who allegedly smashed two stocking frames in 1779,
and whose name had become emblematic of machine destroyers. The name evolved into the
imaginary General Ludd or King Ludd, a figure who, like Robin Hood, was reputed to live in
Sherwood Forest.

A high point in the protest movement was a demonstration at St Peter's Field, Manchester,
1819, against the rise in the price of bread, caused by a ban on the import of foreign corn.
Eleven people were killed by the army in what is now known as the Peterloo Massacre (or the
Battle of Peterloo to rhyme with 'Waterloo'). The ruling classes of England were afraid that
the revolution would spread across the Channel. Any attempts on the part of the poor to
protest were suppressed by repressive measures. The army had sometimes to be called in to
keep law and order. Usually the protests took the form of ‘mob’ violence and were never
sufficiently well organized to present a real threat. The conservatives in England felt they had
saved their country from chaos, and the supporters of the Revolution felt betrayed and
disappointed.

The general features of the Romantic Movement were:

a) A return to nature--to the real nature of earth and air, and not to the bookish
nature of the artificial pastoral.

b) A fresh interest in man's position in the world of nature. This led to great activity in
religious and political speculation

c) An enlightened sympathy for the poor and oppressed. In English literature during
this time one has but to think of the work of Cowper, Burns, and Crabbe, and even
of the classically minded Gray, to perceive the revolution that is taking place in the
minds of men.

d) A revolt against the conventional literary technique, such as that of the heroic
couplet. On the other hand, we have a desire for strength, simplicity, and sincerity
in the expression of the new literary ideals.

e) Fresh treatment of Romantic themes in such poems as The Lay of the Last
Minstrel, The Ancient Mariner, La Belle Dame sans Merci. Writers turned to
 supernatural stories, legends, and the more colourful periods of history, especially
the Middle Ages.

The New Learning. The middle and later stages of the eighteenth century show a minor
Renaissance that touched nearly all Europe. The increase in wealth and comfort coincided
with a general uplifting of the standard of the human intellect. In France particularly it was
well marked, and it took for its sign and seal the labours of the Encyclopedists and the social
amenities of the older salons. Many of the leading English writers, including Gibbon, Hume,
and Sterne, visited Paris, which was the hub of European culture. In England the new
learning took several channels. In literature we have the revival of the Romantic movement,
leading to
(a) research into archaic literary forms, such as the ballad, and
(b) new editions of the older authors, such as Shakespeare and Chaucer.

The publication of Bishop Percy's Reliaues (1765), which contained some of the oldest and
most beautiful specimens of ballad-literature, is a landmark in the history of the Romantic
movement. Both Pope and Johnson were moved to edit Shakespeare, the former's ingenious
guesses at meanings and cavalier treatment of his text contrasting strongly with the latter's
shrewd, common-sense notes and attempt to restore the original readings. Other editions, by
Theobald and Warburton, were examples of scholarly and enlightened research.

The New Philosophy. The spirit of the new thinking, which received its consummate
expression in the works of Voltaire, was marked by keen scepticism and the zest for eager
inquiry. Scotland very early took to it, the leading Scottish philosopher being Hume.

It would seem, perhaps, that this destructive spirit of disbelief would injure the
Romantic ideal, which delights in illusion. But finally the new spirit actually assisted
the Romantic ideal by demolishing and clearing away heaps of the ancient mental
lumber, and so leaving the ground clear for new and fresher creations.

The Growth of Historical Research. History appears late in our literature, for it
presupposes a long apprenticeship of research and meditation. The eighteenth century
witnessed the swift rise of historical literature to a place of great importance. Like so many
other things we have mentioned, it was fostered in France, and it touched Scotland first. The
historical school had a glorious leader in Gibbon, who was nearly as much at home in the
French language as he was in English.

The New Realism. At first, as might be expected, the spirit of inquiry led to the
suppression of romance; but it drew within the circle of literary endeavour all the ranks of
mankind. Thus we have the astonishing development of the novel, which at first concerned
itself with domestic incidents. Fielding and his kind dealt very faithfully with human life, and
often were immersed in masses of sordid detail. In the widest sense of the word, however, the
novelists were Romanticists, for in sympathy and freshness of treatment they were followers
of the new ideal.

The Decline of Political Writing. With the partial decay of the party spirit the
activity in pamphleteering was over; poets and satirists were no longer the favourites of
Prime Ministers. Walpole, the greatest of contemporary ministers, openly despised the
literary breed, for he did not need them. Hence writers had to depend on their public, which
was not entirely an evil. This caused the rise of the man of letters, such as Johnson and
Goldsmith, who wrote to satisfy a public demand. Later in the century, when the political
temperature once again approached boiling-point, pamphlets began again to acquire an
importance, which rose to a climax in the works of Junius and Burke.

The six of the most important Romantic poets were

 William Blake
 William Wordsworth
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge
 George Gordon Byron
 Percy Bysshe Shelley
 John Keats.

English Romantic poets rebelled against the accepted conventions of the Neo-classical
literature of the first half of the 18th century. Although some of the Romantics adapted the
classical forms (for example, ode) and included the elements of Greek mythology in their
works, they rejected the idea of imitation as too restrictive of creative imagination.
Content
Ode is an elaborately structured poem praising or glorifying an event or individual,
describing nature intellectually as well as emotionally. There are two distinctive features of
the ode: it uses heightened, impassioned language; and addresses some object. The ode may
speak to objects (an urn), creatures (a skylark, a nightingale), and presences or powers
(beauty, autumn, the west wind). The speaker first invokes the object and then creates a
relationship with it, either through praise or prayer. Unlike the early 18th century authors,
who looked outwards to society for general truths to communicate to common readers,
Romantic writers looked inwards to their soul and imagination to find private truths for
special readers. The poet was considered to be a supremely individual creator, who gave
freedom to his creative spirit. In 1759 Edward Young published Conjectures on Original
Composition, where he introduced the idea of organic, as opposed to mechanical, nature of
composition.
Coleridge wrote: "An original may be said to be of a vegetable nature; it rises spontaneously
from the vital root of genius; it grows, it is not made; Imitations are often a sort of
manufacture, wrought up by those mechanics, art and labour, out of pre-existent materials,
not their own."
Keats wrote: "If poetry comes not as naturally as leaves to a tree, it had better
not come at all".

The idea of poetry as a series of strictly defined rules diminished the figure of a poet
to a skilled craftsman. In the beginning of the 19th century it was rejected in favour of the
idea that creative process is regulated by the laws of its own nature. In 1798 William
Wordsworth (1770–1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) published the
Lyrical Ballads. The book became a landmark in English literature, indicating the beginning
of a new era. The preface, written by Wordsworth for the second edition (1800), is often
considered to be a manifesto for the Romantic movement.
In it Wordsworth stated that:
• The poet's imagination can reveal the inner truth of ordinary things, to which the mind is
habitually blind;
• Poetry is not simply the unrestrained, spontaneous expression of emotions. It takes its
 origin "from emotion recollected in tranquility". The initial emotion is recalled and
reproduced in the poet's mind, and when it has been processed through thought, the creative
act of composing begins;
• The poet is "a man speaking to men"; he uses his special gift to show other men the essence
of things. Although many of these poets were conscious of a new "spirit of the age", they
didn’t refer themselves to a movement as a unity of purpose and aim. Only towards the
middle of the 19th century they were conveniently grouped together under the term
"Romantic" on the basis of some common features: imagination, individualism,
irrationalism, childhood, escapism,nature, etc.

Romantic poets attached much importance to the role of the imagination in the
creative processes. They believed the imagination was an ability of the mind to apprehend a
kind of truth and reality which lay beyond sensory impressions, reason and rational intellect.
The imagination is an almost divine activity through which a poet gets the access to the
supernatural order of things. He recreates and reinterprets the world becoming a prophet to all
men. This new, subjective vision of reality went hand in hand with a much stronger emphasis
on individual thought and feeling. Poetry became more introspective and meditative.
Autobiographical element and first person point of view, which for many years had been
unpopular, became very common and most appropriate for the expression of emotions and
feelings. Some of the Romantics lived in isolation and believed that poetry should be created
in solitude. In this they anticipated the idea of the artist as a non-conformist. This feeling of
alienation later was shared by many writers of the modernist age.

Together with the new emphasis on imagination, Romantic poets turned their
attention to the irrational aspects of human life – the subconscious, the mysterious and the
supernatural. As a result poetry became more symbolic and metaphorical. Childhood
provided another source of interest. Some poets celebrated an uncorrupted, instinctive, or
childlike, view of the world. In its innocence untouched by civilisation, this view gave a
freshness and clarity of vision which the poet himself aspired to. Some poets felt themselves
attracted to the exotic. Distant times and places became a sort of refuge from the unpleasant
reality. The Middle Ages in particular served as a source of inspiration in both form (ballad,
for example, became a popular verse form once again) and subject matter.

Nature provided another stimulus for imagination and creativity. It reflected a poet’s
moods and thoughts. It was interpreted as the real home of man, a beneficial source of
comfort and morality, the embodiment of the life force, the expression of God’s presence in
the universe. The Romantic poets are traditionally grouped into two generations. The poets of
the first generation, William Blake, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, were
greatly influenced by the French Revolution, which physically represented a deliverance from
the restrictive patterns of the past. Poets of the second generation lived through the
disillusionment of the post-revolutionary period. George Gordon Byron, Percy Bysshe
Shelley and John Keats, all had intense but short lives.
Content
William Blake

William Blake (1757–1827) was born on November 28, 1757, in the family of a London
haberdasher. He received little formal education and spent his youth as an apprentice to a
famous engraver. At the age of twenty-four he married the illegitimate daughter of a market
gardener, Catherine Boucher, whom he taught to read, write and help with his engravings.
The couple remained childless. Blake stayed a religious, political, and artistic radical
throughout his life. He protested against the rationalist philosophy of the 18th century and its
restrictive influence on man’s life and work. In his childhood he professed to have seen
God’s head at his window and a tree filled with angels. During his mature artistic life he
claimed to have had conversations with the Virgin Mary and the Archangel Gabriel. These
visions predetermined his strong belief in the vital role of imagination in his life and works.
Blake insisted that he had been granted visions by God.

