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The Romantic Age
- HISTORICAL CONTEXT
⬤ Great revolutions dominated the period: the Industrial Revolution, the American
Revolution and the French Revolution
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⬤ In the Industrial Revolution, coal, iron and steam power were used in the development of
the factory system
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⬤ Towns grew as the agricultural workers moved from the South to the Midlands and the
North, where the newly industrialized manufacturing was creating labor opportunities
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⬤ The Industrial Revolution resulted in the rise of a middle-class business interest
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- LITERATURE, ARTS AND OTHER CONCEPTS
⬤ A new sensibility arose with an emphasis on the power of imagination, sensations and
feelings
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⬤ The concept of beauty was no longer linked to classical images but was associated with
the great and the sublime in nature
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- A NEW SENSIBILITY
- TOWARDS SUBJECTIVE POETRY
- In the second half of the 18th century a new sensibility emerged
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⬤ Early poets of the 18th century had dealt with impersonal material with loud and noble
eloquence
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They were less intellectual than
Augustan poets and more intimately emotional
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It dealt with experiences presented not
for their immediate impact, but for generalized reflection
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⬤ The noisy activity of the industrial town was compared negatively with the simple serenity
of the countryside
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- A NEW CONCEPT OF NATURE
- There was also a revolution in the concept of nature
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⬤ The higher value placed on sensibility led to the need to elaborate a new aesthetic theory
built on individual consciousness rather than on the imitation of the precepts of nature or the
classics
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⬤ The sublime, for Burke, is “whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and
danger [
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He argued that terror and pain are
the strongest emotions and that there is an inherent pleasure in such feelings
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The Romantic Poetry
- THE ROMANTIC IMAGINATION
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End of 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century,
English Romanticism saw the prevalence of poetry, which best
suited the need to give expression to emotional experience and individual feelings
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Imagination
allowed the poet to recreate and modify the external world of experience
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⬤ The poet was also seen as a visionary prophet or a teacher whose task was to mediate
between man and nature, to point out the evils of society, to give voice to the ideals of
freedom, beauty and truth
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⬤ To the Augustan Age, a child was important only insofar as he would become an adult
and civilized being
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⬤ Childhood was considered a temporary state, a necessary stage in the process leading to
adulthood
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- THE IMPORTANCE OF THE INDIVIDUAL
- There was new emphasis on the significance of the individual
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They exalted the atypical, the outcast, the rebel
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⬤ The current of thought represented by Jean-Jacque Rousseau stated that the
conventions of civilisation represented intolerable restrictions on the individual personality
and produced every kind of corruption and evil
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⬤ Romantic poets welcome the picturesque in scenery, but also the remote and the
unfamiliar in custom and social outlook
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⬤ Nature became:
- a main source of inspiration;
- a stimulus to thought;
- a source of comfort and joy;
- a means to convey moral thoughts
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⬤ The problem of poetic diction was a central issue in the Romantic aesthetics
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- TWO GENERATION OF POETS
- The great English Romantic poets are usually grouped into two generations
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⬤ The poets of the second generation, Shelley and Keats, experienced political
disillusionment which is reflected, in their poetry, in the clash between the ideal and the real
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- The poets of the second generation all died very young and away from home, in
Mediterranean countries
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⬤ The subordination of nature to the self is emphasized in the new concept of the
“sublime”, expounded by Edmund Burke, who held that the sublime is not a feature of
nature, but a particular way of perceiving and interpreting it
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⬤ Primitive, wild landscape or night scenes convey the inner feelings of the poet, connecting
his soul with the supernatural and the divine, as in the poems by Coleridge, Shelley and
Byron
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⬤ In Romanticism nature also meant an escape from familiar experiences and from the
limitations of reality
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They also were
attracted by faraway exotic places as a means of expanding their consciousness
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Wordsworth was taught to read by his mother and attended, first, a
tiny school of low quality in Cockermouth, then a school in Penrith
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After the death of his mother in 1778, his father sent him to
Hawkshead Grammar School
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John’s College, in Cambridge; and in 1791 he graduated
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The brutal, destructive developments of the Revolution
and the declaration of war between England and France in 1793 brought him to the edge of
a nervous breakdown
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She constantly supported his poetry,
she copied down his poems and recorded their life in her Journals
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Their friendship proved crucial to the development of English Romantic poetry: they
produced a collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads
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He also wrote a
series of five poems, Lucy Poems, between 1798 and 1801
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The last years of his
life were marked by the growing conservatism of his political views
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- THE MANIFESTO OF ENGLISH ROMANTICISM
In the 18th century, English poetry was mainly composed at the highest level of diction
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He belonged to the first generation of Romantic poets, which was characterized by the
attempt to theorize about poetry
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Wordsworth’s strongest objection to 18th- century poetry was its artificial, elevated language,
which he called ‘poetic diction’
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The language should be simple and the objects called by their ordinary names
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Therefore the poet is not a man in an ivory tower, but a man among
men, writing about what interests mankind
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He thought that man could achieve that good through the cultivation of his
senses and feelings
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Rather than a precise and objective observation of natural
phenomena, his poetry offers a detailed account of the complex interaction between man
and nature, of the influences, insights, emotions and sensations which arise from this
contact
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In his pantheistic view
Wordsworth saw nature as something that includes both inanimate and human nature: each
is a part of the same whole
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- THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SENSES AND MEMORY
For Wordsworth nature was also a world of sense perceptions and he used especially the
sensibility of the eye and ear
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Memory, therefore, is a major force in the process of growth of the poet’s mind
and moral character, and it is memory that allows Wordsworth to give poetry its life and
power
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The poet also has a great sensibility and an ability to see into the heart of things
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Wordsworth abandoned the 18th-century heroic couplet; he almost always used blank verse,
though he proved skilful at several verse forms such as sonnets, odes, ballads and lyrics
with short lines and simple rhymes
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The poem celebrates the beauty of the natural world and its ability to provide solace and
inspiration, emphasizing the importance of reflection and the lasting impact of serene
moments experienced in nature
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- THE DAFFODILS THEMES
⬤ Beauty of Nature: the poem celebrates the beauty and vibrancy of nature, particularly
through the imagery of golden daffodils
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⬤ Solitude and Reflection: the poem emphasizes the value of solitary contemplation and
introspection, highlighting how nature can provide solace and comfort
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⬤ Memory and Imagination: it touches upon the power of memory and imagination, as the
poet recalls and finds solace in the memory of the daffodils during quiet moments
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The poem explores the profound impact of nature on the human spirit
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This sight fills him with joy and wonder
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The poem emphasizes themes of
nature's healing power, the joy found in solitary contemplation, and the enduring pleasure
derived from experiencing and recalling the beauty of the natural world

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