ASSIGNMENT #3

Romantic Period was an artistic and literary movement which was originated in Europe in the late eighteenth century. The Romantic Period in English literature is taken to begin with the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge`s Lyrical Ballads and end with the novelist Sir Walter Scott's death. Even though the works of J.J. Rousseau and W. Godwin had great influence, the French Revolution and its consequences had the strongest impact of all. This started as a revolt against social and political norms of the time, so it was associated with liberalism and radicalism. Also it had a great impact in different areas such as music (one of the earliest important applications of the term to music occurs in 1789, in the Mémoires of André Grétry), visual arts (used to refer loosely to a trend that appears at any time) and literature (this movement was started by the publication in 1798 of Lyrical Ballads, with many of the finest poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge).

On the other hand, it is necessary to understand the meaning of romanticism and from which comes the word. It is possible to rely on the statement given by Cuddon J. (1991) who says “A roman or romant came to be known as an imaginative work and a 'courtly romance'. The terms also signified a 'popular book'”; while Whitney (2000) added:

The word romantic (ism) has a complex and interesting history. In the Middle Ages 'romance' denoted the new vernacular languages derived from Latin - in contradistinction to Latin itself, which was the language of  learning. Enromancier, romancar, romanz meant to compose or translate books in the vernacular. The work produced was then called romanz, roman, romanzo and romance.

Romanticism emphasizes everything that was not seen before such as feelings and emotions, so now the heart governs over the mind; natural places began to be a point of inspiration for both poems and paintings, the supernatural began to have their space and mode of expression. No other period in English literature displays more diversity in style, theme, and content than the Romantic Movement. The German poet Friedrich Schlegel, who is given credit for first using the term romantic to describe literature, defined it as "literature depicting emotional matter in an imaginative form."

Nevertheless, the Romantic period’s aims are related with art, not beauty but the expression and feelings which can open wider horizons. It has, in fact, been defined in so many different ways. In addition, the right to individual and collective freedom is developed; this is subjective, expressing deepest feelings. Besides, the romanticism seeks to break the classic rules. Just the novel is based on objectivity, and it seeks to reproduce life accurately, so it is immersed in the environment and society.  Romantic works are characterized by a mix of genres, the combination of verse and prose, and the use of different metrical structures in the same poem. Literary genres in the romanticism are: poetry, fiction, prose and drama.

Therefore, poetry is a literary genre considered as a manifestation of beauty or artistic feeling through words using verse or prose (prose is opposed to verse because it has no metrical rhythm, or repetition, and rhyme). Often, term poetry is used as synonymous with lyrical, although from a historical point of view it is a subgenre of poetry.  Moreover, It is called fiction to reality simulation that perform literary and cinematographic works while the drama is a word that comes from Greek and means to act; it is divided into realistic and unrealistic genres without forgetting that it is also called drama to the work that includes certain elements, especially when you have a terrible, tragic and catastrophic end.

Finally, it is possible to mention some examples of romantic English poets are William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats; and some American poets are Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman. Besides, there are Romantic essayists such as Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, and Thomas De Quincey.

References:

Whitney E. (2000). What is Romanticism? Retrieved May 18, 2013 from http://www.uh.edu/engines/romanticism/introduction.html.  University of Houston

CUDDON J. (1991) The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Third Edition. London: Penguin Books

Wikipedia Foundation, Inc (2013). Romanticism. Retrieved May 19, 2013 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism