Pre-Romanticism. In the second half of 18 th century there appeared the so-called Pre-Romanticism. It originated among the conservative groups of men as a reaction against Enlightenment and the

Pre-Romanticism. In the second half of 18 th century there appeared the so-called Pre-Romanticism. It originated among the conservative groups of men as a reaction against Enlightenment and the French revolution. Robert Burns and William Blake are the representatives of Pre-Romanticism.

Robert Burns (1759-1796). He was born in Scotland. His father was a poor farmer but a man who valued knowledge. It was from his father that Robert received his learning and his love for books. His mother had a beautiful voice and taught Robert old Scottish songs and ballads which he later turned into his best poems. Burns wrote his first verses when he was fifteen. Very soon his poems became popular among his friends. In 1785 he met a girl who became the great love of all his life and inspirer of his numerous lyrical verses. She had a wonderful voice and knew a lot of old melodies to which Burns composed his songs. In 1786 Burns published his first book under the title “Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect”. The book was a great success. He was invited to Edinburgh. He conquered the Edinburgh society by his wit and manners as much as by the poetry. There he was advised to write in Standard English on noble themes but he refused. He wanted to write poetry about the people and for the people, that’s why he wrote both in standard English and in Scottish dialect. While he was in Edinburgh, he got acquainted with some enthusiasts of Scottish songs and ballads and became engaged in collecting the treasures of the Scottish folklore. He travelled about Scotland collecting popular songs. The collection was entitled “The Scots Musical Museum” and included 160 songs. His prolific output includes thousands of songs and poems, the best known of which are “Auld Lang Syne” (“Old Times Past”), which is sung all over the English-speaking world on New Year’ Eve, and “My Heart’s in the Highlands”. His poetry was inspired by his deep love for his motherland. Its history and folklore. His poems are dedicated to the descriptions of beautiful Scotland’s nature; national struggle of the Scottish people for their liberation from English oppression and Scottish peasantry.

William Blake (1757-1827). William Blake had a very individual view of the world. His religious philosophy is seen through his works “Songs of Innocence” (1789), “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” (1790) and “Songs of Experience” (1794). His poems are simple but symbolic. For example, in his poems “The Tyger” and “The Lamb”, the tiger is the symbol of mystery, the lamb – the symbol of innocence. The lyrics in the “Songs of Innocence” are fresh, direct observations and show life as perceived by children. The poems in the “Songs of Experience” reflect a gloomier vision of the world, where evil has the upper hand over God. Innocence and experience are the two contrary states of the human soul which are shown in direct contrast in such poems as “The Lamb” and “The Tyger”. “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” develops Blake’s idea that without contraries there is no progression. The work includes aphorisms, anecdotes and proverbs. In “Prophetic Books”, a series of long symbolic poems which he started writing in 1789, Blake expresses his condemnation of 18 th-century political and social tyranny. The inspiration for these poems was Milton. The “Prophetic Books”, which contain some of his most powerful images, denounce authority in often abstruse language through a cast of imaginary mythological characters.

Romanticism. The Period of Romanticism began from the last decade of the 18 century and continued up to 1830s. Romanticism as a literary current can be regarded as a result of two historical events: 1) the Industrial Revolution in England and 2) the French Revolution of 1789. These two events had a great influence on the cultural life of the country. Romanticists were dissatisfied with the present state of things in their country. Some of the writers were revolutionary: they denied the existing order, called upon the people to struggle for a better future, shared the people’s desire for liberty and objected to colonial oppression. Such writers were George Gordon Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Others, though they had welcomed the French Revolution and the slogan of liberty, fraternity, later abandoned revolutionary ideas. They turned their attention to nature and simple problems of life. Among these writers were the poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others who formed the “Lake School”, called so because they all lived for a time in the beautiful Lake District in the north-west of England. They dedicated much of what they wrote to nature. Legends, tales, songs and ballads became part of the creative method of the romanticists.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850). In 1795 William Wordsworth met the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge who became his closest friend. This friendship had an influence on both poets. They discussed political issues, read, wrote, exchanged theories on poetry and made comments on each other’s work. In 1797 (1798) they published their best work “Lyrical Ballads”. Coleridge contributed 4 poems and Wordsworth 19 to the collection. The poem deals with “low” subjects – rural life, rustic characters and are written in simple and unelaborated expressions. The long preface, written by Wordsworth for the second edition (1800), is considered the manifesto for the Romantic movement. It includes such main ideas about poetry:

1) the language of poetry should be simple;

2) the subject of poetry should consist of incidents and situations from common life;

3) the poet’s imagination can reveal the inner truth of ordinary things, to which the mind is blind;

4) the poet is a man speaking to men. He uses his special gift to show other men the essence of things.

Many critics consider the long poem “The Prelude, published after his death in 1850 in 24 books, to be his greatest achievement. The poem describes the crucial experiences and stages of the poet’s life and is an introspective account of his emotional and spiritual development.

