CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL PERIOD

RENAISSANCE OF WONDER – It implies the element of childlike wonder which had been repressed by the reason and common sense during the eighteenth century but was present in the Elizabethan Age. This sense of wonder was inspired by two forces:

1.   Literary and artistic discovery of the Middle Ages, of its faith, picturesqueness, and its simplicity.

2.   The revival of interest in the supernatural.

Many saw in medievalism a richer inspiration for the mysterious forces. They therefore turned away from the modern condition of life to the folklore and legends of the middle ages.

The revival of interest in the supernatural and the abnormal, in the wild and savage aspects of nature, in things remote from the familiar scenes of everyday life introduced an element of mysticism in the romantic spirit.

Crompton Rickett in ‘The History of English Literature’ observes the subtle sense of mystery is found on analysis, to be a complex emotion compounded of awe in the presence of the unknown, wonder int eh presence of the known and an exquisite response to manifestations of beauty wherever they may be found.

Poets like Coleridge and Keats were struck with a sense of wonder at the supernatural world. Coleridge was extraordinary, alive to the wonder and mystery of his world. The world of ghosts and spirits were more real to him than the world of men, the supernatural excitement and he conveyed his sense of wonder through his poetry.

His poem ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ illustrates Coleridge’s sense of mystery very effectively. His treatment of the supernatural is refined, suggestive and psychological. He presented the supernatural in such a way that it appeared natural.

Keats has given us a good account of his delicate feeling of wonder through the element of the supernatural in his short poem ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’.

Walter Scott, Coleridge and Keats also satisfied their emotional sense of wonder by transporting themselves to the middle ages. The Middle Ages was a period of faith, superstition, magic, chivalry, adventure and pageantry.

These wonderful aspects of medieval life cast a spell on writers who drew upon them to create the effect of wonder. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner substantiates the truth of the fact.

In Wordsworth the renaissance of wonder is of a different variety. Wordsworth strives to evoke a sense of wonder from nature and elemental simplicities of life. He tears open the façade of familiarity and shows the reader the wonder and history lurking behind the familiar objects of nature and human life. He does not present nature realistically but cast over it a certain coloring of his imagination. The result is that common objects like a violet, a cuckoo, a solitary reaper, a leech gatherer, become objects of wonder.

IMAGINATION – The main spring of the Romantic Revival period

For the Romantics of the early nineteenth century imagination is fundamental because they thought that without imagination, poetry was impossible. The belief in the imagination was part of the belief in the individual self. The romantic writers were conscious of a wonderful capacity to create imaginary world’s and they did not believe that these imaginary worlds were false. They realized that the power of poetry was strongest when the imagination worked without any checks.

The emphasis on imagination was strengthened by two considerations:

Religious consideration: In the early eighteenth century with its scientific reasoning the people came to the conclusion that God existed in the universe. But to the Romantics of the early nineteenth century religion was a matter of feeling rather than that of reasoning, of experience rather than that of argument.

Metaphysical consideration: The eighteenth century because of its emphasis on reason and common sense did not believe in matters which went beyond physical reality. They were realists and therefore could not appreciate the spiritual reality of existence. But the romantics were interested in looking through the film of familiarity and believing in the mystery of even familiar objects.

William Blake said, ‘The world of imagination is the world of eternity. Imagination for Blake was nothing less than a God as he operated in a human soul. The romantics were therefore concerned with the things of the spirit. All romantic poets, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, maintain that the created imagination was closely connected with a peculiar insight into an unseen order (beyond) behind miserable things.

RETURN TO NATURE: Ancient passion for nature is a characteristic of romanticism. This love for nature was stimulated by Rousseau’s clarion call ‘Return to Nature’ to his countrymen. Rousseau’s ‘back to nature’ stance reveals three motives:

1.   Man must love external nature because it is most human. Man must love not just world’s flowers and animals but also the rocks, mountains, waterfalls, etc.

2.   Nature strengthens the primary instincts of man like brotherhood, generosity of mind, joy, affection, sorrow, etc.

3.   The state of nature will awaken in each man consciousness of his own rights and duties.

He considered nature as an inexhaustible source of knowledge and mans best teacher. He heard in nature ‘The Sad Still Music of Humanity’.

