CAMPUS SALAMANCA

SEDE YURIRIA
Applied Literature

ROMANTICISM IN ENGLISH
LITERATURE
ROMANTIC PERIOD IN ENGLISH
LITERATURE: 1785-1830

A BRIEF OVERVIEW
SOCIAL & POLITICAL CONTEXT

 PERIOD OF GREAT CHANGE IN

ENGLAND:

 AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY WHERE

POWERFUL LANDHOLDING
ARISTOCRACY WAS GIVING WAY TO
MODERN INDUSTRIAL NATION OF LARGE
SCALE EMPLOYERS & A GROWING,
RESTLESS MIDDLE CLASS.
 PERIOD OF CHANGE (CONT.)
 AMERICAN & FRENCH REVOLUTIONS WERE
HUGELY IMPORTANT ELEMENTS OF THE
POLITICAL LANDSCAPE.

 THREATS TO EXISTING SOCIAL STRUCTURE

WERE BEING POSED BY NEW, REVOLUTIONARY
IDEAS.

 A TIME OF HARSH POLITICAL REPRESSION IN

ENGLAND, IN SPITE OF NEED FOR CHANGES
BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION.
LACK OF REFORM (CONT.)

 CONSEQUENCES WERE LOW WAGES, HORRIBLE

WORKING CONDITIONS, LARGE SCALE EMPLOYMENT
OF WOMEN & CHILDREN IN BRUTALLY HARD
OCCUPATIONS (SUCH AS COAL MINING).
 IN THE FACE OF TECHNOLOGICAL UNEMPLOYMENT &
POVERTY, WORKERS—WHO COULD NOT VOTE—HAD TO
RESORT TO PROTESTS & RIOTS, INCURRING FURTHER
REPRESSION.
 BUT WHILE THE POOR SUFFERED, THE LEISURE CLASS
PROSPERED.
 PLIGHT OF WOMEN

 WOMEN OF ALL CLASSES WERE REGARDED AS INFERIOR

TO MEN, WERE UNDEREDUCATED, HAD LIMITED
VOCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES, WERE SUBJECT TO A STRICT
CODE OF SEXUAL BEHAVIOR, AND HAD ALMOST NO LEGAL
RIGHTS.
 IN SPITE OF THE ABOVE, THE CAUSE OF WOMEN’S RIGHTS
WAS LARGELY IGNORED.
 ROMANTICISM

 THE TERM “ROMANTICISM” IS DIFFICULT TO DEFINE

BECAUSE OF THE VARIETY OF LITERARY

ACHIEVEMENTS, AND WRITERS OF THE PERIOD WERE

ONLY LATER LABELLED “ROMANTIC”.

 BUT MANY HAD A SENSE OF “THE SPIRIT OF THE

AGE”—THAT A GREAT RELEASE OF CREATIVE ENERGY

WAS OCCURING AS ACCOMPANIMENT TO POLITICAL &

SOCIAL REVOLUTION. IT WAS SEEN AS AN AGE OF

NEW BEGININGS & LIMITLESS POSSIBILITIES.

POETIC THEORY & PRACTICE

 WORDSWORTH TRIED TO ARTICULATE THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW

POETRY IN THE PREFACE TO LYRICAL BALLADS (1800, 1802).

CONCEPT OF POETRY: THE POET

 POETRY WAS SEEN AS THE “SPONTANEOUS OVERFLOW OF

POWERFUL FEELINGS”; THE ESSENCE OF POETRY WAS THE

MIND, EMOTIONS, & IMAGINATION OF THE POET (NOT THE

OUTER WORLD).
POETRY & THE POET (CONT.)

 FIRST PERSON LYRIC POEM BECAME THE MAJOR

ROMANTIC LITERARY FORM, WITH “I” OFTEN
REFERRING DIRECTLY TO THE POET.
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF BECAME A
MAJOR TOPIC OF ROMANTIC POETRY.
 POETS OFTEN SAW THEMSELVES AS PROPHETS IN
A TIME OF CRISIS, REVISING THE PROMISE OF
DIVINE REDEMPTION IN TERMS OF A “HEAVEN” ON
EARTH.
POETIC SPONTANEITY, FREEDOM
 INITIAL ACT OF POETIC COMPOSITION MUST ARISE FROM IMPULSE; BE

FREE FROM THE RULES INHERITED FROM THE PAST; AND RELY ON

INSTINCT, INTUITION, & FEELING

NATURE
 IMPORTANCE OF ACCURATE OBSERVATION & DESCRIPTION OF WILD

NATURE, WHICH SERVES AS A STIMULUS TO THINKING & TO THE

RESOLUTION OF PERSONAL PROBLEMS & CRISES.