He was a great innovator. He found his greatest inspiration in nature, which he believed could elevate the human soul and exert a positive moral influence on human thoughts and feelings. He identified nature with God. His poetry celebrates the lives of simple rural people, whom he sees as more sincere than people living in cities. Children are also regarded as pure and innocent, uncorrupted by the evils of the world.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). While Wordsworth wrote poetry inspired by the simple things of everyday life, Coleridge turned to the past for mystery and wonders and took the readers into the fantastic world of the imagination. Wordsworth asked readers to enjoy his natural descriptions, Coleridge, on the other hand, asked them to let him lead them into mysterious, extraordinary and supernatural worlds. For his most famous poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” he chose the medieval ballad form. Here one can see the combination of ordinary experience with supernatural events, the use of powerful symbols and striking images which stimulate the reader’s imagination. One more famous poem of Coleridge is “Christabel”. The poem is a medieval romance of the supernatural, which includes many Gothic elements.

Though he is best known today for his poetry, Coleridge also turned his attention to literary criticism and in 1817 published “Biographia Literaria”, where he developed theories that had to be the introduction to a great philosophical work, which he never produced.

George Gordon Byron (1788-1824). Byron experimented with different literary genres, including poetry and drama.

Poems. Byron dealt with a great variety of themes in his poems. In “She Walks in Beauty” and “Ode on Venice” the poet celebrates the city’s beauty and laments its decay. “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” (1812) tells the story of a young disillusioned nobleman who travels to the places that Byron had visited. Harold is enchanted by the glorious past of the Mediterranean countries, reflected in different monuments; he admires the wonders of the natural world. The unfinished poem “Don Juan” (1818), which many critics consider his masterpiece, is a satire with several autobiographical references. The hero’s travels, adventures, love affairs, ideas, impressions and feelings are very close reflections of what Byron did, felt and thought. The poem is a satire against conventional restraint and society.

Drama. In the drama “Manfred” (1816) the protagonist is the stereotype of the romantic hero: handsome, passionate, melancholic, emotional, solitary. Torn between noble aspirations and sin, and unable to solve the dualism, he commits suicide.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). His works are characterized by intense political passion. In his poem “Queen Mab” (1813) Shelley attacks such ‘evils” as commerce, the monarchy, marriage, religion and the eating of meat. In place of these vices he proposes republicanism, free love, atheism and vegetarianism. “The Revolt of Islam” (1817) is a long allegoric poem which transposes a highly personalized version of the French Revolution into an Oriental setting. The poem contains many autobiographical references and introduces the theme of struggle and renewal.

Italian period (1818-1822). His best works during his staying in Italy:

“The Cenci” (1819), a verse tragedy based on the true story of Beatrice Cenci, who was executed for murdering her father in Rome at the end of the 16 century. The story, which involved incest and atheism, fascinated Shelley and so made it the basis of a play which shows strong Shakespearean influences.

“Prometheus Unbound” (1820): a lyrical drama in 4 acts. Prometheus, the giant who in Greek mythology stole fire from Heaven and gave it to people, becomes a hero who embodies the moral salvation of Man from tyranny.

Odes. In 1819 there were produced some of Shelley’s best lyrics: “Ode to Liberty”, “The Cloud”, “Ode to the West Wind”. The latter is considered his greatest short poem. In it the poet asks the spirit of the West Wind to be both destroyer and preserver, and to regenerate hope and energy in nature, in the poet himself and in mankind in general.

“A Defence of Poetry” (1821) is an essay in which Shelley argues that the poetry can reform the world. In it he claims that the poet is a missionary, a prophet and a leader who, through his quest for the eternal truths of beauty, can show the way to a better society.

John Keats (1795-1821). John Keats was born in London, where his father was the manager of a large livery stable. His early life was marked by a series of personal tragedies: his father was killed in an accident when he was 8 years old, his mother died when he was 14 and one of his younger brothers died in infancy. He received relatively little formal education and at the age of 16 he became an apprentice to an apothecary-surgeon. His first attempts at writing date from the years of his apprenticeship and include “Imitation of Spenser”, a homage to the Elizabethan poet he greatly admired.

First poems. In 1816 Keats obtained a licence to practice apothecary, but abandoned the profession for poetry. He became friends with Shelley and in 1817 his first book of poems was published. Although it sold poorly, this first volume of work introduced him into important literary circles. He met several great literary figures, including Wordsworth, who influenced his approach to writing poetry. His early poems included the sonnet “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (1816), which describes the poet’s delight at first reading Chapman’s 17 th-century translation of the Greek epic poem. “Endymion” (1817) tells the story of a young shepherd whom the moon-goddess Selene puts to sleep eternally so that she can enjoy his beauty. Although the poem is structurally weak and often obscure, it shows flashes of immature genius. “The Eve of St. Agnes” is a romantic love story which blends elements of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”, Chaucer and Boccaccio.

Odes. In 1819 he produced some of his finest works, including his five great odes – “Ode to Psyche”, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, “Ode to a Nightingale”, “Ode on Melancholy’ and “To Autumn”. In those odes he reached the pinnacle of his creative powers. They are lyrical meditations on art and real life, experience and aspirations, life and dreams. These odes, which are so rich in exquisite and sensuous detail, represent for the many the crowning achievement of English Romanticism.

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