THE DEVELOPMENT AND EVOLUTION OF ENGLISH AND FRENCH ROMANTIC POETRY A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of The School of Continuing Studies and of The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Liberal Studies By Brian Preslopsky, M.A. Georgetown University Washington, D.C. November 5, 2012 THE DEVELOPMENT AND EVOLUTION OF ENGLISH AND FRENCH ROMANTIC POETRY Brian Preslopsky, M.A. MALS Mentor: Michael Collins, Ph.D. ABSTRACT The Romantic Movement in the arts is often described as a “revolution.” However, artistic movements are inevitable progressions out of the periods preceding them, at first rising slowly, then accelerating, peaking, and eventually declining. Art also moves through space, following paths across national borders. When we trace the path through the times and places of Romanticism, the idea of evolution rather than revolution becomes more apparent. This thesis investigates the development and evolution of French and English Romantic poetry. France and England have a special bond of history, political interference, conflict, adventure, and luck that deserve as much credit as artistic genius for the literary developments in both countries. Their artists continually form fast friendships and end up teaching and assisting each other in spite of the relations of their governments. I have tracked the evolution of Romantic poetry in these two countries beginning with Shakespeare. I follow literature through the political and sociological changes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the beginning and peak of English Romantic poetry. French Romantic poetry developed after English Romantic poetry was already in decline, and I explore how the English poets influenced the French who were a generation and a country removed. ii The Romantic Movement coincided with the rapid and far-reaching sociological changes swayed and, as the pace of industrialization and democratization increased, eventually overtook this style of art. As the world changed, so did the styles, themes, and tones of Romantic poetry, although within each country, Romantic poetry encompassed a broad range of poems. I have attempted to highlight and explain these similarities and differences in English and French Romantic poetry by examining prominent themes, ideas about inspiration and imagination, and poetic form. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION AND APPROACH ....................................................... 1 CHAPTER 2. SHAKESPEARE AND CLASSICISM ..................................................... 15 The Beginnings and Shakespeare .................................................................................. 15 The Novel ...................................................................................................................... 27 CHAPTER 3. ROUSSEAU THROUGH ENGLISH ROMANTICISM .......................... 35 Rousseau........................................................................................................................ 35 Nature ............................................................................................................................ 39 The French Revolution .................................................................................................. 43 Lyrical Ballads .............................................................................................................. 47 CHAPTER 4. POST-REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE ..................................................... 50 Chateaubriand................................................................................................................ 50 Napoleon ....................................................................................................................... 54 At Last, French Romantic Poetry .................................................................................. 58 Baudelaire...................................................................................................................... 62 CHAPTER 5. NATURE AND LOVE .............................................................................. 64 CHAPTER 6. ROLE OF THE POET ............................................................................... 79 Poetic Style .................................................................................................................... 79 Poets and the Public ...................................................................................................... 86 Inspiration and Imagination .......................................................................................... 92 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................. 97 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................. 99 iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION AND APPROACH The Romantic Movement in the arts is often described as a “revolution.” Major artistic movements often appear this way in hindsight, as if certain artists and their works suddenly appeared out of nowhere, anachronisms ahead of their time that took root and transformed culture, pulling it into their moment. These ideas may arise from the tendency to venerate the artist, or the constraints of time and energy that require us to be discriminating about which works we choose as representatives of an era, supposedly the best and most important, while we ignore lesser work, the majority. Finch and Peers, however, aptly describe the progress of literature as a sine wave, a continuous line with crests and troughs of equal height. 1 New artistic movements appear revolutionary when we look from peak to peak, but they are inevitable progressions out of the periods preceding them, at first rising slowly, then accelerating, peaking, then eventually declining, reaching bottom, and ascending again as something new. Th éophile Gautier writes “poetry had been lost and was now found,” 2 a claim not of invention, but of restoration. Artistic movements are different now, but that basic continuous curve remains. What has changed is the frequency of the waves: Romanticism’s development, peak, and decline occurred over at least a century, and now artistic movements have lifespans measured in decades. We are as chronologically distant from the Romantics as 1 M. B. Finch and E. Allison Peers, The Origins of French Romanticism (London: Constable and Company, 1920), xi. 2 Théophile Gautier, A History of Romanticism , trans. F. C. de Sumichrast (New York: Howard Fertig, 1988), 16. 1 they were from Shakespeare, but we are millennia away in content. The seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries seemed like yesterday to the Romantics. Art also moves through space, following paths across national borders, like a person making a grand, meandering tour of Europe, and similarly, does not necessarily devote the same amount of time and attention to every place it visits. When we trace the path through the times and places that were described as “Romantic,” the idea of evolution rather than revolution becomes more apparent. For example, the French Romantic writers seem to have reached a consensus that one of their most important artistic forefathers was an English poet and playwright from over two centuries earlier, William Shakespeare, who had been held up at the border, so to speak, until a more liberal government came to power. English and French poets themselves acknowledge a debt to Milton, and Bloom and others argue more forcefully that Edmund Spenser’s “The Faerie Queen” and Milton’s “Paradise Lost” loom over English Romantic poetry. 3 Not all Romantic poets remained faithful adherents to Romanticism, some even renouncing it. Moreover, French Romantic poetry, as will be explained later, begins in the late 1820s, when the most prominent English Romantic poets were already dead or, like Wordsworth and Coleridge, were writing little poetry. This thesis will investigate the development and evolution of French and English Romantic poetry. My choice of French and English poetry is not capricious, and as my research has shown, this seems to be an obvious and interesting topic undertaken by 3 Peter Mortensen, British Romanticism and Continental Influences: Writing in an Age of Europhobia (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 4. 2 many talented literary critics before me, including, in fact, many Romantic French and English poets. Poetry is of particular interest for several reasons. Although poetry itself is ancient, and once formed the basis of how literary traditions were transmitted, orally, during the nineteenth century it moved from a public to a more private form of expression, where it remains today. Novelists and playwrights are generally mindful of audiences (no matter how severely they challenge them), but poetry, as I will demonstrate, reached a point during the Romantic era where it could liberate itself from the concerns of audience. Most poets also wrote plays, novels, or essays, but this new freedom in poetry allowed them most clearly and authentically to express their aesthetics and emotions. Poetry, although swayed by artistic movements, is less constrained by socioeconomics and can flourish in many types of conditions. Drama requires theaters, buildings or physical spaces, and novels are a commodity of a vast market enterprise comprising