1.two Generations of Romantic Poets

Two Generations of Romantic Poets
In Britain Romanticism took the shape of a reaction against the excesses of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic
Wars and the Industrial Revolution: for this reason it gave voice to the need to re-evaluate the role of nature against
progress and civilisation. The “Preface” by William Wordsworth marked the birth of English Romanticism. It contains
the definition of the main traits of British Romanticism, which are:
 A predominant role played by nature, seen as the ideal place for man to live;
 A subsequent distrust in progress;
 The use of imagination for understanding the beauty of the universe and the truth;
 A rejection of all the conventions of Neoclassical poetry in favour of a more spontaneous form of poetry;
 An accent on feelings and emotions;
 The idea that poetry can express and create truth;
 A totally new interest in the inner world of the self.
English Romantic poets can be divided into two main groups:
1. The First Generation of Romantics, who focused on common life and gave importance to imagination;
2. The Second Generation of Romantics, who embodied the ideal of the poeta s a rebel and a bohemian.
The peculiarities of the Romantic movement can be fully appreciated if they are compared with the features of
Neoclassicism, which Romantic authors tend to reject. The most significant differences regars:
 Themes: classicists focus on universal themes, while Romantics tackle a variety of themes such as the
individual and his role in the universe: childhood, nature, the role of imagination, contemporary social and
historical issues.
 Types of poem: Classicists tend to use long poetic forms, while Romantics tend to write short poems, ballads,
narrative poems and romances;
 Poetic forms: Classicists tend to use heroic couplets, while Romantics tend to use blank verse;
 Language: Classicists use highly ornate and artifical diction, while Romantics use mainly everyday language;
 The concept of beauty: for Classicists beauty is harmony, the balance between different parts, while for
Romantics beauty is associated with the sublime.
The two main authors of the First Generation of Romantic Poets were William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge. They were united by the fact that their poems were published in a collected volume called Lyrical Ballads,
which was published in 1798. Wordsworth’s poems focus on the depiction of humble, rustic life and are characterised
by emotions recollected in tranquillity. His poems followed three steps: first the poet feels emotions in nature and
freezes them in his mind. Second, the poet recollects this emotions in the tranquillity of his home. Third, the poet uses
words to express his emotion. In this sense the poet is a creator, because his poetry is the re-creation of an emotion.
Coleridge’s works are pervaded by mysterious characters and supernatural events. His The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner is a long poem surprended in a dreamlike atmosphere.
We can say that Coleridge was the poet of the supernatural and Wordsworth was the poet of nature.
The poets of the Second Generation were very different: Percy Bysshe Shelley, for example, was a poet who embodied
political rebellion and a particular kind of visionary mysticism; Lord Byron’s poetry gave voice to a sense of rejection of
social conventions and moral limitations; John Keats explored the nature of sensations and beauty. They all left their
coutry because of an attraction for Italy, and they all died very young.
Lord Byron embodied all the mythical qualities of the Romantic poet: he was a rebel, he was passionate, he
comdemned social hypocrisy and he fought for freedom. All of these qualities were essential traits of the Byronic
hero, a typical character named after Byron himself. Byron’s poem took inspiration from author such as Dryden and
Pope and were often characterised by a strong satirical tone and by the attempt to criticise social conventions.
Percy Bysshe Shelley was a rebel and criticised many of the conventions of his age. He was an atheist and believed the
poet was a prophet and had the powe and the moral duty to change the world. His poems celebrate happiness and
freedom and give voice to people’s desire to free themselves from the oppression of old institutions.
John Keats’ poetry reflected the troubles of his author: his family tragedies, financial problems, sad love affairs, and
his death at the age of 25. His poems represented a costant meditation on the concept of beauty, love, death and
morality. Keats reaffirmed the primary role of beauty in a world dominated by economic interest and material issues.
His Ode on a Grecian Urn is one of the most famous English Romantic poems and is a praise of beauty as an eternal
value and an immortal ethical value.
From the literary point of view the two generations have many features in common: the concept of the role of the
poet, the emphasis on the cognitive power of imagination, individualism, the aspiration ti the Absolute. But with the
second generation there was a return to more complex forms of versification, the language became richer ,and many
poems showed a new interest in the world of ancient Greece.
The critical term that came to include most of the new ideas about art and human perception was the sublime. It was
made popular by Edmund Burke’s treatise, A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and
Beautiful. “Beautiful” means harmony, whereas “sublime” indicates strenght, irregularity and fear. In the pre-
Romantic sensibility there was a predilection for night, darkness and death; the cult of ruins; an interest in medieval
and northern literature and folklore. Most of these tendences and interest came to be called Gothic.

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Two Generations of Romantic Poets

English Romantic poets can be divided into two main groups:

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