Romantic Age-World Literature

Romantic Period/Transcendental Period (c.
1790-1830)
Romantic poets write about nature, imagination, and individuality
The Romantic Period (1785–1832)
The beginning date for the Romantic period is often debated. Some claim it is 1785,
immediately following the Age of Sensibility. Others say it began in 1789 with the start of
the French Revolution, and still, others believe that 1798, the publication year for William
Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s book "Lyrical Ballads," is its true beginning. The
time period ends with the passage of the Reform Bill (which signaled the Victorian Era) and
with the death of Sir Walter Scott. American literature has its own Romantic period, but
typically when one speaks of Romanticism, one is referring to this great and diverse age of
British literature, perhaps the most popular and well-known of all literary ages. This era
includes the works of such juggernauts as Wordsworth, Coleridge, William Blake, Lord
Byron, John Keats, Charles Lamb, Mary Wollstonecraft, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Thomas De
Quincey, Jane Austen, and Mary Shelley. There is also a minor period, also quite popular
(between 1786–1800), called the Gothic era.
Writers of note for this period include Matthew Lewis, Anne Radcliffe, and William
Beckford.
THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONS (1763-1848):
Called the Enlightenment period due to the influence of science and logic, and many
revolutionary movements occur in many paths of Europe and America. The Age of
Revolution is usually considered as beginning in 1789 with the French Revolution. But if we
want to include the American Revolution in the mix, we have to go back to at least 1775, but
more accurately to 1763. The period is noted for the change in the government from the
monarchies to constitutional state and republics.
American Revolutions: American War of Independence (1775-83) and Declaration of

Independence from British rule (1776).
French revolutions: French revolution (1789): new ideas of freedom and social justice
spread all over Europe.
The massive revolutions were: agricultural, Industrial and information.
Agricultural Revolution: The Agricultural Revolution was the unprecedented increase in

agricultural production in Britain due to increases in labor and land productivity between
the mid-17th and late 19th centuries. An important factor of the Agricultural Revolution was
the invention of new tools and advancement of old ones, including the plough, seed drill,
and threshing machine, to improve the efficiency of agricultural operations
Enlightenment in Europe [1650-1800]
1. In the midst of the massive—and often cataclysmic—social changes that violently
reshaped Europe during the eighteenth century, philosophers and other thinkers
championed reason and the power of the human mind, contributing to the somewhat
misleading appellation of this prerevolutionary period as an "Age of Enlightenment."
2. Because literature was produced by a small cultural elite, it tended to address limited
audiences of the authors' social peers, who would not necessarily notice the class- and
race-specific values that served as a basis for proper conduct and actions outlined in
poems, novels, and belles letters.
3. The notion of a permanent, divinely ordained, natural order offered comfort to those
aware of the flaws in the actual social order.
4. Reliance on convention as a mode of social and literary control expresses the
constant efforts to achieve an ever-elusive stability in the eighteenth century.
5. By exercising their right to criticize their fellow men and women, satirists evoked a
rhetorical ascendancy that was obtained by an implicit alliance with literary and moral
tradition.
6. Though she outwardly declared her humility and religious subordination, Sor (Sister)
Juana InÈs de la Cruz managed to advance claims for women's rights in a more
profound and far-reaching way than anyone had achieved in the past.
Revolution and Romanticism in Europe and America [1800-1900]

1. Emerging in the late eighteenth century and extending until the late nineteenth
century, Romanticism broke with earlier models of thinking that were guided by
rationalism and empiricism.
2. After the American and French revolutions, faith in social institutions declined
considerably; no longer were systems that were organized around hierarchy and the
separation of classes considered superior.
3. As manufacturing and industrialization developed, resulting in a decline in the
agricultural economy, a "middle class" began to emerge in England and other parts of
Europe.
4. Breaking with the Christian belief that the self is essentially "evil" and fallible,
Romantic poets and authors often explored the "good" inherent in human beings.
5. As the middle class rose to ascendancy in the nineteenth century, new approaches to
science, biology, class, and race began to shake middle-class society's values.
6. Imagination was seen as a way for the soul to link with the eternal.
7. The new thematic emphases of poetry—belief in the virtues of nature, the "primitive,"
and the past—engendered a form of alienation that was described in the "social protest"
poetry of Romantic poets.

Romantic Age-World Literature

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Romantic Period/Transcendental Period (c.

Romantic poets write about nature, imagination, and individuality

The Romantic Period (1785–1832)

THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONS (1763-1848):

American Revolutions: American War of Independence (1775-83) and Declaration of

The massive revolutions were: agricultural, Industrial and information.

Agricultural Revolution: The Agricultural Revolution was the unprecedented increase in

Revolution and Romanticism in Europe and America [1800-1900]

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