If Wordsworth spiritualized nature, Coleridge who turned to the metaphysical aspect succeeded in making the supernatural natural. Coleridge turned to the middle ages in which he found convenient refuge for man from, ‘The Weariness, the Fever and the Fret’ of civilization.

To Shelly nature appears to be animated by a spirit of love. He loves the majestic aspects of nature such as rocks, mountains, caves, starry sky, that holds out a promise to mankind. ‘If winter comes, can spring be far behind?’

Keats personified nature and his personification has clearest of outline, firmness, and solidity of a Greek sculpture. His attitude towards nature is thus Hellenic.

REVOLT AGAINST THE NEO-CLASSICAL AUGUSTAN SCHOOL OF POETRY – The romantic revival movement of the early nineteenth century registered a revolt against the neo-classical tradition established by Dryden and Waller and brought to perfection by Alexander Pope in the eighteenth century.

The poets of the eighteenth-century disregarded inspiration. The eighteenth century had as its watch word ‘reason’ and not ‘fantasy’. It wished to understand, not to imagine. If there was any emotion, it seemed to it suspect, bordering on madness, and it was disregarded. But it was regarded as inspiration to the romantics. Literature of the eighteenth century therefore appeared like a well-bred elderly gentleman of polished but somewhat chilling manners, meeting all warmth of feeling with the frost of etiquette. The spirit of the eighteenth century may well be summed up in what Alexander Pope the high priest of Neo Classism maintained in his ‘Essay on Criticism’.

‘Know then thyself, presume not God to scan

The proper study of mankind is Man’.

But the romantics like Wordsworth believed in inspiration in a divine drunkenness. They revolted against the dominance of reason and responded to the phenomenal world with the heightened sensibility and extraordinary spontaneity. Such an emphasis on imagination coupled with emotion made these Romantics escapists.

The romantic revival movement was a revolt not only against the subject matter of neo classical poetry, but also against its poetic diction. The poets of the eighteenth century were too polite to be natural. Poetic art came to consist of clever manipulation of conventional language, common to all writers. The language of poetry had become very artificial, entirely removed from the language in which the soul of man would naturally express its emotions. The words for e.g., had to be spoken off as ‘the feathery choir’, the fish as ‘the finny tribe’, the sun as ‘Phoebus’, the peasants as ‘swains’.

The romantic poets revolted against this poetic jargon and this mechanical regularity of the heroic couplet. It boldly asserted the right of each individual to depend on his own inspiration, to see things entirely for himself, to utter his own thoughts and feelings after his own manner and thus seek different modes of expression. Thus, the romantics revolted against ‘convention and artifice’ and advocated ‘nature and art’. Romantic poet was as Wordsworth asserted, a man speaking to men.

PASSION FOR MEDIEVALISM – REMOTE IN TIME AND PLACE – This passion, this yearning for the past has psychological reasons. The romantics of the early nineteenth century, in revolt against custom and tradition, turned away from the present and became amorous of the past. They sought to escape from familiar experience and from the limitations of the world of reality and took delight in the marvelous and picturesque.

The art and culture of the middle ages as well as their primitive morality fascinated the romantic. They regarded the middle ages with a fresh sympathy although not with an accurate understanding. The middle ages offered to poets like Coleridge and Keats a spiritual home, remote and mysterious. Walter Scott too was attracted by the chivalry and pageantry of the middle ages.

EXUBERANT INTELLECTUAL CURIOSITY – The poetry of romantic revival movement along with aesthetic emotion makes evident the intellectual power in the poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelly. Wordsworth’s poetic theory, Shelly’s transcendentalism, Coleridge’s poetic thought embodied in Biographia Literaria to reveal the intellectual side of the romantic movement.

The early nineteenth century saw a rise of the great school of Shakespearean Critics – Coleridge, Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt. Romantic criticism gave rise to the cult of revealing beauties and merits in a work of art instead of demerits. To this critical approach the interpretation of great writers were colored with the creative imagination of the Romantic critic.

The speculative and inquisitive turn of the mind is manifest in the variety of magazines and the rise of political journalism. A large number of periodicals came to be published. For e.g., The Morning Chronicle, The Morning Post, etc.

The literary magazines were The Edinburgh Review, The Quaterly Review, etc., helped to establish literary criticism firmly. The historical method of criticism started by Coleridge, brought a radical change in the field of literary criticism. Romantic criticism became both intellectual and imaginative – intellectual in its form and imaginative in its inner souls of literature.