British Poetry Through the Ages

I. ■ 450 – 1500 Medieval

450 – 1066 Old English
1066 – 1500 Middle English

II. ■ 1500 –1660 Renaissance

1558 – 1603 Elizabethan
1603 – 1625 Jacobean
1625 – 1649 Caroline
1649 – 1660 Commonwealth

III. ■ 1660 – 1798 Neo-Classical

1660 – 1700 Restoration
1700 – 1745 Augustan
1745 – 1798 Johnsonian

IV. ■ 1798 - 1832 Romantic

V. ■ 1832 - 1901 Victorian

VI. ■ 1901 - to the Present

1901 – 1914 Edwardian
1914 – 1939 Modernist
1939 - Contemporary
 The preface to Lyrical Ballads
was written to explain the theory of poetry guiding Wordsworth’s composition of the poems.
Wordsworth defends the unusual style and subjects of the poems (some of which are actually
composed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge) as experiments to see how far popular poetry could be
used to convey profound feeling.

There are general reasons guiding the composition of the lyrical ballads. The first is in the
choice of subject matter, which is limited to experiences of common life in the country. There,
people use a simple language and directly express deep feeling. Their habit of speaking comes
from associating feelings with the permnent forms of nature, such as mountains, rivers, and
clouds. The challenge for the poet is to make these ordinary experiences interesting to readers;
in other words, the poems attempt to take ordinary subjects and treat them in extraordinary
ways. Doing so would cause readers to recognize fundamental truths of universal human
experience.

The second reason guiding his poems is Wordsworth’s goal of emphasizing the purpose of
poetry as art. This purpose is not a moralistic one; indeed, poetry comes from a “spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings,” but it is disciplined by remembering those feelings in moods of
peaceful meditation. The combination of feeling and meditation produces artful poetry with
purpose ….
• What is Romanticism: ((1798–1832))

• Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that

originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and in most
areas was at peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. The
German poet Friedrich Schlegel, who is given credit for first using
the term romantic to describe literature, defined it as "literature
depicting emotional matter in an imaginative form."

• This is a general definition though accurate, although Victor Hugo's

phrase "liberalism in literature" is also apt. Imagination, emotion, and
freedom are certainly the focal points of romanticism. Any list of
particular characteristics of the literature of romanticism includes
subjectivity and an emphasis on individualism; spontaneity; freedom
from rules; solitary life rather than life in society; the beliefs that
imagination is superior to reason and devotion to beauty; love and
worship of nature; and fascination with the past, especially the
myths and mysticism of the middle ages.
• The movement was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution it;
also a revolt against the aristocratic social and political norms of the
Age of Enlightenment; and a reaction against the scientific
rationalization of nature. It was embodied most strongly in the visual
arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography,
education and even politics (where it was associated with liberalism
and radicalism and the long growth of nationalism).

• As its name suggests, the Romantic Age brought a more daring,

individual, and imaginative approach to both literature and life. The
individual, rather than society, was at the centre of the Romantic
vision. The Romantic writers tended to be optimists who believed in
the possibility of progress and social and human reform. As
champions of democratic ideals, they sharply attacked all forms of
tyranny, and the spreading of evils of industrialism, such as urban
blight, a polluted environment, and alienation of people from nature
and one another.
• An Age of revolution:

• Romanticism emerged as a reaction against 'The Age of

Enlightenment', which emphasized on reason and logic. Pioneers of the
Romantic period wanted to break away from the conventions of the Age
of Enlightenment and make way for individuality and experimentation.

• The Romantic Movement is said to have emerged in Germany,

although the main source of inspiration came from the events and
ideologies of the French Revolution.

• The Industrial Revolution, which began during the same period, is also
said to be responsible for the development of this movement.

• The impact of the French Revolution (1789) upon the writers of the age
cannot be underestimated. France was/is only a brief passage across
the English Channel. For a time every important British writer
responded warmly to the cry of the French for Liberty, Equality, and
fraternity.
•Whereas the writers of the Age of Reason tended to regard evil as a basic
part of human nature, the Romantic writers generally saw humanity as
naturally good, but corrupted by the society and the institutions of religion,
education and government. Thus the French revolution gave life and
breath to the dreams of some Romantic writers for a society in which there
would be liberty and equality for all.

•It also contributed later to a sense of disillusionment following the Reign of

Terror in France, during which the oppressed classes became as violent as
and corrupt as their former rulers, thereby paving the way for Napoleon’s
rise to power. One of the most significant aspects of 19th century English
life was the slow but steady application of the principles of democracy.

•England emerged from the 18th century a parliamentary state in which the
monarchy was largely figurehead. The English Parliament was far from a
truly representative body, however, until years of popular agitation,
Parliament finally passed the First Reform Bill of 1832.
•The industrial Revolution took place in England from 1750 to 1850. During this
period England changed from Agricultural to industrial society and from home
manufacturing to factory production. Towns became cities and more people
from the villages were forced to seek work in the growing factories, huddled
together in filthy slums. Workers—men, women and children—laboured from
sunrise to sunset for meager wages. For the children of the poor, religious
training, medical care, and education were practically nonexistent.

•Gradually English society began to awaken to its obligations to the miserable

and helpless. Through the efforts of the reformers, the church and government
assumed their responsibilities. Sunday schools were organized; hospitals were
built; movements were begun to reform the prisons and regulate the conditions
of child labour. The effect of revolution aboard, the demand for a more
democratic government, and a growing awareness of social injustice at home
were all reflected in a new spirit that over a period of years affected practically
every aspect of English life.
•The Romantic Age in England was part of a movement that affected all the countries of
Western Europe. The forms of Romanticism were so many and varied, in some instances
embracing contradictory values. It tended to align itself with the humanitarian spirit of the
democratic revolutionaries; but romantics were not always democrats, and democrats
were not always revolutionaries. Perhaps the safest thing to say is that Romanticism
represented an attempt to rediscover the mystery and wonder of the world, an attempt to
go beyond ordinary reality into the deeper, less obvious and more elusive levels of
individual human existence.

•The emergence and spread of romantic spirit in Enland graduglly became apparent in all
aspects of life—fashions, manners, and morals. Simplicity and excess characterised this
new spirit and lifestyle.

•A New Spirit in Life and the Arts:

•In literature, the emergence of the Romantic spirit was particlarly evident in the writers’
choice of the subject matter.
•For most of the Romantic poets, nature was the principal source of inspiration,
spiritual truth and enlightenment. Nature according to S. T. Coleridge in “Frost at
Midnight,” should be seen as embodying “the eternal language” whereby God
teaches and molds the human spirit.

•Poets of the Romantic Age focused on the ordinary person and common life in
order to affirm the worth and dignity of all human beings, and to repudiate the
evils of a class system that artificially designated a few select people as more
important than others because of wealth, position or name.

•In 1765 Bishop Thomas Percy published Relique of Ancient English Poetry, a
collection of ballads dating back to late medieval times. Several authors,
including Thomas Gray, made translations of old Celtic and Scandinavian
legends. Other writers produced Gothic novels or romances—that is, stories laid
in medieval times and filled with ruined castles, mysterious doors, and
supernaturalism of all kinds.
•Nineteenth-century plays, especially those by German playwrights Goethe and Schiller, were characterised
by emotionalism.

•American writers James Fenimore Cooper, William Cullen Bryant, and Edgar Allen Poe were all influenced to
some extent by the Romantic Age in their emphasis on the past, nature and the Gothic tale of horror,
respectively.

•English readers turned eagerly to all these writings about medieval times, especially to the old ballads.
People longed for literature that dealt with the elemental themes of courage and valour, hatred and revenge,
love and death.

•Writers of the Age of Reason exposed the follies of society with satire, a sophisticated form of attack; the
youthful Romantics spoke out in a voice of anger and outrage. In “London 1802,” Wordsworth called England
a “fen/of stagnant waters” that has lost “manners, virtue, freedom, power.” Percy Shelley, in “England in
1819,” characterizes the rulers as leeches who “neither see, nor feel, nor know,” but who drink the life’s blood
of a poor and starving populace.

•Shelley, like many of the other Romantics, was strongly influenced by William Goodwin’s Political Justice
(1793), a work that criticized the existing society and outlined a new ethic and Utopian ideal. Mary
Wollstonecraft produced an outspoken feminist manifesto, A Vindication of the Rights of Women and spent
her short, intense life living by the ideals she advocated.
•Painting, architecture, and music also reflected Romantic ideals. The works of
English painters John Constable and J.M.W. Turner focused on dramatic
landscapes often peopled by ordinary men and women going about their duties in
dignity and peace. In architecture there was a return to the Gothic style of the
Middle Ages which was regarded as an ideal period. Changes in music also
occurred. The German composer Ludwig van Beethoven composed symphonies of
power and grandeur, often reflecting violent emotions. Other composers frequently
made use of motifs from folk music and themes from folk tales in songs and operas.

•Two Generations of Poets:

•In the period from 1786 to 1830, seven major poets emerged who permanently
affected the nature of English language and literature. Blake, Burns, Wordsworth
and Coleridge may be regarded as the first generation of Romantic poets, writing
most of their major works from 1786 to 1805. Byron, Shelley and Keats are the
second generation, producing their major works between 1810 to 1824.
•Though commonly grouped with writers of the 18th century because of the time in which
they lived and wrote, William Blake and Robert Burns were clearly forerunners of the
Romantic movement in subject matter, themes and style. Both were gifted poets,
unaffiliated with any literary group, who poured out their lyrics while living lives of hard
labour and obscurity.

•The publication of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786) by Robert Burns is a
landmark in English literature. Published when he was only 27 the book made Burns
famous and gave the world a memorable collection of poems. His lyrics on nature, love,
patriotism, the nobility of the common man, and the spontaneous emotions of the heart,
are expressed in native dialect; his treatment of these themes has made him one of the
best loved poets.

•During most of his life Blake lived in a working class neighbourhood in London, though
he was one of the most brilliant minds in his time. Central to Blake’s vision in the concept
of “contraries,” the necessity of experiencing opposites, such as pain and joy, success
and failure, prudence and excess, in order to understand life. Consequently, Blake
produced Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience contrasting poems that need to
be paired to yield their deepest meaning. Though Blake’s talent and achievement were
not widely recognised in his time, today his reputation is firmly established.
• In 1789, with the publication of Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth and
Coleridge gave official birth to Romantic Age in literature, setting
forth a formula for a new kind of poetry and presenting 23 poems
that demonstrated the formula in use.
• The second edition of Lyrical Ballads (pubished in 1800)
contained a preface in which Wordsworth stated the poetic
principles that he and Coleridge believed in:
•the ordinary life is the best subject for poetry because the
feelings of simple people are sincere and natural;
•the everyday language of these people best convey their
feelings and is therefore best suited to poetry;
•the expression of feeling is more important in poetry than the
development of an action, or story;
•“poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” and
“takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.
• These principles served as formal declaration of a new spirit in
English literature and became a turning point in the history of
English poetry.
• The important figures of the second generation of the Romantic
poets were Lord Byron, Percy Bysh Shelley and John Keats.
Though highly different in personality and artistic temperament
they were similarly intense, precocious and tragically short-lived.
Though a generation older, Wordsworth and Coleridge, outlived
all three poets. While initially a major source of inspiration, for
their poetic theory and practice, Wordsworth and Coleridge
turned politically conservative as they grew older, leading the
young poets (especially Byron and Shelley) to denounce their
onetime idols as traitors to their former principles.
• During his brief lifetime, George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron) was
the most popular poet abroad as well as at home and the most
scandalous. Reckless, bitter, and in constant revolt against
society, he succeeded in producing his best work, including his
masterpiece Don Juan (a satirical narrative that sums up his
reflection on life and human nature).
•Like Byron, Shelley was rebellious, scandalous and charismatic. Shelley always had “a
passion for reforming the world,” but it is as a lyric poet that he is remembered.

•Perhaps the most famous line John Keats ever wrote was, “Beauty is truth, truth is
beauty,” in his poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn”—this work explores the relation between
art and life and expresses the gospel of beauty that guided Keats’s brilliant but brief
artistic career. In spite of illness, family hardness and strained love affair, Keats
succeeded, during a nine-month period, in writing his greatest poems.

•Overall, the literature of the Romantic Age has about it a sense of the uniqueness of
the individual, a deep personal earnestness, a sensuous delight in both the common
and the exotic things of this world, a blend of the intensely felt joy and dejection, a
yearning for ideal states of being, and a probing interest in mysterious and mystical
experience.

•If the Romantic vision of the world was ocasionally tinged with bitterness or outrage, it
was because the Romantics confronted an increasingly mechanical and materialistic
society.
• Main features:
• Love of Nature
The Romantics greatly emphasized the importance of nature and the primal
feelings of awe, apprehension and horror felt by man on approaching the
sublimeness of it. This was mainly because of the industrial revolution, which
had shifted life from the peaceful, serene countryside towards the chaotic cities,
transforming man's natural order. Nature was not only appreciated for its visual
beauty, but also revered for its ability to help the urban man find his true identity.

Emotions vs. Rationality

Unlike the Age of Enlightenment, which focused on rationality and intellect,
Romanticism placed human emotions, feelings, instinct and intuition above
everything else. While the poets in the era of rationality adhered to the prevalent
rules and regulations while selecting a subject and writing about it, the Romantic
writers trusted their emotions and feelings to create poetry. This belief can be
confirmed from the definition of poetry by William Wordsworth, where he says
that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. The emphasis on
emotions also spread to the music created in that period, and can be observed
in the compositions made by musicians like Weber, Beethoven, Schumann, etc.
Beethoven played an important role in the transition of Western music from the
classical to the Romantic age.
•Artist, the Creator
As the Romantic period emphasized on human emotions, the position of the artist or the
poet also gained supremacy. In the earlier times, the artist was seen as a person who
imitated the external world through his art. However, this definition was mooted in the
Romantic era and the poet or the painter was seen as a creator of something which
reflected his individuality and emotions. The Romantic perception of the artist as the
creator is best encapsulated by Caspar David Friedrich, who remarked that "the artist's
feeling is his law". It was also the first time that the poems written in the first person
were being accepted, as the poetic persona became one with the voice of the poet.
Nationalism
The Romantics borrowed heavily from the folklore and the popular local art. During the
earlier eras, literature and art were considered to belong to the high-class educated
people, and the lower classes were not considered fit to enjoy them. Also, the language
used in these works used to be highly lyrical, which was totally different from what was
spoken by people.

•However, Romantic artists took no shame from being influenced by the folklore that had
been created by the masses or the common people, and not by the literary works that
were popular only among the higher echelons of the society. Apart from poetry, adopting
folk tunes and ballads was one of the very important characteristics of Romantic music.
As the Romantics became interested and focused upon developing the folklore, culture,
language, customs and traditions of their own country, they developed a sense of
Nationalism which reflected in their works. Also, the language used in Romantic poems
was simple and easy to understand by the masses.
•Exoticism
Along with Nationalism, the Romantics developed the love of the exotic.
Hence, far off and mysterious locations were depicted in many of the artistic
works from that period. Though this was not exactly apposite to the Romantic
ideal of Nationalism, separate factions were never formed. Exoticism is also
one of the most prominent characteristics in art, along with sentimentality and
spirituality.
Supernatural
Another characteristic of this movement is the belief in the supernatural. The
Romantics were interested in the supernatural and included it in their works.
Gothic fiction emerged as a branch of Romanticism after Horace Walpole's
1764 novel The Castle of Otranto. This fascination for the mysterious and the
unreal also led to the development of Gothic romance, which became popular
during this period. Supernatural elements can also be seen in Coleridge's
Kubla Khan', The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Keats' “La Belle Dame
Sans Merci.”
As no Romantic artist followed any strict set of rules or regulations, it is difficult
to define the characteristics of this movement accurately. Nevertheless, some
of these characteristics are reflected in the works of that period. Though many
writers and critics have called this movement "irrational", it cannot be denied
that it was an honest attempt to portray the world, especially the intricacies of
the human nature, in a paradigm-shifting way.
•"What is pantheism?"
Pantheism is the view that God is everything and everyone and that everyone and everything is God.
Pantheism is similar to polytheism (the belief in many gods), but goes beyond polytheism to teach that God
is everything and everywhere. Pantheism is the supposition behind many cults and false religions (e.g.,
Hinduism and Buddhism to an extent, the various unity and unification cults, and “mother nature”
worshippers).

Does the Bible teach pantheism? No, it does not. What many people confuse as pantheism is the doctrine
of God's omnipresence. Psalm 139:7-8 declares, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from
your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.”
God's omnipresence means He is present everywhere. There is no place in the universe where God is not
present. This is not the same thing as pantheism. God is everywhere, but He is not everything. Yes, God is
“present” inside a tree and inside a person, but that does not make that tree or person God. Pantheism is
not at all a biblical belief.

The clearest biblical arguments against pantheism are the countless commands against idolatry. The Bible
forbids the worship of idols, angels, celestial objects, items in nature, etc. If pantheism were true, it would
not be wrong to worship such an object, because that object would, in fact, be God. If pantheism were true,
worshipping a rock or an animal would have just as much validity as worshipping God as an invisible and
spiritual being. The Bible’s clear and consistent denunciation of idolatry is a conclusive argument against
pantheism.
• By its very nature, poetic imagery links human thoughts and emotions intimately with
the external world. Often it attributes human emotions to natural objects - what
Ruskin called the "pathetic fallacy". Typical is Samuel Johnson's description of
pastoral poetry as the kind "in which, among other things, clouds weep."
• Sometimes the world is distorted into the shape of a human emotion. Often it is the
world itself that shapes the emotion. Often - as in haiku - it is impossible to say which
precedes which: the external world is clearly and vividly perceived, yet the concrete
object is chosen to reflect the mood.
• Hence poetry has an implicit tendency towards pan-psychism - the feeling that soul
pervades all matter. The full development of this feeling is pantheism.
• This pantheistic tendency became explicit among the Romantics. Spinoza, long
neglected, had been revived in Germany by Lessing, and became widely known
through Lessing's public debate with Jacobi. The young Goethe read and liked
Spinoza. Coleridge, well acquainted with German culture, was probably the conduit
through which pantheism came to Britain (though John Toland was the first to
introduce the word).
• Coleridge himself could be described as pantheistic for only a few years, and
eventually reverted to trinitarian Christianity. Wordsworth was clearly a nature-
worshipping pantheist, but as the years passed and his fame grew, he introduced
more theistic tones into his work (and revised the Prelude in this spirit too).
• The younger generation of Romantics were more openly unorthodox. Keats
expressed his pantheist views in a letter to his brother and sister: it was a
melancholic, dualist kind of pantheism, of which little is openly visible in his poetry.
• Shelley is better known as an atheist than as a pantheist, but in his atheist tracts he
is careful not to exclude the idea of a universal spirit - an idea that makes his Ode to
the West Wind one of the most powerful poetic statements of pantheism.
• William Blake (1757-1827)
• To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
Auguries of Innocence
• Energy is the only life, and is from the Body; and Reason is the bound or
outward circumference of Energy. Energy is eternal delight …
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
God only Acts and Is, in existing beings or Men.
•[The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793)]
• William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
• A motion and a spirit that impels all things …

• And I have felt

a presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth …
[Tintern Abbey, 93-105 (1798)]
• John Keats (1795-1821)
• There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions...
• Call the world if you Please "The vale of Soul-making" .… I say "Soul making'' Soul
as distinguished from an Intelligence-There may be intelligences or sparks of the
divinity in millions--but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is
personally itself. I[n]telligences are atoms of perception --they know and they see
and they are pure, in short they are God --how then are Souls to be made? How
then are these sparks which are God to have identity given them--so as ever to
possess a bliss peculiar to each ones individual existence? How, but by the medium
of a world like this? This point I sincerely wish to consider because I think it a
grander system of salvation than the Christian religion -- or rather it is a system of
Spirit-creation--This is effected by three grand materials acting the one upon the
other for a series of years--These three Materials are the Intelligence--the human
heart (as distinguished from intelligence or Mind) and the World or Elemental space
suited for the proper action of Mind and Heart on each other for the purpose of
forming theSoul or Intelligence destined to possess the sense of Identity. … I will call
the world a School instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read--I will
call the human heart the horn Book used in that School--and I will call the Child able
to read, the Soul made from that school and its hornbook. Do you not see how
necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a
soul! A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways! … As
various as the Lives of Men are--so various become their souls, and thus does God
make individual beings, Souls, Identical Souls of the sparks of his own essence--
This appears to me faint sketch of a system of Salvation which does not affront our
reason and humanity.
• Letter to George and Georgiana Keats, 1819
• Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
• Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!
•
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
.....
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!
• … Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blossoms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!
....
• Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
• Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
• Ode to the West Wind, 1819