Title: What is Romantic Poetry?
Headings: What is Romantic Poetry?
What is Romantic Poetry?
Content: Emotionally, it expressed an extreme assertion of the self and the value of the individual experience together with the sense of the infinite and the transcendental. The stylistic keyword of ‘Romanticism’ is intensity and its watchword is ‘Imagination’. In Britain, Romantic writers of the first generation included Wordsworth and Coleridge (Lyrical Ballads, 1798), Blake and Burns, though introspective 18th century poets such as Gray and Cowper show pre-Romantic tendencies. The second generation of British Romantics- Byron, Shelley and Keats absorbed these tumultuous influences, wrote swiftly, travelled widely and died prematurely. Their life stories and letters became almost as important for Romanticism as their poetry. Romanticism does not mean any one thing or one characteristic. It is, in fact, a collective term to mean certain features and characteristics, such as mysticism, humanism, supernaturalism, escapism, love of beauty, love of nature, love of equality, alienation, fanciful, melancholy, wonder, emotional intensity, rich imagination, subjectivism, simple diction, sensuousness, love for medievalism, etc. It wanted to free literature from tyranny of the rules of the ancients. English romanticism is both a revolt and a revival. It is a revolt against 18th century traditions and conventions;