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The Romantic Age
T(caps)he writings and beliefs of the Romantic Age (1789-1832) are quite different from those of the preceding periods, like the Restoration and Augustan periods. This is because the Romantic ideals favoured innovation in place of traditionalism, as seen in the themes, styles, and general subject matters of the literature. In Lyrical Ballads, for example, William Wordsworth takes his materials from „common life‟. Though John Keats and Coleridge explore the supernatural and distant past, the works of William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Wordsworth show that these are visionary poets. The Romantics celebrate the beauty of the landscapes; they also write about themselves, defining many of their characters as rebels.
3.1.2 English Literature and the Romantic Age (1789-1832)
Beginning from the French Revolution in 1789 to the Reform Act of 1832, the Romantic period lasted forty years. Great and notable revolutions are identified with the Romantic period. Some of them are the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution that came with the policy of liberty, equality and fraternity; these features all combined tore-christen the Romantic age as the Age of Revolution.
The revolutionary ideals and temper of the period are part of the reasons the poetries of the Romantics are noted for their celebration of freedom and change. Wordsworth and Coleridge‟s „Lyrical Ballads‟, (1798) are about war at a time the society was becoming industrial and the power of the middle class grew and the government moved towards voting reform and popular democracy. English soldiers who fought against the army of the French Napoleon Bonaparte in the battle of Waterloo in 1815 became disillusioned, suffered depression and unemployment. All these increased the social, economic and political problems of the period.
The prevailing revolutionary spirit flowed into English imaginative literature, especially poetry. Wordsworth and Coleridge wanted a radical change in the language of poetry and supported popular themes. This literary ideology differed from that of the Augustan age marked by conservative techniques of order and tranquility. The quest for independent reasoning and exercise of the imagination induced many of the writers of the period to go on self-exile, away from the government that considered intellectual freedom dangerous and unacceptable.
Indeed, the term, „Romantic‟, was not immediately given to the period, until the philosophy of independent reasoning (freedom) and hope became recognised as an important moment of change in Europe. One leading poet of the period, William Blake, developed poetic ideal that was in contrast with the Augustan world. His best known poetic collection, Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794), reveals the lamb as a symbol of innocence and the tiger, a symbol of mystery, contrasting the world of nature with childhood innocence. But in his poem, „London‟, he sees the society in which the individual is imprisoned in chain.
Wordsworth‟s autobiographical poem, „The Prelude‟ probes into the heart of things; the feelings and thoughts of the individual expressed in the poem juxtaposes the past and the present. The Augustan writers believed that an orderly society was imperative, but the Romantic writers believed that the life of the individual spirit was important. These different views influenced the different use of language and mark of identities in styles. For instance, Wordsworth was known for using the simple language of the ordinary people to describe nature. He projects human memory as the (engine room), the mover of creativity and the world.
Although Wordsworth and Coleridge jointly produced Lyrical Ballads, there are different approaches in their creativity and philosophy. For instance, Wordsworth is more about the day-to-day activities of a person while Coleridge‟s poetry is more about the supernatural world. Wordsworth and Coleridge were known to have spent many days in each other‟s company from the moment Wordsworth moved into Alfoxden House in June 1797, four miles walk from Coleridge‟s cottage at Nether Stowey. Of the four poems Samuel Taylor Coleridge has in Lyrical Ballads, his best is „The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'. In the poem, an old sailor tells how he shoots a large, white bird when his ship is stuck at sea. He later experiences terrible dreams, but he endures because he must suffer for what he had done. His suffering teaches him never to drink until his soul is refreshed and renewed. Coleridge also wrote Christabel and Kubla Khan (1797) but published it in (1816). In the poem, he creates symbolic sceneries or landscapes to probe the human imagination, which to him is the most powerful of the human senses. Both poets are of the opinion that poetry should be in a language of the average person. Their styles influenced many poets who expressed poetry in the style of modern writers.
John Keats (1795-1821), a second generation Romantic poet, was born three years before Lyrical Ballads was published. Most of his poems are in fragments but are very imaginative about the nature of literature, and his letters are considered critical. The most famous of Keats‟s poems are „Ode on a Grecian Urn‟, „Ode to Nightingale‟, „la Belle Dame Sans Merci‟ (The beautiful lady with no pity), „Lamia‟, „The Eve of Saint Agnes‟ and „Isabella‟. His interest in mythical and ancient influenced his interest of medieval literatures. The main themes of the poems are the unnecessary search for lasting beauty in a temporal world where everything fades and gives way to death. For Keats, only the work of art is permanent and can keep human ideas and philosophy alive forever. For the poet, the expendable nature of a person is incomparable to the lasting aesthetics and happiness that the work of art can bestow. The poet‟s death came early in life, at the age of twenty-five.
