Romanticism Group

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sanjib
sanjib
Student
College - Senior

What are the characteristic features of poetry during the Romantic Movement? 

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Posted by sanjib on Sunday December 28, 2008 at 3:15 AM and tagged with romantic poetry characteristics, romanticism.

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  1. troutmiller Teacher
    High School - 12th Grade

    eNotes Editor

    The Romantic movement began somewhere near the end of the 18th century in Western Europe and lasted well into the first half of the 19th century.  In part, the movement was a rebellion in response to the Enlightenment of the century prior, which focused on the more scientific and rational thought.  Characteristics of Romantic literature emphasize passion, emotion, and nature.  Romantic poetry was often written in common everyday language for all to relate, not just the upper class.  Nature was a focus of many famous poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge.  Wordsworth was known as the "father of English Romanticism."  Any of his works can support the focus of nature.  Robert Burns uses his Scottish dialect to support the "common everyday language" of the era.  William Blake supports the emphasis of emotion in his Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience.

    Sources:
    http://www.enotes.com/romanticism

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    Posted by troutmiller on Sunday December 28, 2008 at 1:39 PM

  2. lit24
    lit24 Teacher
    Doctorate

    eNotes Editor

    Literary critics consider 1798, the year when Wordsworth and Coleridge published their "Lyrical Ballads," to mark the beginning of the English Romantic Movement. However, its actual beginnings date back to the poetry of Gray, Collins, Blake and Burns who are regaded as 'Transition Poets' who lived and wrote at the end of the Neo-Classical Age. Critical opinion is divided as to when the Romantic Movement actually came to an end; infact, some critics consider the Victorian age to be a continuation of the Romantic Age and that the English Romantic Age extended till the beginning of the Modern Age in the twentieth century. The characteristic features of English Romantic poetry are:

    1. Love and worship of Nature and dislike for the urban life.

    2. Love for the Medieval Age.

    3. Love for the supernatural and the mystical.

    4. Poetry came to be regarded as the spontaneous expression of the poet's own subjective feelings and did not conform to the poetic conventions of classical doctrines.

    5.Completely abandoned the 'Heroic  Couplet' and substituted it with simpler verse forms like the ballads which belonged to the English rural Folk. In fact the 'Ballad Revival' is said to have sparked off the English Romantic Movememnt.

    6. The 'poetic diction' of the Neo-Classical Age was completely  done away with and the language of the ordinary people became the language of Romantic poetry.

    7. The subjects of Romantic poetry were often ordinary people:"The Idiot Boy."

    Sources:
    http://www.enotes.com/romanticism/essays-criticism
    http://www.enotes.com/romanticism/style
    http://www.enotes.com/romanticism/themes

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    Posted by lit24 on Sunday December 28, 2008 at 7:12 PM