Romantic poetry
Romantic poetry is the poetry of the Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. It involved a reaction against prevailing Neoclassical ideas of the 18th century, and lasted approximately from 1800 to 1850. Romantic poets rebelled against the style of poetry from the eighteenth century which was based around epics, odes, satires, elegies, epistles and songs.
English
In early-19th-century England, the poet William Wordsworth defined his and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's innovative poetry in his new Preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads:I have said before that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin in emotion recollected in tranquility: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquility gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.
The poems of Lyrical Ballads intentionally re-imagined the way poetry should sound: "By fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men," Wordsworth and his English contemporaries, such as Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and William Blake, wrote poetry that was meant to boil up from serious, contemplative reflection over the interaction of humans with their environment. Although many stress the notion of spontaneity in Romantic poetry, the movement was still greatly concerned with the difficulty of composition and of translating these emotions into poetic form. Indeed, Coleridge, in his essay On Poesy or Art, sees art as "the mediatress between, and reconciler of nature and man". Such an attitude reflects what might be called the dominant theme of English Romantic poetry: the filtering of natural emotion through the human mind in order to create meaning.Image:Karel Hynek Macha statue.jpeg|thumb|280px|In the Western cultural context, romanticism substantially contributed to the idea of what a real poet should look like. An idealized statue of a Czech man Karel Hynek Mácha represents him as a slim, tender and perhaps unhealthy boy. However, he had in reality a strong, robust and muscular body. He was the head of the Romantic Poetry Age or the Age of Romantic Poetry.
Characteristics of English romantic poetry
The Sublime
The Sublime is considered one of the most important concepts in Romantic poetry. In literature, it refers to use of language and description that excites thoughts and emotions beyond ordinary experience. Although it is often associated with grandeur, the sublime may also refer to the grotesque or other extraordinary experiences that "take us beyond ourselves."The literary concept of the sublime became important in the eighteenth century. It is associated with the 1757 treatise by Edmund Burke, though it has earlier roots. The idea of the sublime was taken up by Immanuel Kant and the Romantic poets including especially William Wordsworth.
Reaction against neoclassicism
Romantic poetry contrasts with Neoclassical poetry, which was the product of intellect and reason, while Romantic poetry is more the product of emotion. Romantic poetry at the beginning of the nineteenth century was a reaction against the set standards, conventions of eighteenth-century poetry. According to William J. Long, "he Romantic movement was marked, and is always marked, by a strong reaction and protest against the bondage of rule and custom which in science and theology as well as literature, generally tend to fetter the free human spirit."Imagination
Belief in the importance of the imagination is a distinctive feature of romantic poets such as John Keats, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and P. B. Shelley, unlike the neoclassical poets. Keats said, "I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination- What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth." For Wordsworth and William Blake, as well as Victor Hugo and Alessandro Manzoni, the imagination is a spiritual force, is related to morality, and they believed that literature, especially poetry, could improve the world. The secret of great art, Blake claimed, is the capacity to imagine. To define imagination, in his poem "Auguries of Innocence", Blake said:Nature poetry
Love for nature is another important feature of Romantic poetry, as a source of inspiration. This poetry involves a relationship with external nature and places, and a belief in pantheism. However, the Romantic poets differed in their views about nature. Wordsworth recognized nature as a living thing, teacher, god, and everything. These feelings are fully developed and expressed in his epic poem The Prelude. In his poem "The Tables Turned" he writes:Shelley was another nature poet, who believed that nature is a living thing and there is a union between nature and man. Wordsworth approaches nature philosophically, while Shelley emphasizes the intellect. John Keats was another lover of nature, but Coleridge differs from other Romantic poets of his age, in that he has a realistic perspective on nature. He believes that nature is not the source of joy and pleasure, but rather that people's reactions to it depend on their mood and disposition. Coleridge believed that joy does not come from external nature, but that it emanates from the human heart.
