English 12 / Unit 4: Romantic Poets
4.1 What Is Romanticism?
Notes
Romanticism (about 1798 to 1837) reacted against the Age of Reason, the Industrial Revolution and rigid social rules. It began in England with Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads (1798).
- Values: emotion, imagination, the individual, nature, and the common person's life.
- The sublime is the awe, and sometimes terror, felt before vast or powerful nature.
- Writers were inspired by the French Revolution's hope for freedom and distrusted factories and cities.
- Wordsworth said poetry is "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" recalled in "tranquillity."
Practice
Romantic writers were reacting mainly against:
Romantics valued emotion and nature over strict reason and factory life.
What is the sublime?
The sublime mixes wonder and terror before mountains, storms and oceans.
Which statement best matches Wordsworth's view of poetry?
He described poetry as feeling recollected in tranquillity.
Ready for more? Take the Unit 4 test.