Romantic Literature

• The Romantic period started from the 18th century until the 19th century.
• There are two phases:

  1. First Phase - Brought by Authors

  • William Wordsworth

  • Samuel Coleridge

  • William Blake

  Second Phase - Focused more on culture and

  folklores

  • Mary Shelly
• During the Romantic period, ideas were conveyed of sentiments and sentimentally, an imaginative or idealistic lack of reality. It was also considered as an artistic, literary and intellectual movement.
• The Romantic period was characterized as partly a revolt against aristocratic, social and political norms of Enlightenment Period. It was a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature in art and literature.
• It emphasized in intuition, imagination and feeling. Romantic period. concentrated on the subjective, the irrational, the spontaneous, and the emotional. Imagination provided freedom from traditional forms of art.
• There are two categories during the Romantic Period:

  1. Tales of chivalric adventures where the plot emphasized an individual here;

  2. Tales of mysterious, the use of strange and the terrifying.
• Lyrical Ballads were famous in the Romantic period. Lyrical Ballads entailed the imaginative, the subjectivity freedom of thought, expression and the idealization of nature.
• The Romantic period was a time of great revolutions. Passion, not reason, ruled the way.
• Love of Nature - Emotions and instinct became more important than reason.
• Love of the Common Man - The social and economic classes were disparaged, or put down. An era of revolutions opened when the governments were overthrown, due to the fact that it often seemed to require elimination of social classes.
• Neo-Classicism - A return to the Classic ideals of: clearness, elegance, symmetry and repose produced by attention to traditional forms.
• Strange and Faraway places - The love of exotic locations around the world and in time and space.
• The Supernatural – Fascination with the supernatural was a characteristic of the Romantic period.
• Nationalism - Using of scenes from their country's life, history. Folk-tales and legends as a basis for operas, songs, literature and symphonic poems.
• Heroism –Heroism is the overcoming of our natural fears and limitations to achieve great things.