Introduction to The Romantic Period

'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive' (William Wordsworth, The Prelude) The dates of the Romantic period of literature are not precise and the term 'romantic' was itself not widely used until after the period in question. Conventionally, the period begins in 1798, which saw the publication by Wordsworth and Coleridge of their Lyrical Ballads and ends in 1832 a year which saw the death of Sir Walter Scott and the enactment by the parliament of the First Reform Bill. These years link literary and political events. The Romantic period was an era in which a literary revolution took place alongside social and economic revolutions. In some histories of literature, the Romantic period is called the 'Age of Revolutions'.

The Period was one of rapid change as the nation was transformed from an agricultural country to an industrial one. The laws of a free market, development by the economist Adam Smith in this book Wealth of Nations (1776), dominated peoples lives. At the same time, a shift in the balance of power took place. Power and wealth were gradually transformed from the landholding aristocracy to the large scale employes of modern industrial communities. An old population of rural farm labourers became a new class of urban industrial labourers. This new class came to be called the working class.

The Industrial Revolution created social change, unrest and eventually turbulence. Deep-rooted traditions rapidly overturned. Within a short period of time, the whole landscape of the country changed. In the countryside, the open fields and communally worked farms were 'enclosed'.The enclosure movement improved efficiency and enabled the increased animal farming necessary to feed a rapidly expanding population, but fewer labourers were required to work the land and that led to an exodus to the cities of large numbers of people seeking employment. Increasing mechanisation both on the land and in the industrial factories meant continuing high levels of unemployment. Workers in the rural areas could no longer graze the animals which they partly dependent for food and income. Acute poverty followed.

These developments literally altered the landscape of the country. Open fields were enclosed by hedges and walls; in the cities, smoking factory chimneys polluted the atmosphere; poor-quality house were built in large numbers and quickly became slums. The mental landscape also changed. The country was divided into those who owned property or land, who were rich, and those who did not -who were poor.

 The Industrial revolution paralleled revolutions in the political order. In fact, Britain was at war during most of the Romantic period, with a resultant political instability. Political movements in Britain were gradual, but in countries such as France and the United States political change was both more rapid and more radical.

A debate in Britain was, however, polarised between support for radical documents such as Tom Paines Rights of Man (1791), in which he called for greater Democracy in Britain and Edmund Burke's more conservative Reflection on the Revolution in France (1790). Later in the 1790s, more measured ideas are contained in the writings of William Godwin, an important influence on the poets Wordsworth and Shelley, who advocated a gradual evolution towards the removal of poverty and the equal distribution of all wealth.

However, as the French Revolution developed, support for it in Britain declined. There was violence, extremism and much bloodshed as sections of the old aristocracy were massacred as the members of new french republic fought among themselves and with other countries, and as Napoleon Bonaparte became emperor and then-dictator of France. In Britain, these events were witnessed with some dismay. In the prelude, a long autobiographical poem Wordsworth wrote that in the early years of the French Revolution 'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive'.

In terms of literary history, the publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 is seen as a landmark. The volume contains many of the best-known best Romantic poems. The second edition in 1800 contained a Preface in which Wordsworth discusses the theories of poetry which were to be so influential on many of his and Coleridge's contemporaries. The Preface represents a poetic manifesto which is very much in the spirit of the age.

The Romantic age in literature is often contrasted with the Classical or Augustan age which preceded it. The comparison is valuable, for it is not simply two different attitudes to literature which are being compared but two different ways of seeing and experiencing life.

There are further contrasts in the ways in which children are and represented in Classical and Romantic literature. For the Augustan writer, the child is only important because he or she will develop into an adult. For the Romantic writer, the child is holy pure and its proximity to God will only be corrupted by civilization. When Wordsworth wrote that 'the Child is father of the Man' he stressed that the adult learns from the experience of childhood.

The two ages may be contrasted in other ways the Classical writer looks outward to society, Romantic writers look inward to their own soul and to the life of the imagination, the Classical writer concentrates on what can be logically measured and rationally understood, Romantic writers are attracted to the irrational, mystical and supernatural world; the Classical writer is attracted to a social order in which everyone knows his place, Romantic writers celebrate the freedom of nature and of individual human experience. In fact, the writings of the Augustan age stress the way societies improve under careful regulation: Romantic literature is generally more critical of society and its injustices, questioning rather than affirming. exploring rather than defining. 

Contrasts between the Augustan and Romantic ages are helpful but there are always exceptions to such general contrasts. For example, eighteenth-century writers such as Gray. Collins and Cowper show a developing Romantic sensibility, and Romantic poets such as Byron were inspired by Augustan poetic models Romanticism was not a sudden, radical transformation, but grew our of Augustanism. Furthermore, English Romanticism contrasts with mainland European Romanticism which, for example, tends to be more politically motivated and philosophically radical.

One final introductory point can be made about the Romantic period. The English Romantic literature discussed in the following sections grew out of specific historical contexts. The Industrial Revolution led to an increasing regimentation of the individual. Small towns and villages, where knew their neighbours began to disappear. The writers of this time wanted to correct this imbalance by giving greater value to the individual consciousness. Their poetic revolution aimed at greater individual freedoms.

'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive' are words written by Wordsworth (in The Prelude) at what he felt to be the dawn of a new age. It was an age in which the uniqueness of the individual would be celebrated. It was a time of war, a time of ideals, a time of freedom, and of oppression. Its conflicts and contradictions breathed new life into literature and, in particular, into poetry.