 LANDSCAPE WAS OFTEN GIVEN HUMAN QUALITIES OR SEEN AS A SYSTEM
OF SYMBOLS REVEALING THE NATURE OF GOD.
 CLOSENESS WITH NATURE WAS SEEN AS BRINGING OUT HUMANITY’S
INNATE GOODNESS.
GLORIFICATION OF THE COMMON-
PLACE

 HUMBLE, RUSTIC SUBJECT MATTER & PLAIN STYLE

BECAME THE PRINCIPAL SUBJECT & MEDIUM OF POETRY.

 POETS SOUGHT TO REFRESH READERS’ SENSE OF WONDER

ABOUT THE ORDINARY THINGS OF EXISTENCE, TO MAKE

THE “OLD” WORLD SEEM NEW.

 THE SUPERNATURAL & STRANGE
 MANY ROMANTIC POEMS EXPLORE THE REALM OF MYSTERY &
MAGIC; INCORPORATE MATERIALS FROM FOLKLORE,
SUPERSTITION, ETC.; & ARE OFTEN SET IN DISTANT OR
FARAWAY PLACES.

 RELATED TO THIS WAS A RENEWED INTEREST IN THE MIDDLE

AGES (AND THE BALLAD FORM) AS A BEAUTIFUL, EXOTIC,
MYSTERIOUS BYGONE ERA.

 THERE WAS ALSO GREAT INTEREST IN UNUSUAL MODES OF

EXPERIENCE, SUCH AS VISIONARY STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS,
HYPNOTISM, DREAMS, DRUG-INDUCED STATES, AND SO FORTH.
 INDIVIDUALISM & STRIVING

 HUMAN BEINGS WERE SEEN AS ESSENTIALLY NOBLE & GOOD (THOUGH CORRUPTED BY SOCIETY), AND AS
POSSESSING GREAT POWER & POTENTIAL THAT HAD FORMERLY BEEN ASCRIBED ONLY TO GOD.

 THERE WAS A GREAT BELIEF IN DEMOCRATIC IDEALS, CONCERN FOR HUMAN LIBERTY, & A GREAT OUTCRY AGAINST
VARIOUS FORMS OF TYRANNY.

 THE HUMAN MIND WAS SEEN AS CREATING (AT LEAST IN PART) THE WORLD AROUND IT, AND AS HAVING ACCESS TO
THE INFINITE VIA THE FACULTY OF IMAGINATION.

 REFUSING TO ACCEPT LIMITATIONS, HUMAN BEINGS SET INFINITE, INACCESSIBLE GOALS, THUS MAKING FAILURE &
INDIVIDUALISM (CONT.)

 THIS REFUSAL TO ACCEPT LIMITATIONS FOUND

EXPRESSION IN BOLD POETIC EXPERIMENTATION.

 MANY WRITERS DELIBERATELY ISOLATED
THEMSELVES FROM SOCIETY TO FOCUS ON THEIR
INDIVIDUAL VISION.
 THEME OF EXILE WAS COMMON, WITH THE
ROMANTIC NONCONFORMIST OFTEN SEEN AS A
GREAT SINNER OR OUTLAW.
THE BRITISH ROMANTIC PERIOD
“The divine arts of imagination: imagination, the real and eternal world of which
this vegetable universe is but a shadow.”
William Blake
 Spring, 1798
 Two English poets, aged 27 and 25, sold some poems to
pay for a trip to Germany.
 Soon after, Lyrical Ballads, with a few other poems,
was published.
 The poets were Wordsworth and Coleridge and the
work contains poems considered among the most
important of the era.

HOW AND WHEN DID IT START?

SO, WHAT IS A POET IN ROMANTIC POETRY?
 According to Wordsworth, “He is a man
speaking to men.”
 The speaker is an ordinary man, a democratic
concept.
 The speaking in lyrical poetry is a passionate
speaking from the heart.
 It seems to be more of an “overhearing” – as
if we are privy to a private conversation or
someone speaking to himself.
 A language of the heart
 According to Keats, “What the imagination
seizes as beauty must be the truth whether it
existed before or not.”
THE LURE OF THE GOTHICS

