Characteristics of Romantic Age
Name: Patel Krishna K.
Roll No. : 16
Semester:- 02
Batch:- 2018 – 2020
Enrolment no. :- 2069108420190035
Email Id :- krishnadobariya08@gmail.com
Course :- M.A. English
Paper No. :- 05 The Romantic Literature
Topic :- Characteristics of Romantic Age
Submitted to :- Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English MKBU
The Second Creative Period of English Literature
The first half of the nineteenth century records the triumph of Romanticism in literature and of democracy in government; and the two movements are so closely associated, in so many nations and in so many periods of cause and effect between them. Just as we understand the tremendous energizing influence of Puritanism in the matter of English liberty by remembering that the common people had begun to read ,and that their book was the Bible, so we may understand this age of popular government by remembering that the chief subject of romantic literature was the essential nobleness of common men and the value of the individual. As we read now that brief portion of history which lies between the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the English Reform Bill of 1832, we are in the presence of such mighty political upheavals that “the age of revolution” is the only name by which we can adequately characterize it. Its great historic movements become intelligible only when we read what was written in this period; for the French Revolution and the American commonwealth , as well as the establishment of a true democracy in England by the reform Bill, were the inevitable results of ideas which literature had spread rapidly through the civilized world. Liberty is fundamentally an ideal; and that ideal – beautiful, inspiring, compelling, as a loved banner in the wind – was kept steadily before men’s minds by a multitude of books and pamphlets as far apart as burn’s poems and Thomas Paine’s Rights of man, all read eagerly by the common people, all proclaiming the dignity of common life, and all uttering the same passionate cry against every form of class or caste oppression.First the dream, the ideal in some human soul; then the written word which proclaims it, and impresses other minds with its truth and beauty; then the united and determined effort of men to make a dream a reality, -that seems to be a fair estimate of the part that literature plays, even in over political progress.
Definition of term “Roman
ticism”
“A style of art, music, and literature, popular in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, that deals with the beauty of nature and human emotions.”
- Cambridge Dictionary
Historical summary
The period we are considering being in the latter half of the reign of George 111 and ends with the accession of Victoria in 1837.
1) The French Revolution :-
The storm center of the political unrest was the French Revolution, that fightful uprising which proclaimed the natural rights of man and the abolition of class distinctions. Its effect on the whole civilized world is beyond computation. Patriotic clubs and societies multiplied in England, all asserting the doctrine of Liberty, Equality, fraternity, the watchwords of the Revolution. Young England, led by pitt the younger, hailed the new French republic and offered it friendhip; old England, which pardons no revolutions but her own, looked with horror on the turmoil in France , and , misled by Burke and the nobles of the realm, forced the two nations into war. Even Pitt saw a blessing in this at first; because the sudden zeal for fighting a foreign nation – which by some horrible perversion is generally called patriotism might turn men’s thoughts from their own to their neighbor’s affairs, and so prevent a threatened revolution at home.2) Economics Condition
The cause of French Revolution were not political but economics. By her inventions in steel and machinery, and by her monopoly of the carrying trade, England had become “the workshop of the world”. Her wealth had increased beyond her wildest dreams; but the unequal distribution of that wealth as a spectacle to make angels weep. The invention of machinery at first threw thousands of skilled hand workers out of employment; in order to protect a few agriculturists, heavy duties were imposed on corn and wheat, and bread rose to famine prices just when laboring men had the least money to pay for it. There followed a curious spectacle. While Europe, and while nobles, landowners, manufacturers, and merchants lived in increasing luxury, a multitude of skilled laborers were clamoring for work. Fathers sent their wives and little children into the mines and factories, where sixteen hours’ labor would hardly pay for the daily bread; and in every large city were riotous mobs made up chiefly of hungry men and women. It was this unbearable economic condition, and not any political theory, as Burke supposed, which occasioned the danger of another English revolution.3) Reforms:-
All the dangers, real and imaginary, passed away when England turned from the affairs of France to remedy her own economic conditions. The long continental war came to an end with Napoleon’s overthrow at waterloo, in 1815; and England ,having gained enormously in prestige abroad , now turned to the work of reform at home. The destruction of the African slave trade; the mitigation of horribly unjust laws, which included poor debtors and petty criminals in the same class; the prevention of child labor; the freedom of the press; the extention of manhood suffrage; the abolition of restriction against Catholics in Parliament; the establishment of hundreds of popular schools, under the leadership of Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster, - these are but a few of the reforms which mark the progress of civilization in a single half century.
