Romanticism in Literature Essay Example

Romanticism in literature, began around 1750 and lasted until 1870. Different from the classical ways of Neoclassical Age(1660-1798), it relied on imagination, idealization of nature and freedom of thought and expression. Two men who influenced the era with their writings were William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, both English poets of the time. Their edition of “Lyrical Ballads”, stressed the importance of feeling and imagination. Thus in romantic Literature the code was imagination over reason, emotion over logic, and finally intuition over science. All of these new ways discouraged and didn’t tolerate the more classic way of literature. Other significant writers of the Romantic Age are noted still as shaping an age of open-mindedness and freedom. Lord Byron was one of these authors, he wrote “Don Juan”. Another is Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote in terza rima, a three line iambic pentameter set up of bcb, cdc, ded, and so on. Johan Keats created his own fairy tale land in the lyrical poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn”. Nature and the natural surroundings were important in romanticism. Taking pleasure in untouched scenery and the innocence of life was the basis and theme of “The Seasons” by the Scottish poet James Thomson. This inspired the nature tradition present in English literature, such as the works by Wordsworth. Another aspect in romantic writings, most times connected with the nature feel, was the look on rural life as being almost a romantic melancholy. This was sensing that change was looming, and the way of life they had been adapted to was being endangered. References to this can be found in “Ode to Evening” by William Collins, and “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” by Thomas Gray. With the freedom that Romanticism brought came the broadening of the writers horizons. The Middle