What is Romanticism? Discuss the major Romantic poets with their specialization in dealing the themes of Romantic poetry.

Romanticism is a movement of creative art specially in literature which was indeed a revolt of the individual against consensus of emotion against reason. Romanticism, initiated by the English poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, as well as John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron was concentrated primarily in the creative expressions of literature and the arts.  

"These writers championed the concepts of ignoring restraint, being free in emotion, embracing individuality and immersing oneself in nature, and they contributed to large-scale political and cultural shifts through their work. From a technical standpoint, they moved poetry into a more simplistic, symbolic and more free-form style." (wisegeek)

Each of these men had a clearly identifiable voice that set them apart from each other, but they all captured the Romantic ideals of individuality, freedom, emotionality and simplicity.

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) teamed with Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772−1834) to produce the Lyrical Ballads. In Lyrical Ballads, these two writers achieved something quite rare in English literature—a collaborative work of creation.

The greatest contribution of William Wordsworth to the poetry of Nature is his unqualified pantheism. As a poet of nature, Wordsworth stands supreme. In his eyes, “Nature is a teacher whose wisdom we can learn if we will and without which any human life is vain and incomplete.” Many of his best-known poems, such as “Tintern Abbey”, “ Ode: Intimation of Immortality”, “The solitary reaper”, “To The Cuckoo”, intertwine nature which is very complicated and a balanced interplay.

Another of his most famous poems, “Daffodils” opens with the line “I wandered lonely as a Cloud.” Loneliness within a natural world and creativity from the natural world are at the heart of Wordsworth’s poetry, and loneliness, for him, is a creative state. These poems spoke of mystical experiences, epiphanies of nature, and the belief that there was a divine spirit working in and through nature.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was fascinated with the supernatural as evidenced by his classic, "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." In addition to the “Ancient Mariner” he wrote the symbolic poem “Kubla Khan”; began the mystical narrative poem “Christabel”; and composed the quietly lyrical “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison,” “Frost at Midnight,” and “The Nightingale,” considered three of his best “conversational” poems.

Richard Holmes claims that the "Kubla Khan" provides evidence of a transition in Coleridge's interests and presents this switch from "classical and religious mythology" to the "drama of self-knowledge ... the growth of consciousness and civilisation" as a key to Coleridge's poetry. Holmes writes:

He is instinct that the modern Epic subject must now centre on "the mind of man," through "travels, voyages and histories," shows a shift of poetic focus characteristic of the new Romantic age.

John Keats is one of the most dominant romantic poets in English literature. His poetry is full of sinuousness, imagination, love and beauty which are the essence of romanticism. But his invocation to love, beauty and art surpass all other romantic poets. He wrote "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "La Belle Dame sans Merci," "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on Melancholy," and much more.

Keats, like other romantics, tries to find an escape in the past. The themes which we find in Keats’s poetry are highly romantic and most of his poetry is busy in the quest of beauty. Love, adventure, chivalry, pathos are also some of his themes. The fear of death runs through some of his poetry and disappointment in love is still another theme found in his poetry. He loves nature and his touch transforms everything into beauty. He has a great devotion to beauty and he finds truth in anything which is beautiful. Beauty is his religion and this beauty makes him forget everything. To Keats, beauty is everywhere.

So, beauty is the dominant theme and one of the major hallmarks of Keats’s poetry. Therefore, It’s focuses on Keats’s romanticism which conveys us the message through his poem “Ode to Grecian Urn” where he says “Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty”. (49) In the ‘Ode to Grecian Urn’, the urn is depicted as a beautiful piece of art. The urn is a mystery and Keats shows imagination as superior to reality. As Keats writes:

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; (11-12).

These lines assert that the unheard music is far sweeter than the music heard. Anything beautiful must be true which in Keats’s words is “What the imagination creates on Beautiful must be true whether it existed before or not.”

His another poem “Ode on Melancholy” reveals the truth that melancholy and all that is beautiful, delightful and joyful live together. If somebody deeply understands beauty, joy or delight, he’ll be able to grasp the intensity of melancholy.

Keats in his “Ode to Nightingale” also searches for beauty. He finds momentary beauty of life in the bird’s song — a world different from the real world. But due to excessive joy, he feels pain deep in his heart. The poet wants to fade far away from the harsh realities of life —

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret.( 21-23)

“For the Romantic poet, the idea of revolution has a special interest, and a special affinity. For Romanticism seeks to effect in poetry what revolution aspires to achieve in politics: innovation, transformantion, defamiliarisation" (Divid Duff,p. 26) Revolution is a dominant spirit in almost all the romantic poets. Percy Bysshe Shelley, a Romantic poet, is also called rebel for his idea of revolution in his poetry. In the "Ode to The West Wind" Shelley is seen as a rebel and he wants revolution. He desires a social change and the West Wind is to his symbol of change.

In this poem, he says, the West Wind acts as a driving force for change and rejuvenation in the human and natural world. Shelley says,

“Wild spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

We also find Shelley’s revolutionary zeal in ode “To A Skylark”. According to Shelley, the bird, Skylark, that pours spontaneous melody from heaven and sours higher and higher can never be a bird. "Mutability" and "Ozymondias" are his more famous poems.

George Gordon, or most known as Lord Byron, was the personification of the heroes of his poems; an impetuous, proud, athletic and charming man whose life no one could rule but himself. "The Destruction of Sennacherib" are a couple of his better short works. His long poems "Child Harolde's Pilgrimage" and "Don Juan" are considered his masterpieces.

Ruth M. Weeks affirmed that:

One powerful conviction dominated all Byron’s work: the hatred of oppression and the love of freedom. For this cause, he wrote his greatest poem; and for this cause he lost his life in the Greek Revolution.

His most famous work, the long poem “Don Juan”, shows a man that seduces every woman that crosses his path without any commitment with feelings; the poem is full of irony, satire, sensuality, images of the exotic (Spain); it has fluid language, and a strong social critique. He is considered poets of evident political lives, engaged to talk about and act against tyranny.

Taken in sum, the Romantic poets may be seen as reactionary and humanist, and in many cases, these individuals are connected to elements of revolution and sociocultural change, fueling political demands for freedom through their writing. They forever changed poetry, inventing new forms and redefining what "acceptable" written expression was in a way that made the genre much more accessible for the average person.

Works Cited

Bowra, Maurice. The Romantic Imagination. Oxford University Press: London, 1966.

Stone, Brian. The Poetry of Keats. Penguin critical studies: Penguin Books, 1992.

"Coleridge, Samuel Taylor."Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 2001. © 1993-2000 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Trad.: John Milton. Sementes Aladas. São Paulo: Ateliê Editorial, 2010.

Wordsworth, William. Trad.: John Milton. O Olho Imóvel pela Força da Harmonia. São Paulo: Ateliê Editorial, 2007.