Romantic literature

See also: Romantic poetry

Francisco Goya, The Third of May 1808, 1814

In literature, Romanticism found recurrent themes in the evocation or criticism of the

past, the cult of "sensibility" with its emphasis on women and children, the heroic
isolation of the artist or narrator, and respect for a new, wilder, untrammeled and "pure"
nature. Furthermore, several romantic authors, such as Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel
Hawthorne, based their writings on the supernatural/occult and human psychology.
Romanticism also helped in the emergence of new ideas and in the process led to the
emergence of positive voices that were beneficial for the marginalized sections of the
society.

The Scottish poet James Macpherson influenced the early development of Romanticism
with the international success of his Ossian cycle of poems published in 1762, inspiring
both Goethe and the young Walter Scott.

An early German influence came from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose 1774 novel
The Sorrows of Young Werther had young men throughout Europe emulating its
protagonist, a young artist with a very sensitive and passionate temperament. At that time
Germany was a multitude of small separate states, and Goethe's works would have a
seminal influence in developing a unifying sense of nationalism. Another philosophic
influence came from the German idealism of Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich
Schelling, making Jena (where Fichte lived, as well as Schelling, Hegel, Schiller and the
brothers Schlegel) a center for early German romanticism ("Jenaer Romantik"). Important
writers were Ludwig Tieck, Novalis (Heinrich von Ofterdingen, 1799), Heinrich von
Kleist and Friedrich Hoelderlin. Heidelberg later became a center of German
romanticism, where writers and poets such as Clemens Brentano, Achim von Arnim, and
Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff met regularly in literary circles. Important motifs in
German Romanticism are travelling, nature, and ancient myths. The later German
Romanticism of, for example, E. T. A. Hoffmann's Der Sandmann (The Sandman), 1817,
and Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff's Das Marmorbild (The Marble Statue), 1819, was
darker in its motifs and has gothic elements.
J.M.W. Turner, The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up, 1839

In Spain, the Romantic movement developed a well-known literature with a huge variety
of poets and playwrights. The most important Spanish poet during this movement was
José de Espronceda. After him there were other poets like Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer,
Mariano José de Larra and the dramatist José Zorrilla, author of Don Juan Tenorio.
Before them may be mentioned the pre-romantics José Cadalso and Manuel José
Quintana.

Spanish Romanticism also influenced regional literatures. For example, in Catalonia and
in Galicia there was a national boom of writers in the local languages, like the Catalan
Jacint Verdaguer and the Galician Rosalía de Castro, the main figures of the national
revivalist movements Renaixença and Rexurdimento, respectively.

Brazilian Romanticism is characterized and divided in three different periods. The first
one is basically focused in the creation of a sense of national identity, using the ideal of
the heroic Indian. Some examples include José de Alencar, who wrote "Iracema" and "O
Guarani", and Gonçalves Dias, renowned by the poem "Canção do Exílio" (Song of the
Exile). The second period is marked by a profound influence of European themes and
traditions, involving the melancholy, sadness and despair related to unobtainable love.
Goethe and Lord Byron are commonly quoted in these works. The third cycle is marked
by social poetry, especially the abolitionist movement; the greatest writer of this period is
Castro Alves.

Romanticism in British literature developed in a different form slightly later, mostly

associated with the poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose co-
authored book Lyrical Ballads (1798) sought to reject Augustan poetry in favour of more
direct speech derived from folk traditions. Both poets were also involved in utopian
social thought in the wake of the French Revolution. The poet and painter William Blake
is the most extreme example of the Romantic sensibility in Britain, epitomised by his
claim “I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's.” Blake's artistic work is
also strongly influenced by Medieval illuminated books. The painters J. M. W. Turner
and John Constable are also generally associated with Romanticism. Lord Byron, Percy
Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley and John Keats constitute another phase of Romanticism
in Britain.
Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People 1830

In predominantly Roman Catholic countries Romanticism was less pronounced than in

Germany and Britain, and tended to develop later, after the rise of Napoleon. François-
René de Chateaubriand is often called the "Father of French Romanticism". In France, the
movement is associated with the nineteenth century, particularly in the paintings of
Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix, the plays, poems and novels of Victor Hugo
(such as Les Misérables and Ninety-Three), and the novels of Stendhal.

Modern Portuguese poetry definitely develops its outstanding character from the work of
its Romantic epitome, Almeida Garrett, a very prolific writer who helped shape the genre
with the masterpiece Folhas Caídas (1853). This late arrival of a truly personal Romantic
style would linger on to the beginning of the 20th century, notably through the works of
poets such as Cesário Verde and António Nobre, segueing seamlessly to Modernism.
However, an early Portuguese expression of Romanticism is found already in the genius
of Manuel Maria Barbosa du Bocage, especially in his sonnets dated at the end of the
18th century.

In Russia, the principal exponent of Romanticism is Alexander Pushkin. Mikhail

Lermontov attempted to analyse and bring to light the deepest reasons for the Romantic
idea of metaphysical discontent with society and self, and was much influenced by Lord
Byron. The poet Fyodor Tyutchev was also an important figure of the movement in
Russia, and was heavily influenced by the German Romantics.

Théodore Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1819.

In the United States, romantic Gothic literature made an early appearance with
Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820) and Rip Van Winkle (1819),
followed from 1823 onwards by the Leatherstocking Tales of James Fenimore Cooper,
with their emphasis on heroic simplicity and their fervent landscape descriptions of an
already-exotic mythicized frontier peopled by "noble savages", similar to the
philosophical theory of Rousseau, exemplified by Uncas, from The Last of the Mohicans.
There are picturesque "local color" elements in Washington Irving's essays and especially
his travel books. Edgar Allan Poe's tales of the macabre and his balladic poetry were
more influential in France than at home, but the romantic American novel developed
fully in Nathaniel Hawthorne's atmosphere and melodrama. Later Transcendentalist
writers such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson still show elements of
its influence and imagination, as does the romantic realism of Walt Whitman. But by the
1880s, psychological and social realism was competing with romanticism in the novel.
The poetry of Emily Dickinson—nearly unread in her own time—and Herman Melville's
novel Moby-Dick can be taken as epitomes of American Romantic literature.

[edit] Influence of European Romanticism on American writers

The European Romantic movement reached America in the early nineteenth century.
American Romanticism was just as multifaceted and individualistic as it was in Europe.
[citation needed]

...Romantics frequently shared certain general characteristics: moral enthusiasm, faith in

the value of individualism and intuitive perception, and a presumption that the natural
world is a source of goodness and human society a source of corruption.[citation needed]

Romanticism became popular in American politics, philosophy and art. The movement
appealed to the revolutionary spirit of America as well as to those longing to break free of
the strict religious traditions of early settlement. The Romantics rejected rationalism and
religious intellect. It appealed to those in opposition of Calvinism, which involved the
belief that the universe and all the events within it are subject to the power of God. The
Romantic movement gave rise to New England Transcendentalism which portrayed a less
restrictive relationship between God and Universe. The new religion presented the
individual with a more personal relationship with God. Transcendentalism and
Romanticism appealed to Americans in a similar fashion.

As a moral philosophy, transcendentalism was neither logical nor systemized. It exalted

feeling over reason, individual expression over the restraints of law and custom. It
appealed to those who disdained the harsh God of their Puritan ancestors, and it appealed
to those who scorned the pale deity of New England Unitarianism....[]...They spoke for
cultural rejuvenation and against the materialism of American society. They believed in
the transcendence of the "Oversoul", an all-pervading power for goodness from which all
things come and of which all things are parts.[citation needed]

American Romance embraced the individual and rebelled against the confinement of
neoclassicism and religious tradition. The Romantic movement in America created a new
literary genre that continues to influence modern writers. Novels, short stories, and
poems began to take the place of the sermons and manifestos that were associated with
the early American literary principals. Romantic literature was personal, intense, and
portrayed more emotion than ever seen in neoclassical literature. America's
preoccupation with freedom became a great source of motivation for Romantic writers as
many were delighted in free expression and emotion without so much fear of ridicule and
controversy. They also put more effort into the psychological development of their
characters. "Heroes and heroines exhibited extremes of sensitivity and excitement"[citation
needed]
William Blake (28 November 1757–12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and
printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal
figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic
poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of
poetry in the English language".[1] His visual artistry has led one contemporary art critic
to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced".[2] Although
he lived in London his entire life except for three years spent in Felpham[3] he produced
a diverse and symbolically rich corpus, which embraced the imagination as "the body of
God",[4] or "Human existence itself".[5]

Considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is held in high
regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and
mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterized
as part of both the Romantic movement and "Pre-Romantic",[6] for its large appearance
in the 18th century. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England, Blake
was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American revolutions,[7] as
well as by such thinkers as Jakob Böhme and Emanuel Swedenborg.[8]

Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to
classify. The 19th century scholar William Rossetti characterised Blake as a "glorious
luminary,"[9] and as "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with
contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors."[10]

Historian Peter Marshall has classified Blake as one of the forerunners of modern
anarchism, along with Blake's contemporary William Godwin.[11]Contents [hide]

[edit]
Early life

The archetype of the Creator is a familiar image in Blake's work. Here, the demiurgic
figure Urizen prays before the world he has forged. The Song of Los is the third in a
series of illuminated books painted by Blake and his wife, collectively known as the
Continental Prophecies.

William Blake was born in 28 Broad Street, London, England on 28 November 1757, to a
middle-class family. He was the third of seven children,[12][13] two of whom died in
infancy. Blake's father, James, was a hosier.[13] William did not attend school, and was
educated at home by his mother Catherine Wright Armitage Blake.[14] The Blakes were
Dissenters, and are believed to have belonged to the Moravian Church. The Bible was an
early and profound influence on Blake, and would remain a source of inspiration
throughout his life.

Blake started engraving copies of drawings of Greek antiquities purchased for him by his
father, a practice that was then preferred to actual drawing. Within these drawings Blake
found his first exposure to classical forms through the work of Raphael, Michelangelo,
Marten Heemskerk and Albrecht Dürer. His parents knew enough of his headstrong
temperament that he was not sent to school but was instead enrolled in drawing classes.
He read avidly on subjects of his own choosing. During this period, Blake was also
making explorations into poetry; his early work displays knowledge of Ben Jonson and
Edmund Spenser.
Later life and career

Blake's marriage to Catherine remained a close and devoted one until his death. Blake
taught Catherine to write, and she helped him to colour his printed poems.[30] Gilchrist
refers to "stormy times" in the early years of the marriage.[31] Some biographers have
suggested that Blake tried to bring a concubine into the marriage bed in accordance with
the beliefs of the Swedenborgian Society,[32] but other scholars have dismissed these
theories as conjecture.[33] William and Catherine's first daughter and last child might be
Thel described in The Book of Thel who was conceived as dead.[34]
[edit]
Felpham

Hecate, 1795. Blake's vision of Hecate, Greek goddess of black magic and the
underworld

In 1800, Blake moved to a cottage at Felpham in Sussex (now West Sussex) to take up a
job illustrating the works of William Hayley, a minor poet. It was in this cottage that
Blake began Milton: a Poem (the title page is dated 1804 but Blake continued to work on
it until 1808). The preface to this work includes a poem beginning "And did those feet in
ancient time", which became the words for the anthem, "Jerusalem". Over time, Blake
came to resent his new patron, coming to believe that Hayley was uninterested in true
artistry, and preoccupied with "the meer drudgery of business" (E724). Blake's
disenchantment with Hayley has been speculated to have influenced Milton: a Poem, in
which Blake wrote that "Corporeal Friends are Spiritual Enemies" (4:26, E98).

Blake's trouble with authority came to a head in August 1803, when he was involved in a
physical altercation with a soldier called John Schofield.[35] Blake was charged not only
with assault, but also with uttering seditious and treasonable expressions against the
King. Schofield claimed that Blake had exclaimed, "Damn the king. The soldiers are all
slaves."[36] Blake would be cleared in the Chichester assizes of the charges. According
to a report in the Sussex county paper, "The invented character of [the evidence] was ...
so obvious that an acquittal resulted."[37] Schofield was later depicted wearing "mind
forged manacles" in an illustration to Jerusalem.[38]