The Funeral of Shelley by Louis Edouard Fournier, 1889. Pictured in the center are, from left, Trelawny, Hunt and Byron.
Romantic poetry is poetry written under the impact of Romanticism. Romanticism was a philosophical, literary, artistic and cultural era[1] which began in the mid/late-1700s[2] as a reaction against the prevailing Enlightenment ideals of the day. Romantics favoured more natural, emotional and personal artistic themes.[3][4] Romanticism influenced all the arts, perhaps especially poetry.
In England
The roots of romanticism in poetry go back to the time of Alexander Pope (1688–1744).[5] Early pioneers include Joseph Warton (headmaster at Winchester College) and his brother Thomas Warton, professor of Poetry at Oxford University.[5] Joseph maintained that invention and imagination were the chief qualities of a poet. The "poet's poet" Thomas Chatterton is generally considered to be the first Romantic poet in English.[6] The Scottish poet James Macpherson influenced the early development of Romanticism with the international success of his Ossian cycle of poems published in 1762, inspiring both Goethe and the young Walter Scott.
By the dawn of the 19th century, poets such as William Wordsworth were actively engaged in trying to create a new kind of poetry that emphasized intuition over reason and the pastoral over the urban, often eschewing consciously poetic language in an effort to use more common language. Wordsworth himself in the Preface to the second edition of his and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads(1800), declared that "all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” -- though he adds in the same sentence: Poems to which any value can be attached, were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility had also thought long and deeply.”[7] Wordsworth also emphasizes the importance of the use of meter in poetry (which he views as one of the key features that differentiates verse from prose).[8]
Although many people seize unfairly upon the notion of spontaneity in Romantic Poetry, one must realize that the movement was still greatly concerned with the pain of composition, of translating these emotive responses into the form of Poetry. Indeed, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, another prominent Romantic poet and critic in his On Poesy or Art sees art as “the mediatress between, and reconciler of nature and man”.[9] Such an attitude reflects what might be called the dominant theme of Romantic Poetry: the filtering of natural emotion through the human mind in order to create art, coupled with an awareness of the duality created by such a process. For some critics, the term establishes an artificial context for disparate work and removing that work from its real historical context" at the expense of equally valid themes (particularly those related to politics.)[10]
Romantic canon
The six most well-known Romantic poets are, in order of birth, and with an example of their work:
- William Blake - Songs of Innocence and of Experience
- William Wordsworth - The Prelude
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Rime of the Ancient Mariner
- George Gordon, Lord Byron - Don Juan, "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"
- Percy Bysshe Shelley - Prometheus Unbound "Adonais" "Ode to the West Wind " "Ozymandias "
- John Keats - Great Odes "Hyperion," "Endymion"
Although chronologically earliest among these writers, William Blake was a relatively late addition to the list; prior to the 1970s, romanticism was known for its "Big Five."[11]
Notable female poets
Although the "Big Six" male poets remain the principal figures in English romantic literature, some of the best-regarded poets of the time were in fact women.[12] Notable female poets include: Mary Shelley, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Anna Seward, Charlotte Turner Smith, Mary Robinson, Hannah More and Joanna Baillie.
Minor Romantic poets
Other Romantic poets in England include Robert Southey, Charles Lamb, Walter Savage Landor, Ebenezer Elliott, James Henry Leigh Hunt , Thomas Chatterton, John Clare, Henry Kirke White, George Crabbe, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Bryan Waller Procter, and Thomas Hood,
Outside England
Major Romantic poets
Writing in English
- Canada: Charles Sangster, Charles G.D. Roberts, Archibald Lampman , Bliss Carman
- Ireland: Thomas Moore
- Scotland: Robert Burns, Joanna Baillie, Walter Scott, James Macpherson
- United States: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe
Writing in another language
- Albania; Naim Frashëri, Sami Frashëri, Jeronim De Rada
- Brazil: Álvares de Azevedo, Castro Alves, Casimiro de Abreu, Gonçalves Dias
- Bulgaria: Hristo Botev
- Czech Republic: Karel Hynek Macha
- Denmark: Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig, Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger, Hans Christian Andersen
- France: Alphonse de Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Théophile Gautier, Alfred de Musset, Charles Baudelaire
- Georgia: Nikoloz Baratashvili
- Germany: Novalis, Friedrich Hölderlin, Heinrich von Kleist, Clemens Brentano, Joseph von Eichendorff, Achim von Arnim
- Hungary: Sándor Petőfi
- India: Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Satyendranath Dutta
- Italy: Giacomo Leopardi, Ugo Foscolo, Alessandro Manzoni
- Montenegro: Petar II Petrović Njegoš
- Poland: Three Bards (Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki, Zygmunt Krasiński), Cyprian Kamil Norwid
- Portugal: Alexandre Herculano, Almeida Garrett, António Feliciano de Castilho
- Romania: Mihai Eminescu
- Russia: Golden Age of Russian Poetry – Aleksandr Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Fyodor Tyutchev, Evgeny Baratynsky, Vasily Zhukovsky, Konstantin Batyushkov
- Serbia: Branko Radičević, Đura Jakšić, Laza Kostić, Jovan Jovanović Zmaj
- Slovakia: Janko Kráľ
- Slovenia: France Prešeren
- Spain: Gustavo Adolfo Becquer, José de Espronceda, Rosalía de Castro, José Zorrilla, Jacint Verdaguer
- Ukraine: Taras Shevchenko
Minor Romantic poets
Writing in English
- Canada: William Wilfred Campbell, Charles Sangster, Francis Sherman
- Ireland: James Clarence Mangan, Thomas Davis
- Scotland: William Knox, James Hogg, James Montgomery, Anne Lindsay
- United States: William Cullen Bryant, Joseph Rodman Drake, John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Writing in another language
- Brazil: Qorpo Santo, Sousandrade
- France: Alfred de Vigny, Gérard de Nerval, Leconte de Lisle, Aloysius Bertrand
- Georgia: Alexander Chavchavadze, Grigol Orbeliani, Vakhtang Orbeliani
- Germany: Gottfried August Bürger, Ludwig Tieck
- Hungary: Mihály Vörösmarty
- Iceland: Jónas Hallgrímsson
- Italy: Silvio Pellico
- India: Suman Hossain
- Nepal: Bhuwan Thapaliya
- Norway: Henrik Arnold Wergeland, Johan Sebastian Cammermeyer Welhaven
- Poland: Kornel Ujejski, Antoni Malczewski, Tomasz Zan, Wincenty Pol, Seweryn Goszczyński, Władysław Syrokomla, Kazimierz Brodziński
- Portugal: Almeida Garrett, Alexandre Herculano
- Russia: Anton Delvig, Wilhelm Küchelbecker, Pyotr Olenin, Nikolay Gnedich
- Serbia: Sima Milutinović Sarajlija
- Spain: Mariano José de Larra, Ramón de Campoamor
- Sweden: Erik Johan Stagnelius
- Wales: Iolo Morganwg
See also
Notes
- ↑ http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/rom.html
- ↑ http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/romanticism.html
- ↑ http://www.uh.edu/engines/romanticism/introduction.html
- ↑ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/508675/Romanticism
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 John Keats. By Sidney Colvin, page 106. Elibron Classics
- ↑ Thomas Chatterton, Grevel Lindop, 1972, Fyffield Books, page 11
- ↑ Wordsworth, William. Preface, Lyrical Ballads, 1800, Gutenberg.org, Web, Oct. 22, 2011.
- ↑ Wordsworth, William. The Poetical Works of Wordsworth. Oxford University Press. London, 1960.
- ↑ Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. On Poesy or Art. Harvard Classics, 1914.
- ↑ Hume
- ↑ Wu, Duncan and David Miall (1994). Romanticism: An Anthology. London: Basil Blackwell, xxxvi.
- ↑ “The Romantic Period.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. D. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt, 8th Edition. New York: Norton, 2006.1.
External links
- "A Brief Guide to Romanticism" - Academy of American Poets
- Article on "The Romantic poets" on PoetSeers.
- British Romantic Era Poets
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