Saturday, April 6, 2019

Assaiment p-5 Romantic litrature

Topic: write about the salient features of the romantic age
Name: Nasim.R Gaha
Roll no: 22
Email ID: gahanasim786@gmail.com
Enrollment: 2069108420190014
Submitted to: smt.S.B Gardi department of English maharaja krishanakumar sihji bhavnagar university








Romantic age

Romantic period has started with the publication of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, both were the prominent poets of the age and they have proved that it was

“The second creative period of English literature”
 
    Majority of writers were not ready to accept their identity as a romantic writer but after the lectures of August Schlegel about romanticism he has depicted classicism as ‘plastic’ and materialistic and romantic age as ‘organic’, and because of this point of view Romanticism has started in its flaw.

      The important movement has been started from Berlin, in Berlin there were a lot of space for writers and all artists. They encouraged writers, painters and singers to establish their works.

       In this age there were several movements were going on, it was a time when two books about England have been published,
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Romanticism was a literary and intellectual movement that lasted from the late eighteenth century through the mid-nineteenth century. Classic examples of Romantic novels are Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Though academics consider Romanticism difficult to define—the movement developed differently in European countries than it did in the US—there are a few key features we can talk about.
The first is important: Romanticism was reactionary. The movement was, at least in part, a response to the Industrial Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment. Rather than focusing on science, logic, or reason, as was the zeitgeist on both sides of the Atlantic, Romantic writers were nostalgic, looking to a simpler past for inspiration. Much as we, as contemporary readers, may look back to the pre-internet era with some sentimentality (remember when we looked things up in an actual encyclopedia instead of Googling everything?), Romantic writers fondly remembered a pre-industrial era.
Which brings us to our second point. Romantic writers expressed emotion and imagination, engaging with aesthetics and the beauty of the natural world. In the poetry and novels of the era, emotion was more important than reason or science. It stands to reason that Romantic writers also rejected some of the structure or rules that had previously governed both novel
Romanticism is a movement in art and literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth century in revolt against the neo-classicism of the previous centuries. It is the direct outcome of French Revolution. The French Revolution directly inspired by Rousseauism, had its influence on the Romantic Poets, both in its revolutionary ideals and in its excess of terror. This imaginative literature of the early nineteenth century found its creative impulse in the sociological ideal.

Romanticism is a contrary to the neo-classicism. Neo-classicism can be characterized by emotional resistant, order and logic while romanticism gives emphasis over imagination. The romantics write what they get from their imagination. The romantics tried to see life with new sensibilities and fresh visions. They are deeply aware of their social obligations, but the burden of an exception vision of life drives them into being almost fugitives from their fellow-men. The romantic poets lead the readers to the strange areas of human experience, but seldom welcome him in the language of ordinary conversations, or even with currency of normality.

Romanticism started its journey in English Literature wit the publication of Lyrical Ballads, a joint work of Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798. Its communion with nature, interest in simple human life, profound impulsiveness, imaginative propensity and lyrical subjectivity etc. are its salient features.

Romantic age is essentially an age of verse. The spirit of romanticism is found primarily struck in poetry in the liberation of poetic inspiration and impulses. This dominant of poetry is found echoed in words worth’s famous saying, “Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge.

Romantic poets had a strong power of imagination. All the poets of this period possess this imaginative power which made their works different from their predecessors. We see the use of this imagination in “Kubla Khan” and “The Ancient Mariner” of Coleridge.

The imaginative power of the romantic poets leads them to mysticism. The poets of romantic age found interested in the mysticism. The poets of romantic age found interested in the mysterious unknown world that lives on the other side of life. Wordsworth viewed nature from a mystic angle, Coleridge’s mysticism found in his fascinating treatment of the supernatural world in his poems, Keats, Shelly and other poets also deal with mysticism.

Love for beauty and nature is another feature of romanticism. All the romantic poets had a deep interest in nature not as a center of beautiful science but as an informing and spiritual influence on life. The common elements of nature i.e. the rising sun, the blooming flower and deep blue sky are like living soul-mighty and gigantic to the romantic poets. The romantic poets also found everything lovely and beautiful in nature and man. “Beauty is truth and truth beauty” is the poetic philosophy of the age of romanticism.

The romantic poets are found to deal with human life in its essential traits, in liberty, simplicity and purity, childhood and primitive simplicity are idealized by Wordsworth whereas Byron and Shelly remain the assertive poets of humanity. Other poets and prose writers also deal with humanity.

