 In today's program I shall be discussing with you the Romantic Age. The program is designed as follows, table of contents followed by the objectives, the Romantic Age and introduction, the literary forms, major writers, the age at a glance, followed by some important terms and suggested reading. The objectives are designed as follows, the design program enables the learner to cross the ideals that characterize the Romantic Age, discuss the background that led to the intellectual movement, highlight the various literary forms of Romantic Literature, gain an idea about some of the major writers of the period and their works, have a better perspective about the cultural history of the age and appreciate the contributions of the age, the history of English Literature. So the Romantic Age must be making you curious what is Romantic? So this is an introduction to the Romantic Age. The Romantic Age in the history of English Literature was a period radical in its assertion of nationalism, democracy, liberty and the individual spirit, followed by the Age of Revolution that is the French Revolution mainly and the American Declaration of Independence. The Romantic Age is considered as a literary, intellectual and an artistic movement which has spread across Europe at the end of the 18th century. So this phenomenon was at the end of the 18th century and just beginning of the 19th century. The historical context of the revolutionary period is closely related to the rich body of Romantic Literature and hence cannot be studied in isolation. So the essence of Romanticism is that quote-unquote literature must reflect all that is spontaneous and unaffected in nature and in man and be free to follow its own fancy in its own way. Do you think that is beautiful? In emphasizing imagination over rational thought which is what Romantic Ideal was all about, the Romantic Age proved to be a major reaction against the ideals of the Enlightenment Age. You will notice in the Enlightenment Age what happened was that there was a much more focus on rational thought, on reason, on empirical reasoning and logic but now it was the imagination, the fancy, the dreamlike stuff of imagination which is gaining importance. The Romantic imagination had dealt with the individual subjective experience, the irrational, the supernatural, mystical and the spiritual elements. So it was roughly at the tail end of the 18th century that the Romantic period was considered to have begun and reached speak from around 1800 to 1850. These are just ways of marking time, it does not mean that this period, this movement began exactly in these particular years but is considered to have begun around this particular period of time. Romanticism in the real sense is a transatlantic cultural movement which bore subtle differences across countries which adopted it as an ideal. So as far as England is concerned the Romantic movement coincided with and as a reaction to the industrial evolution that marked the end of the century. During this time there was also major intellectual reaction to the philosophy of Enlightenment which idealized the advancement of knowledge through science, skepticism, reason and rational. The Romantics emphasized on what? On emotion over reason, imagination over the rational and asserted that more empirical or scientific knowledge could reveal the ultimate truth in the great mysteries of life. So they extoll the virtues of passion, imagination, freedom and supernatural and the spiritual. So these are the characteristics of Romantic age you will do well to know them down. And nutshell the ideals that characterize the Romantic age are the emphasis on individuality, one's creative gifts and the subjective experience. Their way of looking at the world was very colored and very different from that of the rational way of looking at the world. It stood in contrast to the literary ideals of the neoclassical age. Reaction stood as a reaction against the ideals of the 18th century Enlightenment age because just before it, this was happening at the end of the 18th century and just before it was the Enlightenment age. There was this period where reasoning where knowledge based on facts, factual knowledge these were given importance. In fact they were given importance by relegating these subjective way of looking at the world that is through experience, through imagination, through fancy and emotions. So they focused on imagination over reason, passion over rationality. Passion is a very strong word here, passion. Something which is felt from inside, the depth of feeling that comes from within a human subject. Instead of the objective and objective way, objective scientific man, imagine another who is very passionate and who is a dreamer, a romantic man who was somebody who was a dreamer who loved nature, who loved to dream about the supernatural also and who saw the world through his colored lenses. So the romantic ideals were basically imagination, emotion, intuition and freedom and experience of the sensory over the spiritual. There was a fascination with myths and the supernatural, gothic and exotic and there was a devotion to beauty, that is the aesthetic qualities of anything, anything and everything. They saw beauty everywhere, beauty in nature, beauty in supernatural things and everything. There was a love and worship of nature and there was an interest in the rural country life and they were opposed to the ills of urban life as such. So the politicians and the philosophers manifested a new spirit of the age and they extolled the worth of the individual which then found a reflection in romantic literature. So these are the literary forms. After 1770, that is at the later years of the 18th century, when we say 1770, conduct books by women writers became very popular just as children's literature. The writers of children books included John Newberry, Anna LaTitiae, Barbold, William Godwin, Charles and Mary Lamb, among others. During this time, they were lending or circulating libraries, book clubs and book societies which provided an easy access to books and played a vital role in disseminating different literary forms like popularizing poetry and novels, in particular the genre of sensibility and gothic fiction. We can learn about these literary forms much more in details in another or in a subsequent program. So the early 1790s saw the publishing of radical works such as Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, etc. And the circulation of radical pamphlets where there were