The Romantic Period

Romantic Poets/Poetry

• Overall, the term “romantic” signifies a fascination with youth and innocence, a questioning of authority and tradition for idealistic purposes, and an adaptation to change.

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Romantic Poets/Poetry

• In Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth declared that he was writing a new kind of poetry that he hoped would be “well adapted to the interest of mankind permanently…”

Romantic Poets/Poetry

• In Lyrical Ballads, the subject matter would be different form that of earlier giants of poetry - like Alexander Pope - who used poetry to satirize, or to persuade the reader with argumentative techniques.

Romantic Poets/Poetry

• For Wordsworth, good poetry was “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”
• Such poetry would use simple, unadorned language to deal with commonplace subjects.