However, Percy Bysshe Shelley felt the death of Keats very deeply such that he had to immortalise his death in his poem, „Adonais‟ (1821), capturing the deep, painful, personal experience. Shelly‟s poem is similar to Blake‟s as he condemns the religion and morals of the age in his popular essay, „The Necessity of Atheism‟ (1811), in which he doubts the existence of God. He wears the mask of politics in his long poem, „The Mask of Anarchy‟ (1832) in which he responds to the Waterloo massacre of (1819) when a group of workers were attacked in Manchester for daring to ask for social and political reforms. Shelley predicts a new life of freedom for the individual in his „Ode to the West Wind‟ (1819), metaphorically questing for a change of power the same way the wind blows away the particles of old life and, through dispersal by wind, plants new seeds to usher in a new life of freedom for all, something similar to a regeneration or re-newness (transformation). Shelly also wrote „Julian and Maddalo‟ in 1818, but published it in 1824. In the poem, he reduces the modern world to a wasteland where people are individualistic in nature. He sees the poet as a hero who can build a better and more productive society capable of reforming the world. In Defence of Poesies (1840), he explores the problem of inequality in the English society of the Romantic period in which the richer became richer and the poor got poorer. His famous statement that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world has come through the ages.
Another notable Romantic figure is Lord Byron, an influential poet known all over Europe in the nineteenth century. He attacks social conventions and authorities of the age who search for elusive peace. He satirises and questions unethical values of the society. His hero, Childe Harold, in the long poem, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, made Byron famous. He was the most popular, best-selling poet in 1812 at the age of 24. Manfred, in Bryon‟s poem, Manfred (1817) and Childe Harold are heroes with passionate feelings who rebel against society. Manfred, in particular, is more an anti-hero than a hero, but he is an attractive figure to all readers of the poem. In Don Juan (1819-1824), Byron‟s satirical poem invites readers to laugh with him at his hero and to question their own value as well as the values of their society. Other poets of the period are Roberts Burns and John Clare. The former explores nature in his poem but John Clare was said to be the least of the Romantics notable for description of the rural countryside. He became insane and ended in a mental hospital. He died in 1850.
Apart from poetry, prose writing also flourished in the Romantic age. Some of the novelists of the period are Thomas de Quincey, William Hazlitt, and Charles Lamb. Thomas Love Peacock had his works written in the Romantic and Victorian styles, satirising selected Romantic ideals and lifestyle in novels such as Northanger Abbey (1818). Other novelists are Jane Austen, Walter Scott, Fanny Burney, Evelina (1778) and Camilla (1796). Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein (1818).
Women dominated fiction writing at the time; Jane Austen is different among the writers of the period because her interest focuses on an individual‟s moral consciousness and the psychological behaviour of characters. She presents these matters often in an ironic sense, as seen in her Sense and Sensibility (1811), a novel which contrasts with the Romantic and Augustan periods. It is done in the metaphor of two sisters, the more rational and self-controlled Eleanor (sense) and the emotional Marianne (sensibility). Other novels by Jane Austen are Northanger Abbey (1818); Pride and Prejudice (1813); Mansfield Park (1814); and Emma (1816). The novels of Jane Austen generally caution against hasty choice in life especially in marriage, as one needs to know oneself in order to make the right choices in love and marriage. Sir Walter Scott writes about social change, history and revolution. Scott is identified with the novel as a popular genre in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially as he identified with Great Britain in his work by creating memorable characters. All these earned him fame as an influential writer across Europe, earning him the status of the best-selling author of his time. With these, the novel grew rapidly in a period of social and political awareness and became a major medium of exploration of the English society for the human good.
3.2 The Victorian Age
The Victorian period (1832-1900) produced the type of writing that reveals the social, economic, and intellectual issues of the time. Some of them are the industrial revolution, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, and developments in science and knowledge. Some writers of the period are Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, and Mathew Arnold.
3.2.1 English Literature and the Victorian Age (1832-1900)
In English history, the Victorian Age is often said to begin with the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte of France in 1815. But in English Literature, the period opens with the death of Sir Walter Scott. Queen Victoria (1832-1900) inherited social problems with her reign. Trade unionism was forbidden with the Corn Laws that kept the price of bread high. The population of England increased from two million to six and a half million, leading to Britain’s status as the world's richest manufacturer of bread. But the crime and war of 1854-1856, which lasted for forty years, increased the social problems of Britain, coupled with the Indian mutiny of 1857. The death of Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, in 1861 was an added problem.
Reducing the status of the Queen to a widow for forty years, William Gladstone or Benjamin Disraeli became the prime minister for most of the second half of the century. Then, rebellion rose against the monarchy, and a powerful Republican movement grew in the 1870s. But Disraeli challenged this and increased the social status of the Queen who became the Empress of India as well.
