Literature: Romanticism

Although the publication of Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads in 1798 is often heralded as the formal start of Romanticism, the roots of the movement began earlier. The Enlightenment, or Age of Reason, had embraced the power of rational thought and the scientific method to advance society in an orderly fashion. Romanticism, however, heralded a more individual approach, often guided by strong emotions and some type of spiritual insight. According to Romantics, deeper understanding of the world was achieved through intuition and emotional connections, rather than reason. In literature, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was one of the early proponents of the Storm and Stress (Sturm und Drang ) period, which rejected the Enlightenment’s focus on reason in favor of strong emotions and the value of the individual. Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) is a classic Storm and Stress novel, with a protagonist driven by his extreme emotions. If nature could be a source for inspired reflection in Wordsworth, it could also be dangerous. Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” which touches on the Romantic idea of poet as genius at the end, notes the thin line between genius and madness. Exceptional individuals as protagonists are the norm in Romanticism, in part from the (early) admiration for Napoleon Bonaparte.

The admiration for Bonaparte, however, began to fade among many Romantic poets as he became a part of the monarchy and a more traditional figure of authority. One type of exceptional individual, the Romantic hero, has either rejected society or been rejected, and therefore is no longer constrained by society’s rules (with the reminder that a Romantic hero is not necessarily romantic, but rather a product of Romanticism). Romantic heroes tend to be self-centered and arrogant, but are capable of compassion and even self-sacrifice, in some cases. A Byronic hero is a subset of Romantic hero, named for the poet Byron, who was described as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” The distinction between the two types can get murky, since the Byronic hero is in some ways simply a bit more dangerous and alienated than the Romantic hero (in fact, characters such as Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Faust in Goethe’s Faust have been called both by various literary scholars). Byronic heroes are more likely to have some guilty secret in the past, or some unnamed crime that is never revealed, which drives the characters’ actions, and they are more likely to end tragically.

There were critiques of Romanticism even during the movement. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, she questions both Enlightenment views of science and Romanticism’s view of the hero. The first narrator, Robert Walton, fails miserably to advance scientific exploration in the Arctic, while risking the lives of others. Similarly, Victor Frankenstein’s self-absorbed behavior slowly destroys everyone around him. Victor’s passivity and silence become more and more criminal as the novel progresses. Mary Shelley began the novel while she and her future husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, were spending time with Byron, which makes her critical analysis even more intriguing.

Literary movements are, of course, fluid and overlapping. Some scholars date the end of Romanticism to the early 1830s, while others extend Romanticism to as late as 1870. In British literature, Victorianism (1837-1901), which coincides with the reign of Queen Victoria, covers the transition from Romanticism to Realism; while poets such as Tennyson and Robert Browning are clearly descendants of Romanticism, their work contains realistic elements that do not technically fit into Romanticism.

Written by Laura Getty World Literature Copyright © by Anita Turlington; Rhonda Kelley; Matthew Horton; Laura Ng; Kyounghye Kwon; Laura Getty; Karen Dodson; and Douglas Thomson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.