Indranil SarkarContact: 9859945270

Pre-Romanticism

Rousseau’s ideas of ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’

were not only the key-terms of the ‘French Revolution',

these were the life-force behind Romanticism also.

Russoue gave his messege to the world in the 1870s

which is now called ‘Pre-Romantic’ period in English

Poetry.

Pre-Romanticism

Pre-Romanticism is a cultural movement in Europe

from about the 1740s onward. It succeeded Neo-

Classicism and preceded and presaged Romanticism

which officially began in 1798 with the publication of

“The Lyrical Ballads” by Wordsworth and Coleridge.

Pre-Romanticism

Pre-Romanticism is thought to have prepared the

ground for Romanticism in its full sense. In various

ways, these are all departures from the orderly

framework of neoclassicism and its authorized

genres.

Marshall Brown, Preromanticism (1991).

From: preromanticism in The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms »

Pre-Romanticism

The most important constituents of preromanticism are the Sturm und Drang

phase of German literature; the primitivism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and

of Ossianism; the cult of sensibility in the sentimental novel; the taste for the

sublime and the picturesque in landscape; the sensationalism of the early

Gothic novels; the melancholy of English graveyard poetry; and the revival

of interest in old ballads and romances. These developments seem to have

helped to give a new importance to subjective and spontaneous individual

feeling.

Marshall Brown, Preromanticism (1991).

From: preromanticism in The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms »

Pre-Romanticism

Thomas Grey; William Cowper; William Blake; Robert Burns

and James Thomson are considered as the most noted Pre-

Romantic poets, painters and litterateurs .

Pre-Romantics

Thomas Gray (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771)

Although Thomas Gray was one of the least productive poets

(his collected works published during his lifetime amount to

fewer than 1,000 lines), he is regarded as the foremost Pre-

Romantic poet. Gray was so self-critical and fearful of failure

that he published only thirteen poems during his lifetime.

Thomas Gray was a poet, letter-writer, classical scholar and

professor at Cambridge University. Link: wikipedia.org

Pre-Romanticism

Pre-Romantics

“Elegy written in a Country Churchyard” (1751) is

Gray’s masterpiece and he is remembered to day for

this immortal elegy.

He is often classed as a ‘Graveyard Poet’ for his

‘melancholic’ notes.

Link: wikipedia.org

Pre-

Romanticism

Hardly there exist a single English knowing man who has not

read Blake’s ‘Tyger, Tyger, burning bright’ or ‘Little Lamb! Who

made thee? But, this was certainly not the case when Blake

wrote these poems. He was held mad by his contemporaries

and had to suffer extreme hardship and die as an unsung poet

cum painter of his country.

William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) is

recognized today as a precursor of Romantic literature and

painting.

William Rossetti characterized him as a "glorious luminary”.

WWilliam Blake

William Blake

In 2002,BBC Poll review found Blake in No.38 among all

great Britons of all ages.

He is held in high regard for his expressiveness and

creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical

undercurrents within his work.

His paintings and poetry possess an undertone of

‘Romanticism’ and as such he is called a "Pre-Romantic".

Link: Wikipedia.org

William Blake

William Cowper(26 November 1731 – 25 April 1800)

William Cowper was a poet and hymnodist. One of

the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed

the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing

of everyday life and scenes of the English

countryside. Samuel Taylor Coleridge called him "the

best modern poet”.

Link: wikipedia.org

William Cowper

William Cowper

His poem “Light Shining out of Darkness” gave the English language the phrase:

"God moves in a mysterious way

His wonders to perform”.

In Olney Hymns (1779),'Walking with God’, he wrote:-

‘God made the country, and man made the town’.

This sentence has become a slogan for the environmentalists and naturalists of the late 20th century.

William Cowper

Robert Burns recorded and celebrated aspects of farm life, regionalexperience, traditional culture, class culture and distinctions, and religiouspractice and belief in such a way as to transcend the particularities of hisinspiration, becoming finally the national poet of Scotland.(poet’s corner)

"Ye Banks And Braes O'Bonnie Doon” is a Scottish song. The tune of this inspiredGurudev Rabindranath Tagore to compose his song" Phule Phule Dhole Dhole”.Robert Burns composed the original lyric. The song immortalized both RobertBurns and Rabindranath Tagore. It is popular all over the globe.

Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon,How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?How can ye chant ye little birds,And I sae weary, fu' o' care?

Robert Burns(1759–1796 )

Ye'll break my heart, ye warbling birds,

That wanton through the flow'ry thorn,

Ye 'mind me o' departed joys,

Departed never to return.

