Theme: the first stage of english romanticism

The previous lecture concerned the poets, whom we may call the forerunners of Romanticism. But the real flourishing of this literary trend, the real Romantic Age came with the 19^th century.
Romanticism is opposed to the reasonable, calm and classical period of the 17^th -18^th centuries. This new trend is irrational, agitated, dubious and troubled. If the cakthrough was inevitable sooner or later, and it came sooner owing to the extraordinary influence of the 18^th century man of genious, a Swiss philosopher and writer who worked mostly in France –Jean-Jacques Rouseau. It will not be exaggeration to say that his ideas hurried on both the French Revolution and the whole Romantic movement.
It should be noted that Romanticism was a European movement, though it did not succeed in all countries at the same time. It was seen first in Germany, then in England, then in Russia and then belatedly but brilliantly, in France as late as 1830. It’s main influence on both North and South America was later still.
As a period in English literature, Romanticism can be said to extend from about 1798 (which marks the publication of Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s “Lyrical Ballads”) to the mid – 1830’s, when Queen Victoria began her reign and most of the Romantic poets had died.
There is a poet, though writing in the age of reason, but referred to Romantic poets. William Blake. He was a religious mystic in the age of reason, a unique creator who ignored the strict poetic rules of the classicists to follow his own original style. Born in a poor family, Blake received practically no formal education though he attended a drawing school. Later he illustrated not only his own poems, but Milton’s “Paradise Lost”, Dante’s “Divine comedy” and even the Bible. All his life Blake devoted himself to expressing his mystical faith, and his version of a heavenly world. The delicate images and fancifulness of his earlier poems appealed to the later Romantic poets. Compare his two poems in which the author passes questions and speaks symbolically of the power of God and Nature.

“The lamb”, “The lamb the tiger”.

Unable to find a publisher for his further works, Blake started to engrave his own works on copper, texts as well as illustrations, thus coming simultaneously as poet, artist and printer. He thus remained independent of the taste of the market. In this way he printed in 1789 his songs of Innocence, which revealed his mysticism.
Depending his creative independence, Blake lived in poverty. he gladly welcomed the French bourgeois revolution, devoting to it his poem “The French Revolution”. In it he justified the overthrowing of tyranny.
The song of Innocence include the best of Blake’s lyric poems. They express his optimism and his utopian viewpoint. There is no direct reasoning in these songs. Blake expresses his admiration for the unselfconscious innocence of the infant. The playful infant is presented as a model of contemporary humankind and a symbol of its future: