Title: Overview of Romanticism in Literature
Headings: Overview of Romanticism in Literature
Overview of Romanticism in Literature
Content: According the Enlightenment view, people and their relationships, roles, institutions, and indeed, their whole societies, could be understood best if organized and approached with a scientific perspective. 5
During this time in the history of the romanticism movement in literature, it was believed that objectivity was not only desirable, but also achievable. Subjective emotions, contemplation of nature, and the creative impulse felt by individuals were all of far lesser importance than building the physical and commercial infrastructure of a country that had new resources, techniques, and capital with which to experiment. 6 The literary products of the period reflected the priorities and values of the time, focusing mainly on political and economic themes. Philosophical writings similarly reflected the mechanistic preoccupations of the age and dealt more so than ever with the individual human experience as well as personal thoughts. Romanticism, then, emerged as a reaction against what was perceived to be a cultural climate that had been lacking in spontaneity, creativity, and individuality. Indeed, some of the earliest and most profound writings of the Romantic period were not the poems themselves, but manifestos and discourses on the nature of human beings and creative expression, such as Coleridge ’s Biographia Literaria, Shelley’s A Defence of Poetry, and Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads. In these three exemplary prose pieces, the Romantic poets promote their vision of what poetry, and by extension, society, should be. Their vision was quite distinct from that of the Enlightenment, and in these pieces, the major characteristics of Romanticism were developed and disseminated. One of these characteristics, as articulated by Wordsworth in the Preface was the belief that “ordinary things [were worth writing about] and should be presented to the mind in an unusual way".