In the Victorian period, the popularity of the novel increased in Britain and all over the world; the novel became the most important literary form. This was as a result of the acceptability that was attached to the novels of Sir Walter Scott that became bestsellers between 1814 and 1832. Some of them were serialized, thus the reading public had access to Sir Walter Scott’s historical novels through private commercial libraries. While Sir Walter Scott had a tradition of seeing the English society from the perspective of history, Charles Dickens brought the social concern of the English into the novel. He published thirteen novels. He was one of the widely-read English writers. Dickens wrote Sketches by Boz (1836); Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870); Oliver Twist (1837-1838); and Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839); he also published The Pickwick Papers (1836-1837). In these novels, Dickens was interested in the social problem of the youth in the city where they are never given a fair deal in the self-growth and development of the society including education. His young characters, like Oliver and Nicolas, got swept off by the tides of English society; they lose focus and become social miscreants, criminals, and gluttons. The social problem of the Victorian world, particularly of England, and how it affects school-age children, dominates the creative energy of Dickens. He extends his creative lens to English society generally, seeing beyond how children have no chance to be educated. In David Copperfield (1849-1850), the novelist explores the type of social status the Victorian society admired and, in a way, is a parody of Dickens's childhood and success. His other partly autobiographical novels are Great Expectation (1860-1861) and Hard Times (1854). Little Dorrit, (1855-1857) and Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865) are his later novels that show his hatred for the city of London. A Tale of Two Cities is his literary review of the 1789 French Revolution.
Social education and industrial issue were not the concern of Thomas Carlyle whose philosophy of the time was a critique of the economy, the search of ideal democracy and sympathies with the industrial poor. Some of his works include Heroes (1841); Past and Present (1843); and The French Revolution (1837). The great revolutionary writings of Frederick Engels and Karl Marx were important in influencing social thought and the image of the exploited working class. Not comfortable with the condition of the workers in Manchester, Engels published the book, The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) but Marx’s political theory in Das Capital (1867-1895) criticizes capitalism for the exploitation of the workers by the capitalists or bourgeoisie. Marx had lived and worked in Britain from the 1840s to his death in 1883. He and Engels projected that the working class or proletariats would grow in consciousness and make a revolution to overthrow their oppressors and establish a socialist system of equity and justice.
Other important writers of the time are Elizabeth Gaskell who wrote Mary Barton (1848) and Northland South (1855). Emily Bronte, who wrote Wuthering Heights (1847); and Ann Bronte, youngest of the three Bronte Sisters, wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848). As explained in an earlier section, beginning with Aphra Behn in the late seventeenth century, there had been many women novelists, the greatest of whom was George Eliot (her real name was Mary Evans). She was an experienced translator and writer, who, on the advice of George Henry Lewes, began to write fiction. Eliot wrote Scenes of Clerical Life (1857-1858), a collection of short stories. Her first novel is Adam Bede (1859). She is known for themes that relate to home, marriage, and women. Her Middlemarch (1871-1872) is considered the biggest novel in the English language; it was set in 1832 during the first Reform Act. The fictional setting is a town in central England with women, voting systems, and the advent of rail transport as themes. William Makepeace Thackeray and Anthony Trollope are other fiction writers. Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1847-1844) is a historical novel, a satire of the upper-class in London. The novel is similar to his other novels, Henry Esmond (1852); The Virginians (1857-1859); and The New Comers (1853 - 1855).
On the basis of the output and influence of his novels, Thomas Hardy is one of the most celebrated writers of the Victorian era. His books reflect a part of the century with fictional Wessex in the South–West of England in Far From the Madding Crowd (1874). The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895) are some of his other novels.
In the English poetry of the Victorian age, William Wordsworth, who was the last Romantic poet, became the first of the Victorians. Before and after his death in 1850, a new language of expression had taken over the English poetry. Alfred Tennyson (also addressed as Lord Tennyson) began his career as a verse writer in 1830 when he published „Chiefly Lyrical‟, a concept which had earlier been used by Wordsworth and Coleridge in their Lyrical Ballads in 1798. But Tennyson’s use differs in the language of expression of the Romantic. He is best known for „In Memorial A.H.H‟ (1833-1850), an elegy to a friend of his, Arthur Hallam, in which he expresses his sadness about the loss. Themes and mood appealed to the English readership in the second half of the century. For instance, the poem became the favorite of Queen Victoria when she became a widow after the death of her husband, Albert, in 1861. Tennyson’s other poems in dramatic monologue in which a telling voice reveals the thoughts and ideals of the character are „Ulysses‟, who, in old age, was desirous of finding a new ambition. Tennyson was not known only as a writer of poem in which he shows unhappiness, but as an English national poet who wrote on historic issues like the crime and war which he explored in the poem, „The Charge of the Light Brigade‟ (1855). The poem is in praise of the heroes of the war and in recognition of soldiers who died in the war. Towards the end of his life, Tennyson continued to write poetry of sadness such as „Legends of King Arthur‟, and „Knights of Round Table‟. He began working on twelve poems in the 1830s until they were published together in 1891.
