AN ESSAY ON ROMANTICISM

Following the Enlightenment age, literary and philosophical movements began to spring up in Europe and America with the conscious aim of changing the prevailing statusquo. Arguments and counter arguments emerged all in an attempt to explain contemporary phenomenon of the period of enlightenment, scientific and industrial advancement. Movements like Realism, Naturalism and Romanticism came onboard. This essay focuses on Romanticism, its historical background, description, writers and major features.

Historically, Romanticism is a complex artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe. Romanticism did not emerge until the Victorian Age which also coincides with the time Britain industrialized itself. Factories sprung up in towns and cities across the country and there was a massive exodus of people from the country side into the city centers in search of better economic opportunity to improve their livelihood. This period marked a turning point in modern literary history, as the railway, printing press and other progressive instruments change the ways in which things are perceived and done.

According to Hoffmann (2003) Romanticism represents various tendencies for change in such areas as subject matter, attitude and form. It is concern essentially with artistic depiction in which the ordinary and prosaic were imbued with the extra-ordinary and incomprehensible; where “the super-natural agency was given full sway”. It largely began as a reaction against the prevailing Enlightenment ideals. Or, “in a part It was a revolt against the aristocratic social and political norms of the age of the Enlightenment and in another it is a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature and validate strong emotions as an authentic source of aesthetic experience”(Hodgson, 1988).

Poets such as James Macpherson, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats and William Blake were actively engaged in trying to create a new kind of poetry that emphasized intuition over reason and the pastoral over the urban. These poets according to Blamiers (1991) “deal with the natural aspect of life focusing on the feelings of sadness or great happiness because nature is the force which binds man to mother earth”. Romanticism decries the harsh and debased conditions of man in the modern era such as poverty, misery, frustration, war, destruction and alienation. It questioned the dogmatism of the period of Enlightenment. To this end therefore, artistic creativity is credited with new dimensions especially the human psyche or does areas of the human experience not easily upon to logic and reason.
To the Romanists, art is not a mirror that reflects society, but a lamb the shines the way for people to choose their path. They created the sense that the simple or the ordinary can be elevated to the level of the sublime through creativity and introspect. In this way, they object to the view that the object of literary composition must be noble, beautiful and perfect. Literature they argued is capable of elevating the ordinary or common to the level of sublimity. Samuel Taylor Coleridge posits that “great art is the margical blend of thought and emotion”. This means that art sprung from the sanity of thought and the accessibility of expression in order to present or represent the perception and truthfulness of nature and its components.
Romanticism was also a phenomenon in other fields such as history, religion and philosophy. “It was the hope of the poet that a large cultural synthesis could be achieved to erase the artificial boundaries separating these intellectual areas so that such polar concepts such as intellect and feeling, art and life would be fused. This is what the German writer, Freidrich Von Herdenberg meant when he announced that “the world must be Romanticized” Hoffmann (2003).
In 1798 William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge published the Lyrical Ballad. In its preface they proclaimed the features of Romanticism and what it stands for. Some of these features are:
Transcendentalism-This means that their work can not be decipher through scientific means or reason, but through imagination or what they termed as transcendentalism, a concept in philosophy that understanding goes beyond human reason to the intuitive.
Nature - This is a major subject matter in all romantics works, they have an intense love for nature and all its agents. This emanates from the belief that nature is close to the creator and is pure and unpolluted by man. However, what interest them most is not just nature for its own sake, but how it affects the human mind and personality.
Pantheism-This is the notion that God is everywhere as against monotheism. However, this is only possible in the country side because as they argued the city canters are polluted and corrupted. With this they reject the idea of established institution such as the church. They argued that one does not need to go to church before he can experience God; that God is everywhere.
Emotional and Subjective Experience of the Poet. Romanists belief that in composing literary work it is the subjective and emotional feelings of the writer that should be the essential resource from which such works will get their production. All good poetry according to Wordsworth, “is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility. Poetic diction is rejected. Wordsworth says that the poet “use the real language of men not a specialized poetic diction”.
They also recognized the cyclic nature of existence recognizing the spiritual verities as holy and a source of existence.
To conclude, Romanticism is a conscious breakaway from the preoccupations of the Enlightenment ideals to set a new record on how literature should be perceived and designed and what the picture of life seems to them. It did not just reacted to the tenets of the previous writers which it found artificial, destructive and debilitating; it developed its own ideologies and premises based on the working of nature and its various elements. It returned to nature which it belief gives the semblance of perfection, beauty, tranquility, harmony and exuberance of untained vibrant emotions which is the opposite to the mechanic world of the industrial age.


Works Cited.
Duncan, Wu.(2007)ed.Romanticism:An Anthrology.3rd, ed. USA: Blackwell.
E.T.A. Hoffmann(2003). The Sandman. Retrieved from http://www.the literarylink.com/Hoffmann.html. on 18th January 2011.
M.H. Abrams.(2005). A glossaryof literary terms.8th, ed. USA:Thomson Wadswoth.
Terry, Hodgson.(1988).The Batsford Dictionary of Drama.London, B.T Batsford ltd
William, Wodswoth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.(1798).Lyrical Ballad.