Melancholy
Melancholy occupies a prominent place in romantic poetry, and is an important source of inspiration for the Romantic poets. In '"Ode to a Nightingale", Keats wrote:Medievalism
Romantic poetry was attracted to nostalgia, and medievalism is another important characteristic of romantic poetry, especially in the works of John Keats, for example, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, and Coleridge. They were attracted to exotic, remote and obscure places, and so they were more attracted to Middle Ages than to their own age. Medieval Englishman Richard Rolle has been viewed as an early romantic writer with poems such as The Fire of Love.Hellenism
The world of classical Greece was important to the Romantics. John Keats' poetry is full of allusions to the art, literature and culture of Greece, as for example in "Ode on a Grecian Urn".Supernaturalism
Most of the romantic poets used supernatural elements in their poetry. Samuel Taylor Coleridge is the leading romantic poet in this regard, and "Kubla Khan" is full of supernatural elements.Subjectivity
Romantic poetry is the poetry of sentiments, emotions and imagination. Romantic poetry opposed the objectivity of neoclassical poetry. Neoclassical poets avoided describing their personal emotions in their poetry, unlike the Romantics.France
from the first half of the century was dominated by Romanticism, which is associated with such authors as Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, père, François-René de Chateaubriand, Alphonse de Lamartine, Gérard de Nerval, Charles Nodier, Alfred de Musset, Théophile Gautier and Alfred de Vigny. Their influence was felt in theatre, poetry, prose fiction. In a 1983 book about the 16th century Catholic poet Jean de La Ceppède, English poet Keith Bosley wrote that Agrippa d'Aubigné, "the epic poet of the Protestant cause", during the French Wars of Religion, "was forgotten until the Romantics rediscovered him."The effect of the romantic movement would continue to be felt in the latter half of the 19th century in diverse literary developments, such as "realism", "symbolism", and the so-called fin de siècle "decadent" movement.
Germany
was the dominant intellectual movement in the philosophy, the arts, and the culture of German-speaking countries in the late-18th and early 19th centuries. Compared to English Romanticism, German Romanticism developed relatively late, and, in the early years, coincided with Weimar Classicism ; in contrast to the seriousness of English Romanticism, the German variety of Romanticism notably valued wit, humour, and beauty.Sturm und Drang, literally "Storm and Drive", "Storm and Urge", though conventionally translated as "Storm and Stress") is a proto-Romantic movement in German literature and music that took place from the late 1760s to the early 1780s, in which individual subjectivity and, in particular, extremes of emotion were given free expression in reaction to the perceived constraints of rationalism imposed by the Enlightenment and associated aesthetic movements. The period is named for Friedrich Maximilian Klinger's play Sturm und Drang, which was first performed in 1777.
The philosopher Johann Georg Hamann is considered to be the ideologue of Sturm und Drang, with Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, H. L. Wagner and Friedrich Maximilian Klinger also significant figures. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was also a notable proponent of the movement, though he and Friedrich Schiller ended their period of association with it by initiating what would become Weimar Classicism.
Jena Romanticism
– also the Jena Romantics or Early Romanticism – is the first phase of Romanticism in German literature represented by the work of a group centered in Jena from about 1798 to 1804, notably Friedrich Schlegel, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Novalis, Ludwig Tieck, and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. These thinkers were primarily concerned with the problems posed by Immanuel Kant in the Critique of Judgment and what was seen as the failure of the Analytic of the Sublime to accomplish the task set before it: bridging the gap between pure and practical reason. In a different vein, Friedrich Hölderlin and Heinrich von Kleist also grappled with similar philosophical issues in a manner different from the Jena circle.Heidelberg Romanticism
Heidelberg was the centre of the epoch of Romantik in Germany. The phase after Jena Romanticism is often called Heidelberg Romanticism. There was a famous circle of poets, the Heidelberg Romantics, such as Joseph von Eichendorff, Johann Joseph von Görres, Ludwig Achim von Arnim, and Clemens Brentano. A relic of Romanticism is the Philosophers' Walk, a scenic walking path on the nearby Heiligenberg, overlooking Heidelberg.The Romantik epoch of German philosophy and literature, was described as a movement against classical and realistic theories of literature, a contrast to the rationality of the Age of Enlightenment. It elevated medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived to be from the medieval period. It also emphasized folk art, nature and an epistemology based on nature, which included human activity conditioned by nature in the form of language, custom and usage.