From Romantic To Modern English Literature Essay

As Pope is our greatest poet of the town and of artificial life, so Wordsworth is our greatest poet of the country and of natural life. He has been called, and rightly, ‘the keenest eyed of all modern poets for what is deep and essential in nature (Hudson,190)

It is generally supposed that the English Romantic Movement began in 1798, with the publication of The Lyrical Ballads. But it is a mistake to assign any definite date to it. It was not a sudden outburst but the result of long and gradual growth and development. The poets of the romantic school-Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, etc.-were not even the first romantics of England, for the Elizabethan literature is essentially romantic in spirit. It is also full of that sense of wonder and mystery, that love of daring and adventure, that curiosity and restlessness, which associate with the poets of the early 19th century.

However it may be, the romantic spirit suffered a total decline and eclipse during the Augustan or the Pseudo-classical age. The Augustan literature was mainly intellectual and rational, deficient in emotion and imaginatical. It dealt exclusively with the artificial life of the upper classes of the city of London, and its form and diction was as artificial as its theme. It had no feeling for nature and no feeling for those who lived outside the narrow confines of fashionable London society. The romantic movement began as a reaction against the dry intellectuality and artificiality of the Pseudo-classics.

Return to Nature played a very prominent part in the revival of romanticism. Suffocated with the cramped and crowded city atmosphere, people longed for the freshness of Nature. They wanted to return to the free and invigorating life of the world of leaves and flowers. It was in The Seasons (1730) of James Thomson that nature came to her own for the first time. This is the first really important poem in which nature, instead of remaining subordinate to man, is made the central theme. The seed sown by Thomas grew and flourished in the poetry of such poets as Gray, Collins, Burns, Cowper and Crabbe.

A very important phase of the romantic movement was the medieval revival. Not only were the ancient masters studied, but old English metres and poetic forms were revived. Bishop Percy’s Reliques of Ancient Poetry, Chatterton’s Rowley Poems, and James Macpherson’s Ossiam are important landmarks in the history of English romanticism.

A long step forward in the history of romanticism was taken with the publication of “the Lyrical Ballads” in 1798. Uptil now the movement had no unity, no fixed programme, and no aim. It was not a conscious movement at all. It was now for the first time that the two friends-Wordsworth and Coleridge-emphasised the aims and objectives of the new poetry. Coleridge pointed out that he would treat of objects and incidents supernatural, but in such way as to make them look real and convincing; Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to deal with subjects taken from ordinary and commonplace life but so as to cast over them by the magic of his magic power of his imagination the charm of novelty. The former would make the unfamiliar, look familiar, and the latter would make familiar look unfamiliar. Sukumar Dutt while writing about the common ground between Wordsworth and Coleridge writes, “it is obvious that the supernaturalism of Wordsworth and Coleridge, at any rate in theoretical conception and speculative principles, has more than a mere superficial or adventitious relation to romanticism. Its fundamental or originative idea, as we have seen, is involved in the romantic conceptions of Nature and man; its peculiar form as a tale of human experiences,–of the mind and also of the senses acted upon by the mind,–is determined by the humanity and idealism of romantic imagination”(Dutt, 221).

In this was they enunciated the theory and methods of the new poetry, gave a new consciousness and purpose to the movement, and thus opened a new chapter in the history of English Romanticism.

No account of the development of English romanticism can be considered complete without a mention of the impact on it of the French Revolution and German Idealistic philosophy. More specially, the French Revolution and the writings of the makers of the Revolution, fired the imagination of the English romantics. A re-awakening of the love of real and wild nature and of the simple humanity living in her lap, had been there even before the revolution. But now it acquired a philosophical basis and gained a fresh stimulus. The Return to Nature and the democratic spirit were nourished and fostered by the Revolution. It also fed and strengthened the revolutionary idealism of poets like Byron and Shelley.Romantic poetry does not turn its back on all these shattering changes and wander off up an Alp to sniff flowers and contemplate eternal verities (Flinn, 6).

Keats is a unique phenomenon in the history of English romanticism, in more ways than one. For one thing, he represents a unique balance of classicism and romanticism. Highly imaginative and emotional matter is enclosed in forms of perfect beauty. The music and melody of the romantics is combined with the well-chiseled and highly finished expression of the classics.

The term “Romanticism” has been variously defined by various writers. Pater, for example, calls it the “addition of strangeness to beauty” and Watts Dunton defines it as, “the renaissance of wonder”. Abercrombie, on the other hand, stresses the subjective element of romanticism and writes, “Romanticism is a withdrawal from outer experience to concentrate upon inner experience”.