As an artist he transformed those visions into special designs which combined picture and
word. Blake transferred the written text of a poem to an etched copper plate, accompanying it
with appropriate illustration or decoration. When printed, the page was elaborately hand-
coloured or, in some cases, actually printed in colour by a unique method of illuminated
printing invented by Blake himself. To make a living Blake taught drawing and illustrated
books. A one-man show of his poems and drawings in 1809 was a failure. The Examiner
magazine labelled him ‘an unfortunate lunatic’. Blake persisted in his unconventional poetry
and drawing becoming increasingly obscure and odd.

William Blake achieved little recognition during his lifetime. When he was in his late fifties
he began to attract a small group of admirers, the general opinion being that he was gifted but
insane. In the twentieth century Blake came to be recognised as a poetic genius. He is often
regarded as the first Romantic poet who revolutionized the concept of creative process. "One
Power alone", he wrote in Proverbs of Hell, "makes a Poet: Imagination, the Divine Vision".
By cleansing what Blake defined as the "doors of perception" the individual sees beyond the
surface reality of everyday objects into the infinite and eternal, discerning within the physical
world symbols of a greater and infinitely more meaningful spiritual reality. "A fool", wrote
Blake, "sees not the same tree a wise man sees". For Blake, imagination was God operating
in the human soul.

Proverbs of Hell is a part from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793) is a series
of texts written in imitation of biblical prophecy but expressing Blake's own intensely
personal Romantic and revolutionary beliefs. Like his other books, it was published as
printed sheets from etched plates containing prose, poetry and illustrations. The plates were
then coloured by Blake and his wife Catherine. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is probably
the most influential of Blake's works. Its vision of a dynamic relationship between a stable
"Heaven" and an energized "Hell" has fascinated theologians, aestheticians and
psychologists. Blake was fascinated with the idea of ‘contraries’. He understood Heaven as a
part of a structure which must become one with the creative energy of Hell rather than stand
in opposition to it. The doors of perception’ are cleansed only by a transformation of
categories so that contraries meet in newly energetic formations. Thus the tigers and horses,
the lions and lambs, the children and adults, the innocent and the experienced of Blake’s
symbol-ism should be regarded as integral elements of creation.

A characteristic feature of Blake's poetry to see the world in terms of opposites is highlighted
in the collections Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794).
Accompanied by Blake’s magnificent hand-decorated drawings, the two volumes were
printed together for the first time in 1794 (with the title Songs of Innocence and of
Experience). The book describes contrary states of feeling and seeing. "Innocence" is a state
of genuine love and naïve trust to all mankind, accompanied by unquestioned Christian
belief. Blake was a true believer, but he recognized that Christian doctrines were used by the
English Church as a form of social manipulation to encourage among the people passive
obedience and acceptance of oppression, poverty and inequality. The state of "Experience" is
described as a profound disillusionment with human nature and society. One entering the
state of "Experience" sees cruelty and hypocrisy clearly, but is unable to find a way out.
The Songs of Innocence frequently suggest challenges to the innocent state: children are
afraid of the dark, brute beasts threaten lambs, dreadful trade kills a little chimney-sweeper.
Satirical and sarcastic poems from the Songs of Experience represent the "wisdom" of the old
as oppression. Parents, nurses, priests, and human reason serve to limit and restrain what once
was innocent.

Blake said that innocent conceptions of reality change in the face of experience, but he didn’t
deny the role of experience in the development of human soul. Blake pointed out a third,
higher state of consciousness he called "Organized Innocence", which is expressed in his
later works. In this state, one’s idea of the divinity of humanity coexists with the idea of
injustice. One recognizes both and assumes an active position to them. "Without contraries",
Blake wrote, "there is no Progression. If Man is to grow he must come to terms with the more
sorrowful aspects of life". Blake’s work is rich in symbols and images. He tried to create an
alternative reality to that which dissatisfied him. "I must create a system", he wrote, "or be
enslaved by another man’s". This system of personal myths and visions became increasingly
complex and elusive as time progressed. Much of his later poetry possesses an almost biblical
‘prophetic’ quality.
Content
Con
William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth (1770–1850), born on April 7, 1770, was the second of five
children of an estate manager. He lost his mother when he was eight and his father died five
years later. The children were separated and raised by guardian uncles. The boys were sent to
a village in the heart of the Lake District. Wordsworth received a good education in classics,
literature, and mathematics, but the chief advantage to him there was a beautiful countryside
and boyhood pleasures of living and playing in the outdoors.

In 1787 Wordsworth entered Cambridge. While still a university student he went on a

three-month walking tour of France, the Swiss Alps and Italy. When he finished his degree he
returned to France for a year and became a passionate supporter of the democratic ideals of
the French Revolution. During his stay in France Wordsworth had a love affair with Annette
Vallon who bore him a daughter, Caroline. Financial problems forced him to return to
England. Wordsworth was unable to rejoin Annette and his daughter due to the outbreak of
hostilities between England and France. He was sickened by the war between France and
England and gradually became deeply disillusioned about his hopes for change.

