English Literature

Romanticism, (1790-1850), the beautiful and vibrant word, has thrilled young hearts through the ages. It has many connotations.  It hints at the Romance languages, but eludes them and had its origin and development in Germany and England. Coinciding with many revolutions, including the industrial revolution, it has the same spirit at its centre. So powerful, is the core that some of its precepts have found its way even to the twenty first century (Introduction to Romanticism. 2010). Thus in comparison with the preceding age of reason of neoclassicism, romantic age ushered in imagination as the supreme faculty of the mind as compared with reasoning ability. This indicates revolution in the field of art too.  The importance given to the individual with the success of the French Revolution is another cause of the importance attributed to the individual in the movement itself.  It began as a revolution against the social order and religion of the times (Romanticism (1790-1850).).

Thesis statement  
The spirit of the Romantic age did have a great influence on the poems and works of art during that period.

Nature
The first revolution came in the field of Religion.  Wordsworth and most of his contemporaries were Pantheists, as compared with the precepts of Christian tenets.  They tried to see God in Nature.  His Lucy Gray Poems, Daffodils, The solitary Reaper etc., resonate with the wonderful descriptions of Nature.  William Blake, Shelley, John Keats, the line of Nature lovers is unending.  Analyzing a few lines from Wordsworths Daffodils

Continuous as the stars that shineAnd twinkle on the milky way,They stretched in never-ending lineAlong the margin of a bayTen thousand saw I at a glance,Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

Nature is in full bloom in these lines.  The poet dreaming comes upon the beautiful sight of thousands of golden daffodils dancing.  In simplicity, which was the hallmark of the age, the poet pours out his hearts melody.  And we feel that our heart profound, is overflowing with the sound as in The solitary reaper.  When Keats sings that he is sinking Lethe-wards, the only sound that takes him to the brink of eternity is the sound of the nightingale.

Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,But being too happy in thine happiness,--That thou, light-winged Dryad of the treesIn some melodious plotOf beechen green, and shadows numberless,Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

A bigger celebration of Nature cannot be seen even in the whole of English Language.  The bird singing of summer, in a garden of green and the poet happy and dreamy, almost a waking dream, which was again a reaction to the reality mania of the previous age, akin to the contemporary romantic period.  The adoration and enjoyment of Nature was a revered practice to the bards of the Romantic age.

Individualism

Unlike the previous age, the individual came to be given much importance. In contrast with Neoclassicism, the hero was the individual, his emotions and his experience. Shelley with his indomitable sense of the Romantic had argued that Satan was the real hero of John Miltons Paradise Lost. The best examples are poets like William Blake and Wordsworth.

Blake was an artist-poet.  He witnessed Englands war with France. His innocence matured to his lifes experience.  And in art his Songs of innocence gave way to the Songs of experience. In the Songs of Innocence he finds that God is meek as a lamb and sings

Little Lamb, who made thee Dost thou know who made thee Gave thee life, and bid thee feed, By the stream and oer the mead Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing, woolly, bright Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice Little Lamb, who made thee Dost thou know who made thee

But,

Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry

Was his exclamation in his songs of experience  Because he lived at the end of a century, within a period of wars and Revolutions, sick of the hypocrisy of the ruling class, he believed in prophecies that would come to success.  Blake is a fine example of the influence of the spirit of the age on the creative genius of the times. His experience taught his to approach the age with a more fearful reverence (Biography of William Blake.).

Another important aspect is the celebration of childhood which was adopted mainly from the folklore which formed the cradle of Romanticism.

My heart leaps up when I beholdA Rainbow in the skySo was it when my life beganSo is it now I am a manSo be it when I shall grow old,Or let me dieThe Child is father of the manAnd I wish my days to beBound each to each by natural piety.

While celebrating the rainbow, the poet celebrates childhood, and declares that child is the Father of man thought.  Famous for many generations now, this in itself is a fantastic proof of the influence of Romanticism as well as the pantheistic traditions followed during the times of Wordsworth. Thus we find that the individualism and the celebration of childhood influenced the sensitive artist to a great extent.

Emotions as opposed to logical reasoning

The human emotions, intuitions, instincts and feelings were given equal footing with purely logical reasoning.  At this the focus of poetry shifted towards poems becoming a spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions.  Thus when we turn towards the literary giants ruling the Romantic era, our revering eyes fall upon the majesty of Shelley crying out in agony with the West Wind.
I fall upon thorns of life, I bleed.  The chains of self-pity and severe mental pain find an echo in every poetic heart of that period and to some extent those of today.  The poet identifies himself with the West wind

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowedOne too like thee tameless, and swift, and proud.

We find the creative genius bending to the similarity and identifying himself with the great and powerful phenomenon such as the west wind.  The waves of philosophy that had preceded the era had left nothing but a sense of emptiness in the hearts of the intelligent and they find the ultimate freedom for their emotions and their search for beauty in singing to Nature and giving a free rein to their emotions. Going back to Keats,

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and diesWhere but to think is to be full of sorrowAnd leaden-eyed despairs,Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

The fickleness of common things of this world makes the poet sing about the freedom and the eternal happiness that belongs to the lot of the bird.  So he is happy for the bird and wants o drink a beaker full of the warm south and with the bird fades away into the forest dim.   The way emotions run rampant in the poems those times cannot have been imagined during the neoclassical age.

Conclusion

As compared with the preceding age, the awareness of Nature is more evident during the Romantic times. Taking its flight from William Blake and Robert Burns in England, Goethe and Schiller in Germany, it spread through literary as well as works of art throughout Europe and later to America.  It coincides with the age of revolutions.  American and French revolutions which happened ushered in an age of upheaval in political economic and social traditions. The revolutionary aspect followed the genius to their field of work.  This influence gave rise to the fantastic poetic outputs of the times.  So we are forced to agree that the influence of the age is actually felt in the poems of the prominent writers of those times (Barzun.). If we can analyze the romantic poems of shelly, Wordsworth, Keats, Byron etc, we can understand that the romantic mind is always affected by inferiority complex. Moreover romanticism has an imperialistic mood which arises from the feeling that one persons activities are associated with a celestial alliance. Moreover a romantic mind is always a heart which is opposed to its head (Abrams.).