 Literature of the Romantic period is filled with

examples of the eerie and the supernatural.
 This taste for terror grew from a sensibility called
“gothic” that set stories in gloomy medieval castles.
 It was a way the people of the age expressed a sense of
helplessness about forces beyond their control.
 CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANTICISM
1) Romanticism turned away from 18 century emphasis on
reason and artifice. Embraced imagination and naturalness.
2) ( Informality) Preferred poetry that spoke of personal
experiences and emotions, often in simple, unadorned
language.
3) Used the lyric as the form best suited to expressions of
feeling, self-revelation, and the imagination.
4) A democratic attitude towards their audience.
5) Most believed in individual liberty and sympathized with
those who had rebelled against tyranny.
6) Thought of nature as transformative; fascinated by the ways
nature and the human mind “mirrored” one another.
7) NATURE AND IMAGINATION:
Most of the Romantic poems present imaginative experiences
as very powerful and moving.
 AGE OF REASON VS. ROMANTIC ERA
In the Age of Reason, Writers stressed: In the Romantic Era, Writers stressed:
 Reason and Judgement  Imagination and Emotion
 Concern with the universal experience  Concern with the particular experience
 The value of society as a whole  The value of the individual human being
 The value of rules  The value of freedom
 one another.
FIVE MAJOR ROMANTIC ERA POETS

William Wordsworth
William Blake
Lord Byron
Percy Shelley
John Keats
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
 Helped to launch the Romantic Age
 His most famous work is The Prelude chronicles the spiritual life
of the poet
 Has an interest and sympathy for the life and troubles of the
“common man”
 He is considered the nature poet by focusing ordinary people in
country settings
 PERCEY SHELLEY
 Started writing poetry when he was twelve
 Blake was a nonconformist who associated with some of the
leading radical thinkers of his day
 He rebelled against traditional poetic forms and techniques
 He valued imagination over reason
LORD BYRON

 He indulged in excesses and had huge debts and many

love affairs
 His most famous creations are his dark heroes, called
Byronic heroes, who, in fact, were not heroes at all, but
stood out from ordinary humans as larger than life
WILLIAM BLAKE

 WILLIAM BLAKE
 Started writing poetry when he was twelve
 Blake was a nonconformist who associated with some of the
leading radical thinkers of his day
 He rebelled against traditional poetic forms and techniques
 He valued imagination over reason
 JOHN KEATS
 During his life, his poems did not receive favorable reviews
by the critics
 The poetry of Keats is characterized by sensual imagery,
most notably in his odes
 The most notorious Romantic poet and satirist, Byron was famous in his lifetime for his love affairs
with women. He created his own cult of personality, the concept of the 'Byronic hero' - a defiant,
melancholy young man, brooding on some mysterious, unforgivable in his past. "There's not a joy the
world can give that it takes away / When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay, / 'Tis
not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast, / But the tender bloom of heart is gone,
ere youth itself be past." (“Lord Byron”) Byron's influence on European poetry, music, novel, opera, and
painting was immense, although the poet was widely condemned on moral grounds by his
contemporaries.
• George Gordon, Lord Byron, was the son of Captain John Byron, and Catherine Gordon of Gight, a
self-indulgent, somewhat hysterical woman, who was his second wife. He was born with a club-foot and
became extreme sensitivity about his lameness. His life did not become easier when he received painful
treatments for his foot by a quack practitioner in 1799. Eventually he got a corrective boot. (“Lord
Bryon”).

• In his works short and stout Byron glorified proud heroes, who overcome hardships. The poet himself
was only 5 feet 8 1/2 inches tall and his widely varying weight ranged from 137 to 202 pounds - he once
said that everything he swallowed was instantly converted to tallow and deposited on his ribs. One of his
friends noted that at the age of about 30 he looked 40 and "the knuckles of his hands were lost in fat."

• At the age of fifteen he fell in love with Mary Chaworth, his distant cousin, whom he wrote the poem 'To
Emma'.
• In 1807 appeared Byron's first collection of poetry, HOURS OF IDLENESS. It received bad reviews.
The poet answered his critics with satire ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWS in 1808. Next
year he took his seat in the House of Lords, and set out on his grand tour, visiting Spain, Albania, Greece,
and the Aegean.

• Success came in 1812 when Byron published the first two cantos of CHILDE HAROLD'S
PILGRIMAGE (1812-1818). "I awoke one morning and found myself famous," he later said. He became
an adored character of London society, he spoke in the House of Lords effectively on liberal themes, and
had a hectic love-affair with Lady Caroline Lamb. ''Mad - bad - and dangerous to know,'' she wrote in her
journal on the evening she first saw him.

