Romantic poetry
Romantic poetry is the poetry of the Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. It involved a reaction against prevailing Enlightenment ideas of the 18th century,[1] and lasted approximately from 1800 to 1850.[2][3] Romantic poets rebelled against the style of poetry from the eighteenth century which was based around epics, odes, satires, elegies, epistles and songs.
France[edit]
French literature from the first half of the century was dominated by Romanticism, which is associated with such authors as Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, père, François-René de Chateaubriand, Alphonse de Lamartine, Gérard de Nerval, Charles Nodier, Alfred de Musset, Théophile Gautier and Alfred de Vigny. Their influence was felt in theatre, poetry, prose fiction. In a 1983 book about the 16th century Catholic poet Jean de La Ceppède, English poet Keith Bosley wrote that Agrippa d'Aubigné, "the epic poet of the Protestant cause", during the French Wars of Religion, "was forgotten until the Romantics rediscovered him."[8]
The effect of the romantic movement would continue to be felt in the latter half of the 19th-century in diverse literary developments, such as "realism", "symbolism", and the so-called fin de siècle "decadent" movement.
Poland[edit]
Romanticism in Poland was a literary, artistic and intellectual period in the evolution of Polish culture, which began around 1820, coinciding with the publication of Adam Mickiewicz's first poems, Ballads and Romances, in 1822. It ended with the suppression of the Polish-Lithuanian January 1863 Uprising against the Russian Empire in 1864. The latter event ushered in a new era in Polish culture known as Positivism.[10] Some other notable Polish romantic poets include Juliusz Słowacki, Cyprian Kamil Norwid, Zygmunt Krasiński, Tymon Zaborowski, Antoni Malczewski and Józef Bohdan Zaleski.
Sweden[edit]
In Swedish literature the Romantic period is between 1809 and 1830,[17] while in Europe, the period is usually seen as running between 1800 and 1850. The Swedish version was very much influenced by German literature. During this relatively short period, there were so many great Swedish poets, that the era is called the Golden Age.[18] The period started around when several periodicals were published that criticised the literature of the 18th century. The important periodical Iduna, published by the Gothic Society (1811), presented a romanticised version of Gothicismus,[19] a 17th-century cultural movement in Sweden that had centered on the belief in the glory of the Swedish Geats or Goths. The early 19th-century Romantic nationalist version emphasised the Vikings as heroic figures.[20]
United States[edit]
Transcendentalism was a philosophical movement that developed in the late 1820s and 1830s in the eastern region of the United States, rooted in English and German Romanticism, the Biblical criticism of Herder and Schleiermacher, the skepticism of Hume,[21] and the transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant and of German Idealism. It was also influenced by Indian religions, especially the Upanishads.
The movement was a reaction to or protest against the general state of intellectualism and spirituality.[22] The doctrine of the Unitarian church as taught at Harvard Divinity School was of particular interest.
Poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892), whose major work Leaves of Grass was first published in 1855, was influenced by transcendentalism.[23] Influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalist movement, itself an offshoot of Romanticism, Whitman's poetry praises nature and the individual human's role in it. However, much like Emerson, Whitman does not diminish the role of the mind or the spirit; rather, he elevates the human form and the human mind, deeming both worthy of poetic praise.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) is best known for his poetry and short stories, and is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole. Poe, however, strongly disliked transcendentalism.[24]
Another American Romantic poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), was the most popular poet of his day.[25] He was one of the first American celebrities and was also popular in Europe, and it was reported that 10,000 copies of The Courtship of Miles Standish sold in London in a single day.[26] However, Longfellow's popularity rapidly declined, beginning shortly after his death and into the 20th Century as academics began to appreciate poets like Walt Whitman, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and Robert Frost.[27] In the twentieth century, literary scholar Kermit Vanderbilt noted, "Increasingly rare is the scholar who braves ridicule to justify the art of Longfellow's popular rhymings."[28] 20th-century poet Lewis Putnam Turco concluded "Longfellow was minor and derivative in every way throughout his career [...] nothing more than a hack imitator of the English Romantics."[29]
There are elements of Romanticism in many later works of American poetry. The influence of Whitman is evident in the work of Langston Hughes and E. E. Cummings; there are echoes of Transcendentalism in poems about nature by Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, and Gary Snyder; there are strains of Romantic individualism in writing by Frank O'Hara, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and the work of the Beat Generation. However, all of these poets are generally identified with more recent movements -- as feminists, Harlem Renaissance writers, modernists, et cetera -- and only indirectly linked with Romanticism by their critics.
Romantic poetry's legacy[edit]
Some writers consider romantic poetry a way for a better life. Moreover, as Heidi Thomson mentioned in her article, Why Romantic Poetry Still Matters, "The more literate and articulate we are, the better our chances for survival as citizens and inhabitants of the earth".[30]