When Wordsworth returned from France in 1793, he was reunited with his sister
Dorothy, who became his constant companion. They lived in a small village in Dorset. The
collapse of his radical hope of perfecting society drove Wordsworth to poetry. He published
his first two books of verse, which received little notice from either the critics or the public.
Two events then changed his life forever: he inherited a sum of money which covered his
daily necessities and, in 1795; he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a poet with similar political
and literary views. Wordsworth and Dorothy moved to a comfortable country house four
miles from the village where Coleridge lived, and Coleridge suddenly burst upon their lives.
This friendship had a lasting impact on both poets. Together they read, wrote, discussed
political issues, exchanged theories on poetry and commented on each other's work.
Coleridge had a broad philosophic mind, and Wordsworth the steady diligence of a writer.

Lyrical Ballads (1798) was the fruit of their friendship and mutual influence. Coleridge
contributed four poems and Wordsworth nineteen to the collection. Later that year
Wordsworth, his sister Dorothy and Coleridge travelled to Germany. Coleridge continued his
studies in philosophy, while Wordsworth wrote several of his finest lyrical poems and started
to work on The Prelude (1850), an autobiographical poem which he continued to revise
throughout the rest of his life. The poem describes the crucial experiences and stages of the
poet's life and is an introspective account of his emotional and spiritual development. Many
critics consider the long poem The Prelude, published posthumously in twenty-four books, to
be Wordsworth’s greatest achievement.

In 1800 a second edition of the Lyrical Ballads appeared with Wordsworth’s new poems and
a prose Preface illustrating his principles of poetry. The Lyrical Ballads was one of the most
wonderful literary collaborations, but it could not survive the real differences between the
two men. Wordsworth’s ability eventually provoked Coleridge’s envy, and Wordsworth
could not endure watching Cole-ridge waste his talents in indecision and become a drug
addict. Coleridge was experiencing serious health problems and
the two became estranged and never fully reconciled.

William and Dorothy moved to Grasmere, one of the loveliest villages in the Lake District, a
region which Wordsworth immortalised in his poetry. In 1802 Wordsworth married a
childhood friend and together they had five children. During this period he produced Poems,
in Two Volumes (1807), a collection which includes some of his finest verse and most
famous sonnets. His reputation began to grow and his work became increasingly popular.
As his fame as a poet grew, Wordsworth became more conservative in his political views. He
was given a well-paid government job and openly campaigned for the conservative Tory
party. As Wordsworth advanced in age his poetic vision grew weaker and his output was
largely uninspired and written in the elevated and artificial style against which he had once
rebelled. The younger generation of Romantic poets criticised him for abandoning the
idealism and passion of his youth. In 1840 Wordsworth was awarded a government pension
and the title of Poet Laureate, in recognition of his contribution to English literature. He died
in 1850, a few days after his eightieth birthday.

Wordsworth is frequently thought of as a nature poet. He believed nature could elevate the
human soul and exert a positive moral influence on human thoughts and feelings.
Wordsworth’s poetry celebrates the lives of simple rural people, whom he sees as being more
sincere than people living in cities. Pantheistic philosophy led Wordsworth to believe that
men should enter into communion with nature. Since nature was an expression of God and
was charged with his presence, he believed it constituted a potential moral guide for man.
Pantheism is the belief that the Universe (or nature as the totality of everything) is identical
with divinity, or that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent god. Pantheists
thus do not believe in a distinct personal or anthropomorphic god. In the West, Pantheism
was formalized as a separate theology and philosophy based on the work of the 17th-century
philosopher Baruch Spinoza, whose book Ethics was an answer to Descartes' famous
dualist theory that the body and spirit are separate. Although the term pantheism was not
coined until after his death, Spinoza is regarded as its most celebrated advocate. This
reverence for nature went hand in hand with sympathy for childhood. Like Blake,
Wordsworth understands childhood as a quality of imagination which has not been spoilt by
the rational world of adults. The child possesses an instinctive superior wisdom which is lost
in adulthood. Wordsworth believed that intuition, not reason, should guide the poet.
Inspiration should come from the direct experience of the senses. Poetry, he wrote in the
Preface, originates from "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" which is filtered
through the "emotion recollected in tranquility". For Wordsworth the memory was a key
element in poetic composition. The "spontaneous overflow" occurs at the moment of
composition, but the feelings are newly contemplated and organized in the poet’s mind
through the subjective experience of memory.

The poet, Wordsworth says, is "a man speaking to men", but he is also, "a man, it is true,
endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater
knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be
common among mankind". The poet is a prophet-like figure whose task is not simply to
embellish everyday life, but to show other men the essence of things. Wordsworth was a
great innovator. His ideas concerning the task of the poet and the nature of poetical
composition have become a landmark in the history of English literature and much of
his earlier verse is among the finest of the Romantic period.
Content
Content
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), born on October 21, 1772, was the youngest child of
a village parson. When his father died he was sent to a London charity school for children of
the clergy. He was a bright student. In 1791 Coleridge went to Cambridge. At Cambridge he
became a radical and won a prize for an ode in Greek on the abolition of slavery. In
Cambridge Coleridge met Robert Southey (1774–1843). Both poets had sympathetic views
on the French Revolution. Together they planned the foundation of an egalitarian utopian
community in New England. Coleridge left Cambridge without a degree and almost on
impulse, married the sister of Southey's fiancée. This marriage was a failure. The couple had
four children but lived apart for most of their lives. The community project never
materialized.

In 1795 Coleridge met William Wordsworth, a poet with similar political and literary views.
The encounter produced one of the most creative partnerships in English literature. The result
of their collaboration was the Lyrical Ballads (1798). The contribution to the collection by
the two poets was very different. While Wordsworth wrote poetry inspired by the simple
things of everyday life, Coleridge turned to the past for the unknown and mysterious and took
the readers into the fantastic world of imagination. Wordsworth asked the readers to enjoy his
natural descriptions. Coleridge, on the other hand, led them into supernatural worlds using
striking symbols and images. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is Coleridge’s best work in
the collection.

In 1798 Coleridge travelled to Germany with Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. He had
become disillusioned with the political radicalism inspired by the French Revolution and
turned his attention to German philosophy, especially the ideas of the philosopher Immanuel
Kant. He learned German, studied philosophy at Gottingen University and translated some
works by the romantic poet Friedrich von Schiller into English. Johann Christoph
Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805) was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and
playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller struck up a
productive friendship with already famous and influential writer Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe (1749–1832), who was an early participant in the Sturm und Drang("Storm
and Stress") literary movement in which individual subjectivity and, in particular, extremes
of emotion were given free expression.

Sturm und Drang is a proto-Romantic movement in German literature and music. The
period is named for Friedrich Maximilian Klinger's play Sturm und Drang, which was first
performed in 1777. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller ended their
period of association with Sturm und Drang movement by initiating what would become
Weimar Classicism, a cultural and literary movement of Europe, which attempted to establish
a new humanism by synthesizing Romantic, classical and Enlightenment ideas. By this time
he had become addicted to opium, which was the only available relief for the pain he suffered
due to various health problems. In 1804 he left for Malta, hoping to overcome his addiction
and improve his health in a warmer climate. He worked as secretary to the governor of Malta
for two years and then returned to England. In 1808 he moved back to the Lake District, close
to the Wordsworths and Southey. Together they became known as the "Lake Poets". He fell
in love with Wordsworth’s sister-in-law. This love was a source of great suffering all through
his life.

Lake Poets are the poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, and William
Wordsworth, who lived in and were inspired by the Lake District; they are also known as The
Lake School, or The Lakists. Both terms are first recorded in the Edinburgh Review of
1816; the pejorative Lakers, used by Lord Byron, however, antedate them by two years. Now
the term does not bear any derogatory meaning whatsoever.

In 1810 his friendship with Wordsworth came to a bitter end. His addiction to opium got
worse, making him unable to work productively. Following a serious quarrel with
Wordsworth, he left the Lake District and moved to London, where he stayed with a certain
Doctor Gillman, who provided hospitality and comfort for Coleridge at his home in Highgate.
In the following years Coleridge slowly regained his health, worked as a journalist and gave
lectures that established his reputation as a distinguished literary critic. Highgate home
became a centre of pilgrimage for a number of friends who admired Coleridge’s
conversations. Hazlitt described him as "the most impressive talker of his age".

The publication of the poems Christabel (1816) and Kubla Khan (1816), both unfinished,
consolidated Coleridge’s fame. Kubla Khan was inspired by a dream in an opium sleep.
Coleridge woke up with a clear image of the poem, but lost the vision, except for a few lines,
when a visitor disturbed him. The poem describes ancient magic rites. Its most striking
features are its suggestive imagery and musical rhythm. Christabel is a medieval romance of
the supernatural, which includes many Gothic elements.

Though he is best known today for his poetry, Coleridge wrote articles and dissertations on
philosophy, political analysis and theology. His treatises and lectures made him the most
influential English literary critic of the nineteenth century. In his Biographia Literaria
(1817), considered his greatest critical work, Coleridge developed theories that laid the
foundations of twentieth-century literary theory. The combination of the supernatural and the
commonplace, dreamlike elements and astonishing visual realism, help create an atmosphere
of irresistible mystery in the poem. Many of the features traditionally associated with ballads
– the combination of dialogue and narration, the four-line stanza, frequent repetition,
alliteration and internal rhyme – are present in this work. While frequently simple and direct,
the language is also permeated with archaisms which help create the atmosphere of medieval
ballads.
Content
George Gordon Lord Byron

Lord Byron (1788–1824), born on January 22, 1788, was the son of Captain John Mad Jack.
He was christened as George Gordon after his grandfather, a descendant of James I. When his
grandfather committed suicide in 1779, Gordon's mother sold her land and title to pay for her
father's debts. Soon John Byron married Catherine for her money. The two separated before
their son was born. Lord Byron received his education at Harrow and then at Cambridge
where he became fascinated with history, fiction and extravagant life. Byron was born lame.
This deformity, known as club-foot, left him self-conscious most of his life. During his
university time, he found diversion in boxing, horse riding and gambling.

In 1807, Byron's first collection of sentimental poems, Hours of Idleness (1807), was
published. After receiving a critical review Byron retaliated with the satirical poem English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809). The witty and satirical poem attacked the literary
community and gained Byron his first literary recognition. In the meantime his great uncle
died, and the young man inherited the title (Baron Byron of Rochdale), some money and the
Byron’s ancestral home, Newstead Abbey. Byron took his seat at the House of Lords and
soon engaged the hatred of the Conservative Party for his outspoken political views.
After graduation Byron had a grand tour through the Mediterranean Sea (Greece, Turkey,
Albania) and began writing Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812–1818), a poem of a young
man's reflections on travel in foreign lands.

In the 13th and 14th centuries, child appears to have been a term applied to a young noble
awaiting knighthood. Byron uses it to mean a youth of gentle birth. In 1812, upon his return
Byron published the first two cantos of Child Harold. One of the principal divisions of a long
poem, cantos (Italian: "songs") are usually reserved for epic poems. But the term "canto"
wasn't around for Homer and Virgil. It was popularized by Italian poet Dante Alighieri who
used them to divide his Divine Comedy. Edmund Spenser was the first person to use the word
in English to divide his The Faerie Queen. The poem met with instant success and
established Byron as one of England’s leading Romantic poets. He was just twenty four years
old when he "awoke one day to find himself famous". The pilgrim, called Childe Harold,
became the prototype for the moody, handsome character type, who would eventually be
labeled "the Byronic hero".
Content
Byron then became the most popular person in Regency London. Gossip regarding his private
life added to the aura of intrigue surrounding the remarkably handsome man, and his success
with women became legendary. A rumour began to circulate that Byron was involved with
Lady Caroline, the wife of future Prime Minister, William Lamb. Besides, Byron’s incestuous
relationship with his half-sister Augusta Leigh led to the birth of a child. It outraged society.
In September 1814, seeking to harsh up scandal, Byron proposed to Annabella Milbanke,
cousin of Lady Caroline. They married in January 1815, and in December of that year, their
daughter Augusta Ada was born. Later she became better known as Ada Lovelace. Augusta
Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (1815–1852), born Augusta Ada Byron and now
commonly known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known
for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the
Analytical Engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognised as the first algorithm
intended to be carried out by a machine. Because of this, she is often described as the world's
first computer programmer.

The marriage was an unhappy one. Anabella left Byron and took Ada with her. They were
legally separated. Byron became a social outcast. He left England never to return.
Byron traveled with his personal physician John William Polidori. In Switzerland they made
friends with Percy Bysshe Shelley and his soon-to-be wife, Mary Godwin. The Shelleys were
accompanied by Mary's step-sister, Claire Clairmont, with whom Byron had a daughter,
Allegra.Meanwhile Byron wrote the third canto of Childe Harold and started Manfred
(1817). He wrote this "metaphysical drama", after his marriage failed in scandal and he was
ostracised by London society. Some critics consider Manfred to be autobiographical, or even
confessional, because the main character is also tortured by the sense of guilt for an
unmentionable offence.

In 1816 Byron moved to Italy where he wrote the fourth canto of Childe Harold. In Italy
Byron met 19-year-old Teresa Guiccioli, a married countess, with whom he settled down into
a relatively long relationship. Byron soon won the admiration of Teresa's father, who had him
initiated into the secret Carbonari society dedicated to freeing Italy from Austrian rule.
Between 1818 and 1820, Byron wrote the five cantos of Don Juan (1821). The poem was
very different from the melancholic Childe Harold. Don Juan is a picaresque verse satire
with many autobiographical references. The hero’s travels, adventures, love affairs are very
close reflections of what Byron did, felt and thought. Byron wrote 16 cantos of Don Juan
before his death and left the poem unfinished. Many critics consider this poem to be his
masterpiece.
Content
The word picaresque (Spanish: "picaresca," from "pícaro," for "rogue" or "rascal") is used
to describe a literary work that depicts, in realistic and often humorous detail, the adventures
of a roguish hero who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. This style originated in sixteenth-
century Spain and flourished throughout Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Byron continued living in Italy until 1823 when he accepted an invitation to support Greek
independence from the Turks. He spent much of his money on the Greek rebellion and took
personal command of a unit of elite fighters.

In February 1824 Byron fell ill. The cold became a violent fever, and on April 19, 1824,
Byron died at the age of 36. He was deeply mourned in England and became a hero in
Greece. His body was brought back to England to be buried in the family vault near
Newstead. The clergy refused to bury him at Westminster Abbey. The most notorious of the
major Romantics, George Gordon, Lord Byron, was also the most fashionable poet of the
day. To this day he remains a legend. He was the hero of all his poems, but his real life was
far more exciting than anything that he wrote. He was a man possessed by self-pity, self-
consciousness and self-love. He created an immensely popular character –
defiant social outcast, brooding and mysterious, haunted by secret guilt, yet charming and
courageous – for which he was the model. Byron created a romantic archetype which was to
last well into the 19th century. The love of liberty and freedom, coupled with a melancholy
disposition rooted in solitude, became an expression of what many people of the time
interpreted as the Romantic hero.