• During the summer of 1813 Byron apparently entered into a more than brotherly relationship with his
half-sister Augusta Leigh, who was a mother of three daughters. In 1814 Augusta gave birth to
Elizabeth Medora, who was generally supposed to be Byron's.
• In the same year he wrote 'Lara,' a poem about a mystical hero, aloof and alien, whose identity is
gradually revealed and who dies after a feud in the arms of his page. THE CORSAIR (1814), sold
10,000 copies on the first day of publication.

•. Byron married Anne Isabella Milbanke in 1815, and their daughter Ada was born in the same year.
The marriage was unhappy, and they obtained legal separation next year. When the rumors started to
rise of his incest and debts were accumulating, Byron left England in 1816, never to return. ''The only
virtue they honor in England is hypocrisy,'' he once wrote a friend.

• Byron settled in Geneva with Mary Godwin, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, and Claire
Clairmont, who became his mistress. There he wrote the two cantos of Childe Harold and THE
PRISONER OF CHILLON. At the end of the summer Byron continued his travels, spending two years
in Italy.
• During the years in Italy, Byron wrote LAMENT OF TASSO, inspired by his visit in Tasso's cell in
Rome, MAZEPPA, THE PROPHECY OF DANTE, and started DON JUAN, his satiric masterpiece.

• After a long creative period, Byron had come to feel that action was more important than poetry. With
good wishes from Goethe, Byron armed a brig, the Hercules, and sailed to Greece to aid the Greek's, who
had risen against their Ottoman overlords. He worked ceaselessly and joined Alexander Mavrocordato on
the north shore of the Gulf of Patras..

• However, before Byron saw any serious military action, he contracted the fever from which he died in
Missolonghi on 19 April 1824. Before his death he had suffered a seizure, and his condition was worsened by
a leeching procedure. Memorial services were held all over the land. The Greeks wished to bury him in
Athens, but only his heart stayed in the country. Part of his skull and his internal organs had been removed for
souvenirs. Byron's body was returned to England but refused by the deans of both Westminister and St Paul's.
Finally Byron's coffin was placed in the family vault at Hucknall Torkard, near Newstead Abbey in
Nottinghamshire
 Characteristics of the Byronic Hero

A Byronic hero exhibits several characteristic traits, and in many ways he can
be considered a rebel.
• is a rebel (against convention, society, etc.)
• has a distaste for society and social institutions
• is isolated from society (a wanderer, an exile)
• is not impressed by rank and privilege (though he may possess it)
• is larger-than-life in his ability--and his pride
• has a hidden curse or crime
• suffers from titanic passions 
• tends to be self-destructive

One of the key connections to understanding the Byronic Hero is that he is, in some ways, like the
Romantic conception of Satan in Paradise Lost--the rebel who fights against a tyrannical establishment but
is destroyed by his own overwhelming pride.  This figure is an unconventional hero--dangerous and
destructive, but admirable because he is larger than life.
• Percy Bysshe Shelley (August 4, 1792 – July 8, 1822) was one of the
major English Romantic poets and is widely considered to be among the
finest lyrical poets of the English language.

• Lyrical poems are a form of poetry that does not attempt to tell a story but is of a more personal nature
instead.
• He is perhaps most famous for such anthology pieces as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a
Skylark, and The Masque of Anarchy.

• Shelley's unconventional life and uncompromising idealism, combined with his strong skeptical voice,
made him a notorious and much denigrated figure during his life.
• He became the idol of the next two or three generations of poets
(including the major Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets Robert
Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles
Swinburne, as well as William Butler Yeats

• He is famous for his association with contemporaries John Keats and Lord
Byron; an untimely death at a young age was common to all three. He was
married to the famous novelist Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, and
wrote the introduction to the 1818 edition of the novel.
Mary Shelley

• In 1814 Shelley fell in love and eloped with Mary, the sixteen-year-old daughter of William Godwin and
Mary Wollstonecraft. For the next few years the couple travelled in Europe. Shelley continued to be involved in
politics and in 1817 wrote the pamphlet A Proposal for Putting Reform to the Vote Throughout the United
Kingdom. In the pamphlet Shelley suggested a national referendum on electoral reform and improvements in
working class education.
• In 1822 Shelley, moved to Italy with Leigh Hunt (friends with other young writers who favored
political reform) and Lord Byron where they published the journal The Liberal. By publishing it in
Italy the three men remained free from prosecution by the British authorities. The first edition of
The Liberal sold 4,000 copies. Soon after its publication, Percy Bysshe Shelley was lost at sea
on 8th July, 1822 while sailing to meet Leigh Hunt.
•. John Keats was born in Finsbury Pavement near London on October
31st, 1795.
• The first son of a stable-keeper, he had a sister and three brothers, one of whom died
in infancy. When John was eight years old, his father was killed in an accident. In the
same year his mother married again, but little later separated from her husband and
took her family to live with her mother.

