The Romantic Period

Romantic Poets/Poetry

• It is a mistake to think of the Romantics as “nature poets.”
• Rather, these poets were “mind poets” who sought a deeper understanding of the bond between human beings and the world of the senses.

Romantic Poets/Poetry

• Their search led them to a third, more mysterious element present in both the mind and nature….this element is a creative power that makes things happen…this power is the IMAGINATION.
• The Romantics thought this superior to human reasoning.

Romantic Poets/Poetry

• Each of the Romantics had his or her own special view of the imagination.
• However, all of them believed that the imagination could be stimulated by both nature and the mind itself.
• These poets had a strong sense of nature’s mysterious forces, which both inspire the poet and hint at the causes of great changes taking place in the world.

Romantic Poets/Poetry

• Romantic poems usually present imaginative experiences as very powerful or moving.
• This suggests that the human imagination is also a kind of desire - a motive that drives the mind to discover things that it cannot learn by rational or logical thinking.

Romantic Poets/Poetry

• In the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth makes it clear that the poet is special: the poet is “endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness…a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind.”
• All Romantic poets described the ‘poet’ in such lofty terms.

Romantic Poets/Poetry

• For example: (differing poets views of the poet)
• William Blake held the poet to be the bard, an inspired revealer and teacher.
• Coleridge thought the poet “brings the whole soul of man into activity” by employing “that synthetic and magical power…that imagination.”
• Shelley called poets “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
• Keats wrote that a poet is a “physician” to all humanity and “pours out a balm upon the world.”

Romantic Poets/Poetry

• Thus, the Romantics saw the poet as someone human beings and society cannot do without.
• Romantics saw a very special place for the poet or the artist in society…they saw poets in a role similar to that of a priest, teacher, or master.
• In the Romantic view, the poet functions as a sort of spiritual guide to the inner realms of intuition.

Romantic Poets/Poetry

• Overall, in the Romantic period, poetry was no longer used to make complex arguments in a witty, polished style. Romantic poets used unadorned language to explore the significance of commonplace subjects, the beauty of nature, and the power of human imagination.