newspapers and weeklies which were circulating, you know, also there was literary criticism which appeared in leading magazines which was very influential in establishing the works of writers like Thomas de Quincy, who was known for his personal confessions in writing, Samuel Taylor Galrich who was celebrated for his ideas of, you know, fancy and imagination. You must have read about this also or heard about it somewhere. So Leigh Hunt was again another important figure who penned satirical reviews and, you know, in a way shaped literary criticism of this particular age. Charles Lamb who wrote the personal essay, who was a master of the personal essay, William Haslett who was, you know, who used a familiar style of infused irony and political radicalism and William Godwin and Mary Wistoncraft who wrote radical works on human rights. So during this period there was a widespread circulation of puritacles and literary magazines, you know, which established a rich body of literary criticism like the Edinburgh Review, the Quotley Review, Blackwood's Magazine, the Westminster Review, the Spectator which is very famous, 1838 you must note this, the Spectator, the Athenium, Fraser's Magazine, etc. There were many, many, many magazines and journals and puritacles circulating during this time. Coleridge, Blake and Byron contributed to a new approach and interest in the literary form of the epic and epic poetry. Like for example Helen Maria Williams' brief epic Peru, it was in the form of an epic and then Keats' epic poem Hyperion which was again a form of epic poetry. So the romantic fragment also had emerged as a new accidental form from the period like for example S. T. Coleridge's Kubla Khan. You will do well to know that S. T. Coleridge wrote under the influence of opium sometimes, that's why a romantic fragment because sometimes he wrote under the influence of opium and suddenly there was this fragment he, you know, he just lost his vision of writing and he just forgot what he was writing about in just writing mood, just war of or something of that kind of an or some kind of an interruption which left the work incomplete and thus a fragment, a romantic fragment which was still completing itself because it was so beautiful to read and textbooks even today prescribe these beautiful pieces. Shelly's incomplete work, The Time for Life, Byron's Unfinished, Don Juan, these are all examples of romantic fragment. There are many examples. This is not to say that these are the only examples. There are many examples. These have just been selected to cite for your ease of reference. A significant body of biographical, autobiographical and semi-autobiographical works were also in circulation. Why? Because the romantic ideal also projected the subjective, the personal and the subjective experience of man which is why you have the autobiographical form, the semi-autobiographical form or, you know, basically the biographical form, right? All the major romantic poets had experimented with romantic drama written and meant for reading rather than stage performances like Shelly's, Prometheus Unbound, a closet drama which was meant for reading and Byron's Manfred. In the romantic period, there were various schools of poetry which debated their ideas on what made good poetry. The basic characteristics of romantic poetry were spontaneous flow of inspiration in the creation of sublime poetry and the emphasis on imagination and creative passion, romanticizing the ordinary as fit subject of poetry, that is the common man, any incident of other regular mundane things, a sense of wonder for the supernatural elements of life and inspiration from nature and its lit locales. So these were the romantic ideas that were practiced in romantic poetry. In Wordsworth's famous phrase, poetry was a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings and he called poetry a sensitive plant. Lyrical poetry was also a popular form during the period and there was also revival of the romantic sonnet. The major novelists of the period, writers who wrote romantic novels like Jane Austen, Bernie, Mary, Edgeworth, and Ratcliffe, Walter Scott, and Mary Shelley, among others. They wrote their wonderful works during this period of time which are still, you know, which still stand as evergreen classics. There was a distinct and continued interest in the genre of the Gothic and the sensational novel because there was a marked interest in the supernatural side of the world, in the supernatural. So he had such works like Matthew Lewis's The Monk, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I'm sure you must have heard about this work. So these works were very interesting, they still the interest of the readers. The novelist Walter Scott wrote classics such as Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, among others. Jane Austen wrote realistic novels like Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, etc. The literary features of the romantic age in a nutshell are belief in the imagination and insight, emphasis on the subjective experience and individuality, significance of emotions, sentiments and creativity, freedom to explore the sensory and the spiritual, extolling and upholding the beauty of nature, approval of the use of fancy, that is controlled by judgement, conveying the movements of vision, exploring the realm of the supernatural and the transcendental, representing the experience of common man and role of poet as integrator, more than a creator. So we come to the major writers, William Blake. Blake was known as a prophetic poet, he was a skill painter and an engraver and he's supposed to have seen visions. He saw prophetic visions while walking the fields as a child, in fact. He saw these visions while walking the field or you know, while staring out the window. He's said to have seen visions and he was also from a very young age, very religious, he was a bottomed religious household and maybe this has bearings on his later works as well and development as a person. So he's considered as a visionary or a prophetic poet. Some of his works are songs of innocence and of experience, political sketches, visions of the daughters of Albion, book of Euryzen, the book of Ahania, etc. William Wordsworth, born in London in the Northwest Lake District, famous Lake District. You must have heard about Lake Poets also, who were a group of poets who got together at Wordsworth's place and discussed the intellectual strands of thought and you know, who had interactive discussions together. So