•John attended a good school where he became well acquainted with ancient and contemporary literature.
• In 1810 his mother died of consumption, leaving the children to their grandmother. The old lady put them
under the care of two guardians, to whom she made over a respectable amount of money for the benifit of the
orphans. Under the authority of the guardians, he was taken from school to an be apprentice to a surgeon. In
1814, before completion of his apprenticeship, John left his master after a quarrel, becoming a hospital student
in London.

• Under the guidance of his friend Cowden Clarke he devoted himself increasingly to literature. In 1814
Keats finally sacrificed his medical ambitions to a literary life.

• He soon got acquainted with celebrated artists of his time, like Leigh Hunt, Percy B. Shelley and
Benjamin Robert Haydon.

• In May 1816, Hunt helped him publish his first poem in a magazine. A year later Keats published about
thirty poems and sonnets printed in the volume "Poems".
• After receiving scarce, negative feedback, Keats travelled to the Isle of Wight on his own in spring of
1817. In the late summer he went to Oxford together with a newly-made friend, Benjamin Bailey.

• In the following winter, George Keats married and emigrated to America, leaving the consumptuous
brother Tom to the John's care.

• Apart from helping Tom against consumption, Keats worked on his poem "Endymion". Just before its
publication, he went on a hiking tour to Scotland and Ireland with his friend Charles Brown.

• First signs of his own fatal disease forced him to return prematurely, where he found his brother seriously
ill and his poem harshly critisized. In December 1818 Tom Keats died.
• John moved to Hampstead Heath, were he lived in the house of Charles Brown. While in Scotland
with Keats, Brown had lent his house to a Mrs Brawne and her sixteen-year-old daughter Fanny. Since
the ladies where still living in London, Keats soon made their acquaintance and fell in love with the
beautiful, fashionable girl.

• Absorbed in love and poetry, he exhausted himself mentally, and in autumn of 1819, he tried to gain
some distance to literature through an ordinary occupation.

• An unmistakable sign of consumption in February 1820 however broke all his plans for the future,
marking the beginning of what he called his "posthumous life".
• His health improved momentarily, only to collapse finally. Keats died in Rome on the 23rd of
February, 1821.
• The inscription at the bottom is in Severn's hand, and reads (in partial shorthand):
“28 Janry 3 o'clock mng.  Drawn to keep me awake - a deadly sweat was on him all this
night.”

• Keats passed away on Friday, 23 February 1821, around 11:00 pm. 

• He was buried on the Protestant Cemetary, near the grave of Caius Cestius. On his desire, the following
lines were engraved on his tombstone: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water."

This is the last

known portrait of
the poet.
 Works Cited
Allen, Dr. Rosemary. “The Bryonic Hero.” English 213, Spring 2003. Georgetown
University. 23 Apr. 2007. < http://spider.georgetowncollege.edu/english/allen/byron2.htm>.

----. “Characteristics of Romanticism.” English 213, Spring 2003. Georgetown

University. 23 Apr. 2007. < http://spider.georgetowncollege.edu/english/allen/romantic.htm>.
English History.Net. “The Final Months of John Keats.” 12 Jan. 2007. 21 Apr. 2007.
< http://englishhistory.net/keats/death.html>.

“George Byron, 6th Baron Byron” Wikipedia, the free encylopedia. 21 Apr. 2007. Wikipedia
Foundation,Inc. 21 Apr. 2007. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Byron>.

John Keats.com. “Biography.” 21 Apr. 2007 < http://www.john-keats.com/>.

“Lord Byron (1788-1824) - Byron (of Rochdale), George (Gordon), 6th Baron.” 2007.
Kuusankosken kaupunginkirjasto. 21 Apr. 2007. <http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/byron.htm>.

“Percy Bysshe Shelley.” Apr. 2007. Spartacus Educational. 21 Apr. 2007.

<http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRshelley.htm>.

“Percy Bysshe Shelley” Wikipedia, the free encylopedia. 21 Apr. 2007. Wikipedia

“Percy Bysshe Shelley.” Apr. 2007. Spartacus Educational. 21 Apr. 2007.

<http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRshelley.htm>.
“THE END OF PRESENTATION”