“Romanticism is often described as a return towards nature but this notion is indeed very complex because for the French writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau there was a return to the sources of our being that is less a primitive aggression than a return to the state of the ‘noble savage'”(Wolfreys, 103).

It would be more profitable to consider the salient features of Romanticism than wasting time in defining it.

The chief characteristics of romantic poetry are:

All romantic literature is subjective. It is expression of the inner urges of the soul of the artist. The poet does not care for rules and regulations, but gives free expression to his emotions. Emphasis is laid on inspiration and intuition rather than on the observance of set rules.

Romantic poetry is spontaneous overflow of powerful passions. The romantic poet is gifted with a strong “organic sensibility”, he feels more than there is to feel and sees more than there is to see.

The romantic is extraordinarily alive to the wonder, mystery and beauty of the universe. He feels the presence of unseen powers in nature.

A romantic is a dissatisfied individual. He may be dissatisfied with the circumstances of his own life, with his age, with literary conventions and traditions of the day, or with the general fate of humanity.

While some may escape into the past, (the world of classical antiquity or the Middle Ages) others may dream of a better and happier world to come and build “utopias” of the future.

Zest for the beauties of the external world characterizes all romantic poetry. Romantic poetry carries us away from the suffocating atmosphere of critics into the fresh and invigorating company of the out-of-door world. It not only sings of the sensuous beauty of nature, but also sees into the “heart of things” and reveals the soul that lies behind.

Love of Nature leads, by an easy transition, to the love of those who live in her lap. The romantics have an instinct for the elemental simplicities of life.

Not only do the Romantics treat of the common man, they also use language for their purposes. Thus Wordsworth raised his voice against the inane and artificial diction of the 18th century classics, and advocated the use of the language of the common man for purposes of poetry.

Their interest in the past leads the romantics to experiment with old metres and poetic forms. The 18th century had confined itself to the use only of one metre i.e. the Heroic Couplet. With the coming of the romantics there is a revival of a number of ancient metres.

English romanticism is thus both a revolt and a revival; it is a revolt against 18th century traditions and conventions; it is a revival of old English metres and old English masters of poetry.

Victorian literature is the literature that was produced during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). England was undergoing a tremendous cultural upheaval and all the forms of literature, art and music had undergone a radical change. The Romantic movement which preceded the Victorian Renaissance had often portrayed the human pursuit of knowledge and power as a beautiful thing for example in works of Wordsworth.

During the Victorian era, there was a lot of radical social change and as such, many poets of this time didn’t like the romanticized version of society. The Victorian poetry is divided into two groups of poetry. The High Victorian Poetry and The Pre-Raphaelite Poetry.

The following are chief characteristics of Victorian poetry:

The use of sensory elements. Most of Victorian Poets used imagery and the senses to convey the scenes of struggles between Religion and Science, and the ideas about Nature and Romance, which transport the readers into the minds and hearts of the people of the Victorian age. Lord Alfred Tennyson lives up to this expected characteristic in most of his works. One notable example is the poem Mariana, in which Tennyson writes,

The doors upon their creaked;

The blue fly sung in the pane; the muse

Behind the moldering wainscot shrieked

This images of the creaking door, the blue fly singing in the window, and the mouse with moldy wood paneling, all work together to create a very definite image of an active, yet lonely farmhouse.

The sentimentality is another technique. The Victorian Poets wrote about Bohemian ideas and furthered the imaginings of the Romantic Poets. Poets like Emily Bronte, Lord Alfred Tennyson prominently used sentimentality in their poems. The husband and wife poet duo, Elizabeth Barrett-Browning and Robert Browning conducted their love affair through verse and produced many tender and passionate poems. Dramatic monologue is also a technique that was very much in practice. It is a ‘crystallization of some of these trends. It is a cross or hybrid of the genres of drama and lyric'(Hawlin,63).

The reclaiming of the past was a major part of Victorian literature with an interest in both classical and medieval literature of England. The Victorians loved the heroic, chivalrous stories of knights of old and they hoped to regain some of that noble, courtly behavior and impress it upon the people both at home and in the wilder empire. The best example of this is Alfred Tennyson’s idyll of the King.

Matthew Arnold gave several pronouncements on poetry which are also considered to be the traits of Victorian Poetry when he says (a)” ‘Poetry is a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty…..”(b) He says in his essay on Wordsworth that ‘the noble and profound applications of ideas to life is the most essential part of poetic greatness” (c) “Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive and widely effective mode of saying things”(James, 82,83).

