Romantic poetry

• Belief in a world that transcends what is perceived by the senses.

Humanity has become separate from nature. “Humanity has become separated from
nature, which leads to a false characterization of external nature as ‘fixed and dead. The
romantic poet seeks a way to reactivate the world by discovering the creative
perceptiveness which will allow the writer to draw aside the veils which modern living has
laid across the senses and seek a perception where the false separation of Nature (fixed,
external objects) and nature (the living being of the perceiver) can be reconciled: a new
synthesizing vision. The romantic thinker often feels that such a faculty is not an invention,
but a rediscovery of the truth about the way we perceive and create which has been lost in
the development of more complicated social forms and the growth of rational and self-
conscious theories of human thought” (A Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms, Routledge).

• Imagination as the way to get a panoptic vision, to get to the ultimate truth of that
transcendental world. Imagination as a principle.

• Intimate self-revelation of the poet. The poet is seen as a prophet, bringing about change
in society. However, despite the poet’s heightened sensitivity, he did not elevate himself
above his reader, but spoke as a “man speaking to men.” The difference between one
level of imagination and another is a question of degree, not of nature.

• Medievalism, recovery of the ballad and the folk-song.

While in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Middle Ages had suggested barbarism,
superstition and ignorance, to the Romantic poets and artists, they suggested an age of
faith, idealism and adventure. For example, the basic medieval element, the quest
romance, was used to show an internal quest for self-knowledge (see for instance,
Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner).
• There is a growing interest in the ballad as a form. The focus shifts from the story
(traditional ballads) to emotion (lyrical ballads).

• New literary theory.

The Romantic poetics favour the poetry written in the language used by simple rural folk.
Wordsworth, for instance, advocated the use subject matter that was common and
considered unpoetical. Simple situations. Rejection of elaborate or complex poetic diction
• Desire to rediscover a “living language”

• References to nature and natural objects. Nature as a theme (different from neo-classical
view of nature as ornament)

• Direct expression of emotions.

“Good poetry is the overflow of powerful feelings” (opposite from neo-classical age of
reason)
“Good poetry is emotion recollected in tranquillity” (emotion restricted while in the first
definition there is no boundary to feeling)

• Attraction towards the exotic, the unknown, the past, the supernatural.
• The noble savage

• Concern with the experience and insights of childhood

• Individuality. Man as an individual, not as a group.