George Gordon Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats, who
produced their major works between 1810 to 1824, are regarded as
the second generation of English Romantics.
In 1798, with the publication of “Lyrical Ballads”, William
Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge gave official birth to the
Romantic Age in literature. The second edition of “Lyrical
Ballads”, published in 1800, contained a preface in which
Wordsworth stated the poetic principles that he and Coleridge
believed in: first, that ordinary life is
the best subject for poetry
because the feelings of simple people are sincere and natural;
second, that the everyday language of these people best conveys
their feelings and is therefore best suited to poetry; third, that the
expression of feeling is more important in poetry than the
development of an action,
or story; and finally, that “poetry is the spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings”. These principles were often challenged by other writers of Wordsworth’s day,
but, nevertheless, they served as a 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 Romantic poets were Lord Byron, Percy
Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats. Though highly different in personality and artistic temperament,
they were similarly intense, precocious, and tragically short-lived. During his brief lifetime, George
Gordon Byron, was the most popular poet abroad as well as at home and also the most scandalous.
He was reckless, bitter, in constant revolt against society and devoted to the cause of freedom and
liberty. Shelley, too, like Byron was rebellious and scandalous. In his poems revolted against
tyranny, he believed that the church and state commerce, as organized and conducted in his time,
led
to superstition, selfishness and corruption. That’s why some literary critics call them
Revolutionary Romantics.
Romanticism represented an attempt to rediscover the mystery and wonder of the world.
Romanticists made emotion, and not reason, the chief force of their works. This emotion found its
expression chiefly in poetry.
Some poets were seized with panic and an irresistible desire to get away from the present.
They wished to call back “the good old days”, the time long before the mines and factories came,
when people worked on “England’s green and pleasant land”. These poets are sometimes called the
Passive Romanticists. They spoke for the English farmers and Scottish peasants who were ruined by
the Industrial Revolution. They idealized the patriarchal way of life during the Middle ages, a
period that seemed to them harmonious and peaceful. Their motto was: “Close to Nature and from
Nature to God”, because they believed that religion put man at peace with the world.
The poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey belonged to
this group. They were also called the Lake Poets after the Lake District in the north-west of
England where they lived. The Lake District attracted the poets because industry had not yet
invaded this part of the country.
In the poetry of all romantic poets there is a sense of wonder, of life seen with new
sensibilities and fresh vision. This strangeness of the individual experience
leads each of the
romantics to a spiritual loneliness. They are keenly aware of their social obligations, but the burden
of an exceptional vision of life drives them into being almost fugitives from their fellow-men. This
sense, present in them all, can be found most strongly in Shelley, “who seems even more content
amid the dead leaves, the moonlit water, and the ghosts, than in the places where men inhabit”. The
romantic poets lead the reader to the strange areas of human experience, but seldom welcome him
in the language of ordinary conversation, or even with the currency of normality.
Drama
did not flourish during the Romantic Age. The main type of drama produced at that
period was simplistic, in which all the poor are good and all the rich are evil. Some of the leading
Romantic poets wrote so called
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