The Romantic Period

Romantic Poets/Poetry

• The term “Romantic” has at least THREE useful meanings relevant to the Romantic poets.

Romantic Poets/Poetry

• #1: A Child’s Sense of Wonder:
• “Romantic” signifies a fascination with youth and innocence…particularly the freshness and wonder of a child’s perception of the world.
• This perception seemed to resemble the age’s sense of a “new dawn”…like what Wordsworth saw in his first experience in France as “human nature being born again.”

Romantic Poets/Poetry

• #2: Social Idealism:
• The term “Romantic”refers to a view of cyclical development of human societies. This is the stage when people need to question tradition and authority in order to imagine better - that is, happier, fairer, and healthier - ways to live. Romantic in this sense is associated with idealism.

Romantic Poets/Poetry

• #3: Adaptation to Change:
• The term “Romantic”suggests an ability to change- an acceptance of change rather than a rigid rejection of it. In the so-called Romantic period of the first half of the 19th century (up to the Civil War in America), Western societies met the conditions necessary for industrialization. This demanded that people acquire a stronger and stronger awareness of change, and that they try to find a way to adapt to it.