he was born and brought up there in London and he is known for his lyrical ballads which is also called the Manifesto of the English Romantic Criticism. Now the lyrical ballad was written in 1798 and this date is very important because you will know that because of this particular work, there was a new interest, the romantic way of looking at the world in the romantic perceptions. So he was appointed the poet laureate after the demise of Sherwood Salvi in 1843. Some of his works had lyrical ballads with other poems, poems in two volumes, Guide to the Lakes, The Excursion, Lautomia and The Pridune. Estee Coleridge, I had already talked about Coleridge. He was an English poet, he was a literary critic and philosopher who built an association with the Lake Poets. So he was associated with the Lake Poets whom I just mentioned. His works create an atmosphere of what he called the willing suspense of belief with the elements of the mysterious and the supernatural. The three poems that are considered as masterpieces are The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel and Kubla Khan. John Keats, Keats developed an early interest in the classics, history and Renaissance literature. He was very well-learned in these fields and he had said his imagination was a monastry and he a monk. Some of his works are The Eve of St. Ignace, La Bella, Dame Sans Merci, on first looking into Chapman's Homer, Endymion, Hyperion, La Mia, Otto, etc. And he had written several oaths and he is known for his six oaths, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Gritian Urn, Ode to Psyche, Ode on Melancholy, Ode on Indolence and Ode on Fancy. The next poet, P. B. Shelly, Shelly was one of the finest lyric poets and was radical in his sociopolitical beliefs. His poetry had two different strings or distinct moods, that of a violent reformer and that imbued with this appealing spirit of nature. Some of his works are Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, The West Skylark, Prometheus Unbound, Revolta of Islam, Defensor of Poetry, etc. Then the next father essayist, known for his essays, personal essays, Charles Lamb, was a writer and essayist who was widely read for his personal essays. Lamb had a carefree childhood and as a young man looked after sister Mary who was prone to mental illness but he was very caring as a person and he devoted his life in fact for her, in her care. He had collaborated on three books with Mary, among which A Tales from Shakespeare was most well received and he wrote under the pen name of Elia while writing for the London Magazine and this name states somehow because this is how readers associated him with his works. Some of his works are Essays of Elia, Rosamund Gray, John Woodville and The Last Essays of Elia. So we come to the major writers at a glance. For example, some of the important writers associated with the romantic age are William Blake, William Haslett, William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, who was a sister of William Wordsworth, Estee Coleridge, Robert Sadi, John Keats, B. B. Shelley, James Henry Leigh Hunt, better known as Leigh Hunt, Thomas Dick Quincy, Lord Byron, Charles Lamb, Benjamin Robert Hayden, Mary Wistoncroft, Felicia Dorothea-Hemans, Letitia Elizabeth London and Elizabeth Browning, The Age at a Glance, the joint publication of Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge. I knew this was a collaborative effort in 1798 was considered as a significant milestone for the romantics as it had launched the English romantic movement. Romantic literature is characters by, to sum it up in just a short phrase, to quote Victor Hugo, liberalism in literature. So literature was, you know, liberal, it was not constructed in the sense, you know, it was not constructed by the particular ideals of rational, of empirical thought, of reasoning and objectivity. It was much more subjective, it was much more open, it was exploratory, it was a liberty of, you know, thought and imagination. Its emphasis was on the creative, the sublime and the supernatural. The important characteristic that differentiates the English romantics from the writers of the 18th century, that is, the writers of the neoclassical age, is the emphasis and significance of the imagination. Here are some of the important terms that you might come across. If you have heard about fancy and imagination, in biography, Letitia Coleridge had pointed out the distinction between two faculties of the mind, that is, the fancy and imagination. Imagination is the vital source of creation. The fancy associated with memory accumulates all that is seen, but the imagination recreates and transforms it anew. So, the fancy is associated with memory and imagination recreates and transforms all that is seen in a new way. Coleridge divided imagination as follows, primary and secondary. In the primary imagination which, in his own words, automatically balances and fuses the innate capacities and powers of the mind with the external presence of the objective world that the mind receives to the senses. And in the secondary imagination or the free will, what happens is that it gets dissolved, dissipates in order to recreate or to form something new. So, the role of memory is passive and the role of imagination is active. The negative capability is another term which was Keats. John Keats had used in one of his letters. He stated that an artist in the creation of something was to negate himself, which was to completely distance himself in a way as if the artist did not exist. Such an artist was capable of feeling in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. So, this was the act of negating oneself while writing, while going through the experience of writing or expressing. This negative capability quality was very important according to Keats. So, here are some of the suggested reading. You might do well to refer to the Romantic Imagination by Maurice Barra. Romanticism and Oxford Guide is a huge one. You can, you know, avail it in a good library. Then English Literature, History and its Significance by William J. Long, which is commonly available, and Romanticism and Anthology by Duncan Booth. Here's one of the websites there which might be helpful to you, www.lunsburyacademy.com. There are many websites which will be helpful to you, but you will do well to note the important characteristics, the ideals to let this movement ahead. So, with this, I come to the end of today's program. Thank you, dear learner, and all the best.