"Almost all Don Juan", Byron wrote in one of his letters, "is real life, either my own, or from
people I knew". As Juan’s adventures cover a considerable part of Europe it gives his author
an opportunity to describe different countries, to comment on politics and relations between
men and to give a satirical portrait of his contemporary society, its customs and hypocrisies.
In Manfred Byron voiced his most profound opinions on the fate of the human creature.
Manfred as a rebel, like Satan, Cain, and Prometheus, embodies Romantic self-assertion.
Unable to find consolation for his guilt in this world or in the supernatural, at the moment of
death Manfred absolutely denies the authority of any spiritual system over individual will.
Content
Do you support the idea of absolute freedom and self-sufficiency of human
mind? Interpret the lines:
The mind which is immortal makes itself
Requital for its good or evil thoughts, –
Content
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) was born on August 4, 1792, into a prosperous
aristocratic family. He attended Eton College, and then went on to Oxford University. After
less than a year's enrolment Shelly wrote a pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism and got
expelled. He could have been reinstated with the help of his father, but the young man
refused to renounce the pamphlet and declare himself Christian. It caused Shelly financial
difficulties and a complete break with his father. That same year, at the age of nineteen,
Shelley eloped to Scotland with a sixteen-year-old Harriet Westbrook, whose father owned a
coffee house. Two years later Shelley published his first long serious work, a philosophical
poem Queen Mab (1813). In it he attacked such social "evils" as commerce, monarchy,
marriage, religion. In place of these vices he proposed republicanisms, free love and atheism.
The poem emerged from Shelley's friendship with the British philosopher and radical William
Godwin. Shelley also fell in love with Godwin’s daughter, Mary. He left his wife, Harriet,
who had just had their first child and was expecting the second.

The death of Shelley’s grandfather temporarily solved financial problems and allowed him
and Mary to elope to Europe. In November 1814 Harriet bore a son, and in February 1815
Mary Godwin gave birth prematurely to a child who died two weeks later. The following
January, Mary bore another son, named William after her father. In May the couple went to
Lake Geneva, where Shelley spent a great deal of time with George Gordon, Lord Byron,
sailing on Lake Geneva and discussing poetry. In December 1816 Harriet Shelley committed
suicide. Three weeks after her body was found in a lake in Hyde Park, London, Shelley and
Mary Godwin officially were married. Shelley lost custody of his two children by Harriet.
In 1817 Shelley wrote a long narrative poem Laon and Cythna that was withdrawn after only
a few copies were published, because it attacked religion and contained blasphemy. It was
later edited and published as The Revolt of Islam (1818). It is a long allegoric poem which
transposes the French Revolution into an Oriental setting. Early in 1818, Shelley and his new
wife left England for the last time. During the remaining four years of his life, Shelley
produced all his major works, including the sonnet Ozymandias (1818), the lyrical drama
Prometheus Unbound (1820) and his best-loved poems To a Skylark, The Cloud and Ode to
the West Wind (1820).
Content
In antiquity, Ozymandias was a Greek name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II. Shelley
began writing his poem in 1817, soon after the announcement of the British Museum's
acquisition of a large fragment of a statue of Ramesses II from the thirteenth century BC.
Shelley wrote the poem in friendly competition with his friend and fellow poet Horace Smith
(1779–1849), who also wrote a sonnet on the same topic with the very same title. Both poems
explore the fate of history and the ravages of time: that all prominent figures and the empires
that they build are impermanent and their legacies fated to decay and oblivion.

In Prometheus Unbound Shelley gives the Greek myth his own interpretation. He sings of the
struggle against tyranny. The sharp conflict between Prometheus and Jupiter is in the centre
of the drama. Prometheus is bound to a rock by Jupiter for stealing fire from the gods and
giving it to mankind. The huge spirit Demogorgon, representing the Creative Power, defeats
Jupiter and casts him down. Prometheus is set free and reunited with his wife Asia. The fact
that Jupiter is deposed symbolizes change and revolution. In Greek mythology, Prometheus
(Greek: "foresight") is a Titan, culture hero, and trickster figure who is credited with the
creation of man from clay, and who defies the gods and gives fire to humanity, an act that
enabled progress and civilization. Prometheus is known for his intelligence and as a
champion of mankind. The punishment of Prometheus as a consequence of the theft is a
major theme of his mythology, and is a popular subject of both ancient and modern art. Zeus,
king of the Olympian gods, sentenced the Titan to eternal torment for his transgression. The
immortal Prometheus was bound to a rock, where each day an eagle, the emblem of Zeus,
was sent to feed on his liver, which would then grow back to be eaten again the next day. (In
ancient Greece, the liver was thought to be the seat of human emotions.) In some stories,
Prometheus is freed at last by Heracles.
On July 8, 1822, in Italy, shortly before his thirtieth birthday, Shelley was drowned in a
sudden storm as he was sailing in his boat, the Don Juan. More than any other Romantic poet
Shelley embodied the spirit of the rebel and would-be reformer. His refusal to accept social
conventions, political oppression and any form of tyranny manifested itself in his verse.
Shelley believed strongly in the principles of freedom and love as a means to overcome the
shortcomings and evils of society. Shelley’s rejection of conventional modes of thinking led
to the search for new ideals, and he became greatly interested in the theories of Plato. Later
he rejected his atheism in favour of a pantheistic belief in some kind of universal spiritual
force.

