Romantic Poetry

From the second half of the XVIII century England became the centre of Industrialization. The Industrial Revolution which lasted over 60 years changed both the economy and the natural scenery of the country. Pastures and open fields were enclosed and turned into manufacture factories. Farmers left without land moved into big cities in search of new working places and income. However, increased mechanisation of the industrial factories decreased the need for human labour and created high levels of unemployment. Accordingly, within a short period of time acute poverty spread all over the England.

The Industrial Revolution corresponded revolts in the political order. Being disappointed with the economic inequality in country French population

Nevertheless, along with these newly established genres existing ones flourished as well. Among them the preference was given to poetry which was appreciated for its ability to express profound emotions and contradictions of human soul.

The Romantic poetry was a passionate protest against the rules, conventions and limitations imposed by the previous age. It varied from the strictly upheld formal style of neoclassical writings in its subjectivity, spontaneity and freedom of expressions. The Romantic poems were constitutionally modified to cover the problems of the age. They evolved from the doctrines of liberty and individual conviction, and for this they were mostly focused on personal experience rather than public and moral concerns. The Romantic poems presented vivid portrayals of people’s spiritual life during the age of transition and glorified strong individuals who challenged the social and moral values of their time, and struggled against the cruelty and ugliness penetrating into society. They showed the complexity and discrepancy of human feelings generated not only by unfavourable environmental conditions, but also by the struggle of passions in his own

Being the chief faculty of conveying personal feelings so important for Romantic literature, the lyric poem was regarded as the most essentially poetic of all genres.

Distinct from the conventional love poems of previous ages, the Romantic lyrics were mainly centred on the characters who shared recognizable traits with the poet. They often closely accorded the experiences and states of mind expressed by the lyric speaker with the facts of the lyricist’s living and the personal confessions in his letters and journals.

The most favoured of the lyric poems was the ode of irregular form which allowed the Romantic poets to convey their strongest sentiments. The Romantic odes began in an intensely personal impulse and moved toward reflective or philosophical resolutions. They developed from the classical poem of emotional nature to the performative genre where the language indicated public and communal concerns. The eminent samples of Romantic odes were Wordsworth’s “Intimations of Immortality”, Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”, Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” and