Oft hae I rov'd by bonnie Doon,

To see the rose and woodbine twine;

And ilka bird sang o' its love,

And fondly sae did I o' mine.

Robert Burns[1759–1796]

Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose,Fu' sweet upon its thorny tree;And my fause lover stole my rose,But ah! he left the thorn wi' me.

Robert Burns is also remembered for his beautiful song ‘My Luve islike a Red, Red Rose’.

Tagore heard the Scottish song ‘"Ye Banks And Braes O'BonnieDoon” as a young man of 21,on his first visit to England. He,lateradapted it in Bengali for his work “The Fatal Hunt” or “(Kalmrigaya)”.It was used for the goddess’ song as ‘Phule Phule Dhole Dhole’ inScene 2 (The flowers! They slumber).The song was composed byRabindranath at the age of 21 and was set to Taal "Khemta”.

Robert Burns(1759–1796 )

Robert Burns

My luve is like a Red,Red Rose

O my Luve is like a red, red rose

That’s newly sprung in June;

O my Luve is like the melody

That’s sweetly played in tune.

So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

So deep in luve am I;

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;

I will love thee still, my dear,

While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve!

And fare thee weel awhile!

And I will come again, my luve,

Though it were ten thousand mile.

"A Red, Red Rose" is a 1794 song in Scots by Robert Burns based on traditional

sources.

James Thomson (11 September 1700 – 27 August 1748) was a Scottish

and British Pre-Romantic poet and playwright. He is known to day for his

masterpiece The Seasons and the lyrics of “Rule, Britania!".

Thomson studied at Edinburgh University. Thomson became a member of

the Grotesque Club, a literary group there, and he met his lifelong friend

David Mallet.

His famous works are The Seasons; To the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton;

Liberty (1734);Rule Britania; The Castle of Indolence etc.

James Thomson

Thomson published his masterpiece, a long, blank verse poem in four

parts, called The Seasons: Winter in 1726, Summer in 1727, Spring in

1728, and the whole poem, including Autumn, in 1730.

The Seasons was the first sustained nature poem in English and

concludes with a “Hymn to Nature.” The work was a revolutionary

departure; its novelty lay not only in subject matter but in structure. What

was most striking to Thomson’s earliest readers was his audacity in

unifying his poem without a “plot” or other narrative device, thereby defying

the Aristotelian criteria revered by the Neoclassicist critics.

Link: Encyclopedia Britannica

James Thomson

The Seasons by James Thomson

Summer

An Outline of Trends in Pre-Romanticism through Romanticism:

Faith in the instinctive goodness of human beings: Anthony Ashley Cooper,

3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, "An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit“;

Faith in the relatively high moral and religious value of sympathy or

benevolence (School of Sensibility): Steele, Careless Husband (drama);

Geo. Akenside, The Pleasures of Imagination; Samuel Rogers, The

Pleasures of Memory; Richardson, Pamela; Stern, Tristram Shandy.

Pre-Romanticism

Interest in humanitarian movements and reforms (origin of

labor standards, child labor laws, slave trade, mental health,

and penal reform

Accurate observation of nature, though without mysticism,

sometimes with the suggestion that nature has a religious

significance (Thomson, the Seasons

Elegiac interest: in death, mutability, mourning, melancholy

(Graveyard School): Blair’s "The Grave"; Gray’s "Elegy in a

Country Churchyard”.

Link: http://theliterarylink.com/prerom.html

Pre-Romanticism

Interest in kindness toward animals

A democratic attitude: insistence on the rights and dignity ofman, and on the freedom of the individual socially andpolitically

Attacks upon wrongs in the established order or inconventional usages: political, economic, social, oreducational.

Interest in the state of nature: the "noble savage" preferencefor the simple life of earlier ages, primitive religions, folk-poetry.Source:/Link: http://theliterarylink.com/prerom.html

Pre-Romanticism

Interest in the medieval period as a age of faith, chivalry, and poetry

Attacks on Pope and other neo-classical authors

Revival or imitation of older forms of verse: ballads, sonnets, blank verse,

Spenserian stanzas etc.

Use of local dialects and colour.

Translation or imitation of Oriental tales, Scandinavian, or old Celtic tales or

literature.

Development of the historical novel, the Gothic school, and the School of

Terror.

Source:/Link: http://theliterarylink.com/prerom.html

Pre-Romanticism

Development of literary theories and literary criticism,stressing the relatively greater importance of theimaginative, emotional, intuitive, free, individual, andparticular over the rational, formal, and general.

Exaltation of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton

Period of violent and Revolutionary spirit, especially inAmerica and France.Source:/Link: http://theliterarylink.com/prerom.html

Pre-Romanticism