Hellenism is finely incorporated and echoed in the poetry of romantic age, mainly in the poems of Shelley and Keats. The romantic poets looked upon Greek Literature. They did not borrow the elements but the content of Greek Literature and shaped it with their own genius as like as Shelley did in “Prometheus Unbound”

The romantic poets gave emphasis upon content rather than form and structure. The content of a literary work is the measure by which the romantics measured a literary work. The romantic poets deny the notion that poetry has its own exceptional word stock. They used simple diction rather than elevated diction. They used the word of rustic and daily life in their poetry. Wordsworth, in the later editions of Lyrical Ballads said that the Language of poetry ought to be the same as the language of a simple farm-worker.

Every literary period is sharply inspired by the social and political condition of its own time. But romanticism is free from this kind of inspiration. It criticizes the growth of industry and town though it took birth in the golden period of industrious revolution. The romantic poets turning to nature for protection also criticize the traditional religious belief of the time.

The romantic literature was marked, and is always marked, by a strange reaction and protest against the bondage of rule and custom in science and theology, as well as literature, generally tent to fetter the free human spirit. Romantic poets are essentially subjective self-revelation a creed with them. In their poetry may be found much of their mind and spirit. They seem to take their readers into confidence and pour into their ears all their passions and pains, all their dreams and desires. It’s a cardinal element in all romantic poets. As in the prelude’s words worth made an epic of personal experience based on his own life.

In general, these are the features of romanticism. Of course, romantic poetry is no sudden phenomenon in the literature of England. It is rather an inevitable reaction of the artificial and critical poetry of the eighteenth century with all the features There are as many definitions of poetry as there are poets. Wordsworth defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings;” Emily Dickinson said, “If I read a book and it makes my body so cold no fire ever can warm me, I know that is poetry;” and Dylan Thomas defined poetry this way: “Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn,
There are as many definitions of poetry as there are poets. Wordsworth defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings;” Emily Dickinson said, “If I read a book and it makes my body so cold no fire ever can warm me, I know that is poetry;” and Dylan Thomas defined poetry this way: “Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing.”

Homer’s epic,The Odyssey, described the wanderings of the adventurer, Odysseus, and has been called the greatest story ever told. During the English Renaissance, dramatic poets like John Milton, Christopher Marlowe, and of course Shakespeare gave us enough to fill textbooks, lecture halls, and universities. Poems from the romantic period include Goethe’s Faust (1808), Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” and John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”
Shall I go on? Because in order to do so, I would have to continue through 19th century Japanese poetry, early Americans that include Emily Dickinson and T.S. Eliot, postmodernism, experimentalists, slam…
So what is poetry?
Perhaps the characteristic most central to the definition of poetry is its unwillingness to be defined, labeled, or nailed down. But let’s not let that stop us, shall we? It’s about time someone wrestled poetry to the ground and slapped a sign on its back reading, “I’m poetry. Kick me here.”
Poetry is the chiseled marble of language; it’s a paint-spattered canvas – but the poet uses words instead of paint, and the canvas is you. Poetic definitions of poetry kind of spiral in on themselves, however, like a dog eating itself from the tail up. Let’s get nitty. Let’s, in fact, get gritty. I believe we can render an accessible definition of poetry by simply looking at its form and its purpose:
One of the most definable characteristics of the poetic form is economy of language. Poets are miserly and unrelentingly critical in the way they dole out words to a page. Carefully selecting words for conciseness and clarity is standard, even for writers of prose, but poets go well beyond this, considering a word’s emotive qualities, its musical value, its spacing, and yes, even its spacial relationship to the page. The poet, through innovation in both word choice and form, seemingly rends significance from thin air.
How am I doing so far? On to purpose:
One may use prose to narrate, describe, argue, or define. There are equally numerous reasons for writing poetry. But poetry, unlike prose, often has an underlying and over-arching purpose that goes beyond the literal. Poetry is evocative. It typically evokes in the reader an intense emotion: joy, sorrow, anger, catharsis, love… Alternatively, poetry has the ability to surprise the reader with an Ah Ha! Experience — revelation, insight, further understanding of elemental truth and beauty. Like Keats said:
“Beauty is truth. Truth, beauty. That is all ye know on Earth and all ye need to know.”
How’s that? Do we have a definition yet?
Poetry is artistically rendering words in such a way as to evoke intense emotion or an Ah Ha! experience from the reader.
Pretty unsatisfying, huh? Kind of leaves you feeling cheap, dirty, all hollow and empty inside like Chinese food.
Don’t do this. Don’t shackle poetry with your definitions. Poetry is not a frail and cerebral old woman, you know. Poetry is stronger than you think. Poetry is imagination and will break those chains faster than you can say “Harlem Renaissance.”
To borrow a phrase, poetry is a riddle wrapped in an enigma swathed in a cardigan sweater… or something like that. It doesn’t like your definitions and will shirk them at every turn. If you really want to know what poetry is, read it. Read it carefully. Pay attention. Read it out loud. Now read it again.
There’s your definition of poetry. Because defining poetry is like grasping at the wind – once you catch it, it’s no longer wind.

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