Literary Characteristics of the Age:-
1) Romantic Enthusiasm:-
In the early days, when old institutions seemed crumbling with the Bastille, Coleridge and Southey formed their youthful scheme of a “pantisocracy on the banks of the Susauehanna” – an ideal commonwealth, in which the principles of More’s Utopia should be put in practice. Even Wordsworth, fired with political enthusiasm, could write,
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,But to be young was very heaven.
The essence of Romanticism was, it must be remembered, that literature must reflect all that is spontaneous and unaffected in nature and in man, and be free to follow its own fancy in its own way. We have already noted this characteristics in the work of Elizabethan dramatists, who followed their own genius in opposition to all the laws of the critics. In Coleridge we see this independence expressed in “Kubla Khan” and “The Ancient Mariner,” two dream pictures, one of the populous Orient, the other of the lonely sea. In Wordsworth this literary independence led him inward to the heart of common things. Following his own instinct, as Shakespeare does, he too
Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
And so, more than any other writer of the age, he invests the common life of nature, and the souls of common men and women, with glorious significance. These two poets, Coleridge and Wordsworth, best represent the romantic genius of the age in which they lived, though Scott had a greater literary reputation, and Byron and Shelley had larger audiences.
2) An Age of Poetry:-
The second characteristics of this age is that it is emphatically an age of poetry. The previous century, with its practical outlook on life, was largely one of prose; but now, as in the Elizabethan Age, the young enthusiasts turned as naturally t poetry as a happy man to singing. The glory of the age is in the poetry o Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Moore , and Southey . Of its prose works, those of Scott alone have attained a very wide reading, though the essays of Charles Lamb and the novels of Jane Austen have slowly won for their authors a secure place in the history of our literature. Coleridge and Southey wrote far more prose than poetry; and Southey’s prose is much better than his verse. It was characteristic of the spirit of this age, so different from our own, that Southey could say that, in order to earn money, he wrote in verse “what would otherwise have been better written in prose”.It was during this period that woman assumed, for the first time, an important place in our literature.
3) Women as Novelists:-
Probably the chief reason for this interesting phenomenon lies in the fact that woman was for the first time given some slight chance of education, of entering into the intellectual life of the race; and , as is always the case when woman is given anything like a fair opportunity, she responded magnificently. A secondary reason may be found in the nature of the age itself, which was intensely emotional. The French Revolution stirred all Europe to its depths, and during the following half century every great movement in literature, as in politics and religion, was characterized by strong emotion; which is all the more noticeable by contrast with the cold, formal, satiric spirit of the early eighteenth century. As woman is naturally more emotional than man, it may well be that the spirit of this emotional age attracted her, and gave her the opportunity to express herself in literature.The romantic period encouraged individuals to explore the interior world of emotion and to express themselves through writing. The high value placed on personal reflection resulted in an upsurge in authorship more generally, but it also created a space for women to add their voices in greater numbers. For the most part, women were not educated to be experts in a particular field, but they were certainly able to reflect on the world through their feelings. Thus, during this period more women began to write expressive poetry, novels, letters, and domestic genres deemed appropriate for women. However, other women deviated from those social codes, employing the authoritative tone and direct style normally ascribed to men. Thus, not all women’s writing was well received by the public. Anglican clergyman Richard Polwhele wrote The Unsex’d Females: A poem, Addressed to the Author of the Pursuits of Literature (1798) which “sorted” women writers into two categories: propera and improper.
Amongst the approved women writers, Polwhele listed Hannah More, Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe and Anna Seward. These “Proper” women within the confines of the domestic sphere by penning autobiographical fiction, diaries, letters, conduct books and the poetry of feeling. Intended for a primarily female audience, the works of these authors tended to follow convention instructing women in proper women writers remained conservative. For example, in “An Essay on the Character and Practical Writing of St. Paul” (1835), Hannah More argued that women were powerful in their subordination to their husbands. Other women writers at the time criticized this type of instruction, arguing that such manipulative tactics undermined women’s virtue.
4) The Modern Magazines:-
In this age literary criticism was established by the appearance of such Magazines as
“Edinburgh Review” (1802)“The Quarterly Review” (1808)
“Black Woods Magazine” (1817)
“The Spectator” (1828).
These magazines put their influence on all subsequent literature. These magazines were published the work of certain writes like- Charles Lamb and gave the opportunity to every writer to make his work known to the world.
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