Comic verse abounded in the Victorian era. “there was plenty of fun, not always drawing-room fun in Tennyson” (Elton,351)says Oliver Elton.

Victorian Poetry thus makes an important era in the history of poetry, providing the link between the Romantic Movement and the Modernist Movement (Pre-Raphaelitism) of the 20th century (Web).

Georgian poetry is the poetry of the period from 1910 to 1935 when King George V ruled over England. It is easy simple poetry, largely in the romantic vein, having certain marked characteristics of its own. Says A.S. Collins, “The Georgian had, of course, a positive aim; it was to treat modern, nor too like Tennyson. In their treatment of nature and social life they discarded the use of archaic such as ‘thee’ and ‘thou’, and eschewed such poetical constructions as ‘winter drear’, and ‘host on armed host’. They dropped all gorgeous and grandiloquent expressions in thought and expression. In reaction to Victorian didacticism their verse avoided “all formally religious, philosophic or improving themes”, and in reaction to the decadents or Aesthetes of the nineties they avoided all subjects that smacked of, “sadness, weakness and escapism”. They were neither imperialistic nor pantheistic but “as simple as a child’s reading book”. Their themes are “Nature, love, leisure, old age, childhood, animals, sleep, and unemotional subjects”. They write simply, clearly and melodiously about sheep, bulls and other domestic or wild animals. It is a poetry for the many, and not for the scholarly few alone. It can be enjoyed even by the unlearned. Georgian poetry has been subjected to severe criticism, by critics like T.S. Eliot.

These characteristics are best illustrated by the poetry of John Masefield, Walter De La Mare, W.H. Davies, John Drinkwater, etc.

Twentieth century poetry is a curious mixture of the traditional and the experimental, of the old and the new. It is complex and many-sided. The chief characteristics are:

It has abundance of its output. The variety and quantity of modern publications is bewildering, and one is baffled by the variety of names and labels which are used.

Modern poetry is the poetry of revolt against tradition, and there is much in it that is experimental.

Each writer writes according to his own mood and temper.

It is an age of anthologies which bring together the select works of several hands for the delight of the readers.

The new poetry is a poetry of revolt, resulting largely from the impact of science. This revolt is to be seen both in the form and content of poetry which is best exemplified in the poetry of T.S. Eliot.

Deep feeling of love and joy in nature is a prominent characteristic of modern poetry but the modern poet does not spiritualize nature like Wordsworth.

Nor does the modern poet love nature alone; he also loves and feels for the lower animals living in the lap of nature.

The spread of democracy has made the poet more and more conscious of the dignity of man. Even such outcasts of society as criminals, suicides, prostitutes, drunkards etc., find sympathetic treatment. Thus David Herbert Lawrence considers “the flesh as being wiser than the intellect”.

The new poetry is realistic and the poet’s consciousness of the grim realities of life has shattered all illusions and romantic dreams. The tragedy of everyday life has induced in the poet a mood of disillusionment and so the poetry today is bitter and pessimistic. The Waste Land of T. S. Eliot reflects its tragic gloom and despair of the postwar world.

Despite its stark realism in theme and treatment, there also runs a vein of romanticism in modern poetry.

Modern Poetry has also been influenced by the techniques of music, sculpture, painting and other fine arts.

The modern poet is constantly experimenting with new verse forms and poetic techniques.

Impressionism, Imagism and Surrealism are some other innovations in 20th century poetry.

“The verse of Harold Morno (1879-1932), the poet and cherisher of poetry, so lately lost, is metaphysical in the sense that he tries to go past appearances to the consciousness, or the reality, that is behind them; an instinct that operates in two direction, outward and inward” (Elton,422).

In Midnight Lamentation and elsewhere he muses on the baffled effort, only stopped by death, of lovers to be truly united:

I cannot bear the thought

You, first, may die,

Nor of how you will weep,

Should I.

We are too much alone;

What can we do

To make our bodies one;

You, I; I,you?

…I cannot find a way

Through love and through;

I cannot reach beyond

Body, to you.

When you or I must go

Down evermore,

There’ll be no more to say

–But a locked door.

Conclusion:

I want to quote Dante’s words that great topics of poetry for which and which alone the greatest language is appropriate, are salus, amor, virtus; defining them as valour in arms, the fire of love, and the guidance of the will(Elton,423). We can say that valour, love and guidance of the will are the salient of features of poetry.