John Keats

John Keats (1795–1821) was born on October 31, 1795. His early life was marked by a series
of personal tragedies. His father, a livery stable keeper, was killed in an accident when Keats
was eight. His mother died of tuberculosis six years later, and one of his younger brothers
died in infancy. Keats received relatively little formal education and at fifteen was
apprenticed to an apothecary to study medicine in a London hospital. Keats became a
licensed apothecary, but he never practiced his profession. In 1816 Keats met Leigh Hunt, an
influential editor of the Examiner, who published his sonnets On First Looking into
Chapman's Homer (1817) and O Solitude (1817). Hunt also introduced Keats to a circle of
literary men, including the poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Wordsworth. The
influence of his acquaintances helped Keats to publish his first volume, Poems by John Keats
(1817). Endymion (1817), a four-thousand-line allegorical romance based on the Greek
myth, appeared the following year.

In Greek mythology, Endimion was a beautiful youth who spent much of his life in perpetual
sleep. According to one tradition, Zeus offered him anything that he might desire, and
Endymion chose an everlasting sleep in which he might remain youthful forever. According
to another version of the myth, Endymion's eternal sleep was a punishment inflicted by Zeus
because he had attempted to have a sexual relationship with Zeus's wife, Hera. In any case,
Endymion was loved by Selene, the goddess of the moon, who visited him every night while
he lay asleep in a cave on Mount Latmus in Caria; she bore him 50 daughters. A common
form of the myth represents Endymion as having been put to sleep by Selene herself so that
she might enjoy his beauty undisturbed.

Two of the most influential critical magazines of the time, the Quarterly Review and
Blackwood's Magazine, attacked the collection. They declared Endymion to be nonsense and
recommended that Keats give up poetry. Shelley, who privately disliked Endymion but
recognized Keats's genius, wrote a more favorable review, but it was never published.
Shelley also exaggerated the effect that the criticism had on Keats, attributing his declining
health over the following years to a spirit broken by the negative reviews. Keats spent the
summer of 1818 on a walking tour in Northern England and Scotland, returning home to care
for his brother, Tom, who suffered from tuberculosis. While nursing his brother, Keats met
and fell in love with a woman named Fanny Brawne. Writing some of his finest poetry
between 1818 and 1819, Keats mainly worked on Hyperion, a blank-verse epic based on the
Greek creation myth. He stopped writing Hyperion upon the death of his brother, after
completing only a small portion. Late in 1819 he returned to the poem and rewrote it as The
Fall of Hyperion (unpublished until 1856).
Content
In Greek mythology, Hyperion (Greek: "The High-One") was one of the twelve Titan
children of Gaia (Earth) and Uranus (Sky or Heaven) who, led by Cronus, overthrew Uranus
and were themselves later overthrown by the Olympians. With his sister, the Titanide Theia,
Hyperion fathered Helios (Sun), Selene (Moon) and Eos (Dawn).
Keats contracted tuberculosis, and by the beginning of 1819 he felt that death was already
upon him, referring to the present as his "posthumous existence." In July 1820, he published
his third and best volume of poetry, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other
Poems (1820). The three title poems deal with mythical and legendary themes of ancient,
medieval, and Renaissance times. The volume also contained the unfinished Hyperion, the
poems Ode to Psyche, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode on Melancholy, Ode to a Nightingale,
To Autumn, a ballad La Belle Dame Sans Merci, and a few sonnets.

The book received enthusiastic praise, but by that time Keats had reached an advanced stage
of his disease and was too ill to be encouraged. He continued a correspondence with Fanny
Brawne, but his failing health prevented their getting married. Under his doctor's orders to
seek a warm climate for the winter, Keats went to Rome. He died there in February 1821 at
the age of twenty-five, and was buried in the Protestant cemetery. Though Keats died young,
and had only a few years in which he could write effectively, his achievement in poetry is
great. For a long time his poetry was considered merely as sensuous having no depth of
thought. But with the help of his letters, published posthumously, critics have reinterpreted
his poems. In those letters he recorded his thoughts on poetry, love, philosophy and people
and events of his day.

As a worshipper of beauty, Keats discovered that there is beauty in everything, and that
Beauty and Truth are one: "Beauty is truth, truth is beauty, - that is all ye know on earth, and
all ye need to know." He wrote in a letter to his friend: "I am certain of nothing but the
holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of imagination. What the imagination seizes as
beauty must be truth – whether it existed before or not."
Of all the romantic poets, Keats was the pure poet. He was not only the last but the most
perfect of the Romanticists. He was devoted to poetry and had no other interest. Unlike
Wordsworth who was interested in reforming poetry, unlike Coleridge who was better known
as a critic and lecturer, unlike Shelley who advocated impossible reforms, and unlike Byron
who made his poetry a vehicle of his personal assertion, Keats did not take much notice of the
social, political and literary turmoil, but devoted himself entirely to the worship of beauty. He
was, about all things, a poet, and nothing else. Although his poems were not generally well
received by critics during his lifetime, his reputation grew after his death, and by the end of
the 19th century, he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets.