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ISSN: 2347-7474 International Journal Advances in Social Science and Humanities Available online at: www.ijassh.com CASE STUDY Romanticism in Europe -A Study of Romantic Poets with Special Reference to William Wordsworth’s the Lyrical Ballads Roshni Duhan* Teaching Assistant, IGNOU, Study Centre, Rohtak, India. Introduction Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and matter to form; romanticism subordinates form of intellectual movement that originated in Europe matter. Classicism stands for regimentation, toward the end of the 18th century. Various dates regulation, authority; Romanticism for are given for the Romantic period in British individuality, informality, freedom. literature, but here the publishing of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 is taken as the beginning, and the Nature of Romanticism crowning of Queen Victoria in 1837 as its end, even though, for example, William Wordsworth Defining the nature of Romanticism may be lived until 1850 and both Robert Burns and approached from the starting point of the primary William Blake published before 1798. The writers importance of the free expression of the feelings of of this period, however, "did not think of the artist. The importance the Romantics placed themselves as 'Romantics'" and the term was first on emotion is summed up in the remark of the used by critics of the Victorian period. German painter Caspar David Friedrich that "the Romanticism arrived later in other parts of the artist's feeling is his law". To William English-speaking world. William Blake is Wordsworth, poetry should begin as "the considered a seminal figure in the history of both spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings," which the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. the poet then "recollect[s] in tranquility," evoking The Romantic Movement at the end of the 18th a new but corresponding emotion the poet can century and the beginning of the 19th century was then mould into art [1]. In order to express these a deliberate and sweeping revolt against the feelings, it was considered that the content of the literacy principles of the Age of Reason. Just as art needed to come from the imagination of the Dryden and Pope had rejected the romantic artist, with as little interference as possible from tradition of the Elizabethans as crude and "artificial" rules dictating what a work should irregular and had adopted classical or more consist of. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others correctly neo-classical principles of French believed there were natural laws which the literature in their writings, so now Wordsworth imagination, at least of a good creative artist, and Coleridge, in their turn, rejected the neo- would unconsciously follow through artistic classical principles in favour of the romantic. In inspiration if left alone to do so. As well as rules, doing so they were simply reverting to the the influence of models from other works was Elizabethan or the first romantic age in English considered to impede the creator's own literature. Now what is it that distinguishes imagination, so that originality was essential. The Classic from Romantic? Simply put classical concept of the genius, or artist who was able to writing is characterized by reason or produce his own original work through this commonsense in matter, expressed in a restrained process of "creation from nothingness", is key to style-style, that is to say, which has order, Romanticism, and to be derivative was the worst proportion, and finish. Romantic writing, on the sin.[2-3] This idea is often called "romantic other hand, is characterized by Imagination in originality"[4]. Not essential to Romanticism, but matter, expressed in a style more or less free of so widespread as to be normative, was a strong restraint-a style, that is to say, which may be belief and interest in the importance of nature. simple or grand, picturesque or passionate, However, this is particularly in the effect of depending on the mood or temperament of the nature upon the artist when he is surrounded by writer. In other words, classicism subordinates it, preferably alone. In contrast to the usually Roshni Duhan | February 2015 | Vol.3 | Issue 2 |31-36 31 Available online at: www.ijassh.com very social art of the Enlightenment, Romantics 1834), Robert Southey (1774–1843) and journalist were distrustful of the human world, and tended Thomas de Quincey (1785–1859). However, at the to believe that a close connection with nature was time Walter Scott (1771–1832) was the most mentally and morally healthy. Romantic art famous poet. Scott achieved immediate success addressed its audiences with what was intended with his long narrative poem The Lay of the Last to be felt as the personal voice of the artist. So, in Minstrel in 1805, followed by the full epic poem literature, "much of romantic poetry invited the Marmion in 1808. The romanticism of Blake reader to identify