Characteristics of the Romantic Age

Experimentation with Poetic Form

When we read the Romantics now, they seem old-fashioned. They say things like,  “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” To the modern ear, this stuff can seem pretty old school. But actually, the Romantics were groundbreaking in terms of challenging poetic tradition. What the early Romantics—especially William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge—wanted to do was revolutionize the way poetry was written. They wanted to make poetry conversational. They set out to write poems that used the language of ordinary speech, but which were still beautiful and poetic. This was the big project of Lyrical Ballads, the collection of poetry by Wordsworth and Coleridge that marked the beginning of the Romantic period.

Nature in Romanticism

The Romantics had a huge crush on nature. They loved trees, flowers, mountains, clouds, crags, birds, etc. As long as it was outdoors, they loved it. In nature, the Romantics found inspiration for their poetry, wisdom, and straight-up happiness. If we went to the Romantics with a diagnosis of depression, they’d tell us: “Forget meds; take a walk in the park. Hug a tree. Talk to a bird. All you need is a little green.” Part of the Romantics’ obsession with nature had to do with the fact that they were living and writing at the time of the Industrial Revolution. In the big cities, factories were springing up everywhere, and mechanized manufacturing processes were changing society. People were moving further and further away from nature. So the Romantics took it upon themselves to remind everyone of the importance of nature.

Emotion in Romanticism

The Romantics were a sentimental lot. A flower could move them to tears. An old Greek urn could set them brooding for hours. These writers were flat-out obsessed with feelings. In fact, one of the most famous definitions of poetry is the one that William Wordsworth, the father of British Romanticism, gave us. He said that poetry is the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” The Romantics’ obsession with emotions has to do with what they were reacting against. Remember that Romanticism followed on the heels of the Enlightenment, an intellectual movement of the 17th and early 18th centuries that emphasized reason above emotion, rationality above irrationality. The Romantics didn’t agree with the Enlightenment point of view. Of course, our feelings count, they said. Of course, we can’t always behave rationally. To be human is to be emotional, irrational, and moody, for crying out loud. After all, we are humans, not robots.

Ruins and Relics of the Ancient Past in Romanticism

The Romantics loved to brood. They liked to sit, hunched over, clothes all disheveled, chin on hand, frowning, and thinking about Time. How quickly it goes by, how mysterious it is. It’s not surprising that they loved some ruins. There’s nothing the Romantics loved more than a crumbling building or an excavated vase from who knows how long ago. They loved sitting there and thinking about how these fragments from the past could tell us something about our own times…or tell us nothing at all. Romantics were especially obsessed with Greek and Roman ruins.

Rebellion in Romanticism

The Romantics weren’t conformists. No, they would be the kids in high school who wear strange clothes, listen to underground music, and don’t hang out with anyone else. They’re not trying to fit in with the cool crowd; on the contrary, they sneer at everything that everyone else considers “cool” or “hip” because they have their own, extremely sophisticated, standard of coolness. And one of the Romantics’ standards of coolness was to go against the grain. The Romantics didn’t want to be constrained by social, literary, or political conventions. They believed, above all else, in being true to their own individuality.

Sense and Sensuality in Romantics

We’ll find tons of sensory detail when we read Romantic writing: lots of sounds sights, smells, and tastes. The Romantics are really into exploring the world through the five senses. Because of that, their writing is sensual. They get pretty excited when talking about nature because they are really into the body and how it perceives and interacts with its environment. While the Enlightenment emphasized the mind, the Romantics were all about the body, baby.

Sublime in Romanticism

“Sublime” is one slippery term. According to the Romantics, we experience the sublime when we’re out in nature. But not just any nature—we have to be facing nature at its grandest, it is most awe-inspiring. Think big mountains, crazy deep valleys, a huge thunderstorm with lightning striking everywhere. What happens when we are confronted with nature at its grandest is that we are both terrified and uplifted all at once. It’s a hard feeling to describe.

The sublime was so important to the Romantics because (1) they loved nature and anything having to do with nature, and (2) they believed that the sublime transcended the rational. The feelings of awe and terror evoked by the sublime are beyond words and the emotions that the sublime creates overwhelm rational thought. When that big thunderstorm hits, we are terrified and excited, we’re laughing and we’re crying. We’re a whole mess of very powerful emotions. Think of it this way:

Nature + powerful emotion = the Sublime.

The French Revolution in Romanticism

The French Revolution had huge repercussions not only in France but all over Europe. It was a time of huge social and political transformation, which was pretty inspiring to the Romantics, who valued individuality and freedom and rebelled against the social and literary conventions of their day.

The Industrial Revolution in Romanticism

The Industrial Revolution, like the French Revolution, brought about lots of changes at the time that the Romantic poets began writing. More and more people were moving to the cities to work in factories, new manufacturing processes were being put in place, and people were moving further and further away from nature. The Romantics weren’t very enthusiastic about these changes—they were especially concerned about people moving away from nature. And so the Romantic movement was a movement against industrialization and mechanization.