Apart from the works of Tennyson, the word „lyric‟ came up in the poetry of another Victorian, Robert Browning, in „My Last Duchess‟. This appeared in 1842 in a volume called Dramatic Lyrics. This is where the word “lyric” assumed poetic resonance, but Browning„s many dramatic monologue reveals violence of concealed emotions, exposing the hidden and unknown sides of the Victorian society and behavior which were not noticed or popular. For instance, in „Porphyria‟s Lover ‟, a man discusses his love for a woman, who is sitting on his knees, but whom he has just killed. Browning became more famous when he ran away with a female poet, Elizabeth Barrelt Browning, with whom he lived in Italy for many years. Some of her beautiful poems of love to her husband are „Sonnets from the Portuguese‟ (1850). Her „Aurora Leigh‟ (1857) is a long poem on women‟s themes. Browning‟s poem are set in Italy which he loved, perhaps because he lived there with her wife for many years; thus he was not as famous as Tennyson.
In Mathew Arnold‟s „Dover Beach‟ (1867), the poet looks over the English Channel from Dover, but seeing the calmness of the sea that seems to hide-something, the struggles and changes which affect everyone, somewhat predicting the pessimistic
nature of the Victorian writing. Every writing of the Victorian period was not about poems and novels; there were essays too written in magazines edited by Thackeray, Dickens and others. Charles Lamb was a great essayist of the 1820s. His essays of Elia got published in a London magazine but later in book form in 1833. Arnold is very important in the poetic culture of the era, particularly for his energetic defense of conservative values. He was both a poet and critic of note. His book, Culture and Anarchy, Essay in Criticism (1865 and 1888) changed the reading perception of his generation as defense against societal lawlessness and social disorientation. As the Victorian age moved toward its close, the playwright and novelist, Oscar Wilde, published The Soul of Man. His other works include The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891); Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892); The Happy Prince and Other Stories (1888); and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). The Ballad of Reading Gaol in 1898 was his experience in a London prison where he spent two years after he was charged with homosexual offenses. He was suspected to have written a homosexual novel, Teleny, which was published privately in 1893. The first novel on gay culture reveals the merit of being gay and as a form of love one should be ready to die for; but such themes were kept out of English writing for many years.
Rudyard Kipling, the first English writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907, was another important writer from the colony of India. He wrote the Plain Tales from the Hills (1888), The Jungle Book (1894), and The Second Jungle Book (1895). Charles’s Kingsley was one of the English writers who wrote moral children‟s stories in the Victorian period. His The Water Babies (1863) is one of the famous moral stories of the time; Queen Victoria read it to her children. In the story, a chimney-sweeper falls into the bedroom of the little children, runs away into a river leading to a series of adventures after which he emerges a good child willing to return to the middle class. Tom Brown’s School Days (1857) by Thomas Hughes is a famous school novel. One of the first modern writers, Lutwidge Dodgson, wrote Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland (1865) for Alice, the daughter of a friend of his. The story continues Through the Looking Glass (1871).
The Victorian period also witnessed the beginning of the writing of modern science fiction. The genre of science fiction explores science and scientific investigations and proof to explain the mystery about planets, nature, and human existence, amongst others. H. G. Wells wrote Time Machine in 1895, The Invisible Man (1897), The First Men in the Moon (1901), and The War of the Worlds (1898). Samuel Butter published Erewbon (1872), a novel in the same class of thought as Gulliver’s Travels of the 17th century. William Morris published News from Nowhere (1891).
Drama in the early years of the Victorian period was not considered part of serious literature. Farces and melodrama were types of plays produced in the Victorian era until the 1850s when George Bernard Shaw came into the scene as a playwright with his controversial plays, Widows Houses (1892), Arms and the Man (1894), and Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1898).
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE
i. Review the Romantic Age
ii. Summarize the Victorian Age
4.0 CONCLUSION
In this unit, we have discussed the philosophies of the Romantic and Victorian writers. We have also given you a condensed literary history of the two periods. Reading through the unit, you will realize that we have identified the various revolutionary changes that influenced how a particular age ends as well as the beginning of the next age. It is clear that sometimes a writer may live in two ages, and this may reflect in the creative works.
5.0 SUMMARY
In this unit, you have learnt . How the various human experiences differentiate one English age from the other i.e. (Romantic from the Victorian). . The factors that evolved into the Romantic as well as the Victorian ages. . The popular writers and genres of the Romantic and Victorian eras.
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