the protagonists with the poets consists in the importance he attached to themselves". According to Isaiah Berlin, imagination, in his mysticism and symbolism, in Romanticism embodied "a new and restless spirit, his love of liberty, in his humanitarian seeking violently to burst through old and sympathies, in his idealization of childhood, in the cramping forms, a nervous preoccupation with pastoral setting of many of his poems, and in his perpetually changing inner states of lyricism. consciousness, a longing for the unbounded and the indefinable, for perpetual movement and “Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold! change, an effort to return to the forgotten Bring me my chariot of fire” sources of life, a passionate effort at self-assertion both individual and collective, a search after The above lines from, ‘Jerusalem’ amply justifies means of expressing an unappeasable yearning the point. “Poetry fettered”, said Blake, “fetters for unattainable goals." the human race”. In theory as well as practice, the Romantic Movement began with the smashing of Robert Burns (1759–1796) was a pioneer of the fetters. In his enthusiastic rage, Blake condemned Romantic movement and after his death he the verse-forms which had become traditional. He became a cultural icon in Scotland. As well as poured scorn upon all that he associated with writing poems, Burns also collected folk songs classicism in art and in criticism. from across Scotland, often revising or adapting them. His Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect was published in 1786. Among poems and songs of Wordsworth (1170-1850). Son of a lawyer and Burns that remain well known across the world land agent to Lord Londsdale, William are, "Auld Lang Syne", "A Red, Red Rose", "A Wordsworth was born April 7, 1770 at Cocker – Man's A Man for A' That", "To a Louse", "To a mouth in the Cumberland highlands. The boy’s Mouse", "The Battle of Sherramuir", "Tam o' parents died early, hi mother when he was eight Shanter" and "Ae Fond Kiss". and father when he was fourteen. He received his school education at the neighbouring village of The poet, painter, and printmaker William Hawkshed. His school days were very happy, Blake (1757–1827) was one of other early spent as they were in great freedom of playing Romantic poets. Largely unrecognised during his and reading. At seventeen he entered St. John’s lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure College, Cambridge. In his third vacation he went in the history of the poetry and visual arts of with a friend on a walking tour of France. After the Romantic Age. His prophetic poetry has been taking his degree in 1791 he again went to France said to form "what is in proportion to its merits where he stayed for a year. Like so many of his the least read body of poetry in the English generation he was very enthusiastic about the language"[5] but is now considered a seminal French Revolution, but was cured of this later [6]. figure in the history of both the poetry and visual In 1797 and 1798 he lived in close association arts of the Romantic Age. Considered mad by with Coleridge, and the result of this friendship contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, Blake was the Lyrical Ballads. After the publication of is held in high regard by later critics for his this book, Wordsworth, his sister Dorothy, and expressiveness and creativity, and for the Coleridge visited Germany. Returning home in philosophical and mystical undercurrents within 1799 he settled with his sister at Grasmere in the his work. Among his most important works are lake district, published the second volume of the Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Lyrical Ballads in 1800, and in 1802 married his Experience (1794) "and profound and difficult cousin Mary Hutchinson. 'prophecies' " such as Visions of the Daughters of The Lyrical Ballads Albion (1793), The First Book of Urizen (1794) and Milton (1804). After Blake, among the The book that marks the beginning of the earliest Romantics were the Lake Poets, a small Romantic Movement was the Lyrical Ballads [7] group of friends, including William Wordsworth produced jointly by Wordsworth and Coleridge (1770–1850), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772– and published in 1798. It opens with Coleridge Roshni Duhan | February 2015 | Vol.3 | Issue 2 |31-36 32 Available online at: www.ijassh.com Rime of Ancient Mariner and closes with power, of what Coleridge called “the shaping Wordsworth’s Lines written above Tintern Abbey. spirit of imagination.” The Ancient Mariner and the Tintern Abbey, however, may be said to contain in germ, all the Coleridge (1772 – 1834). Samuel Taylor Coleridge poetry of the 19th century. Describing the origin of was born in the small Devonshire town of Ottery the Lyrical Ballads in his Biographia Literaria St. Mary, was educated at Christ’s Hospital (the Coleridge points out the kinds of poetry the two famous charity school in Landon) and Jesus poets had aimed at.