John Keats (1795 – 1821)
The last Romantic poet, John Keats, was born to a family whose father was head ostler at a London livery stable who married his employee"s daughter and inherited the business. Keats" mother was lively and strongly sensuous. The parents were uninterested in art and had little familiarity with literature. John himself was not interested in literature. He was rather a high spirited boy who adored playing.
When Keats was 8, his father died after a fall from a horse and when he was 14, his mother died of tuberculosis. As a result, the brothers and sisters became close to each other. The children"s guardian was a practical-minded businessman; so, he took 15 year old Keats out of school and bound him apprentice to a surgeon. After 5 years of apprenticeship, Keats was qualified enough to start his medical career, but almost immediately, despite his guardian"s protests, he abandoned medicine for poetry. Almost everything happened suddenly in his life, even his reading literature. When he was 14, he was introduced to book and soon he began to read the books in the school library.
The first major incident of his life was his studying Spenser"s "Fairie Queene" which had a great impact on him and made him start writing. Keats" first poems were shown to Leigh Hunt, editor of several journals, a critic, an essayist and a poet of minor aristocracy who had a great art of detecting artistic genius and who was a radical supporter of Romanticism. Hunt could detect the token of genius in young Keats and published his poems in his journal, "The Examiner". Keats, who was merely a disciple to Hunt, was greatly happy and continued working on "Endymion A Poetic Romance".
The publication of this book of poems brought him the brutal attacks of critics. The major reason was that the critics were against Hunt and tried to attack him through Keats. But Keats had a very tough personality despite his tender appearance and was self critical. Thus, in his preface to "Endymion", he pointed out his own faults.
The year 1818 was a cruel time to Keats during which his favorite brother, Tom caught tuberculosis. Keats spent time nursing his brother and in the closing month of the year he lost him while he himself caught the disease. George, his other brother, left the country due to financial problems; moreover, Keats fell in love with Fanny Brawne, an 18 year old brilliant girl; but their love was disastrous for there were obstacles to their union; in addition to his disease, he had financial straits. The intermingled theme of love, the beauty of love and the inevitability of death can be traced in his works. In order to release himself, Keats started working on poetry and created works which placed him among the greatest poets.
The year 1820 passed miserably. He spent the first half in the country with Fanny nursing him, and in the second half he left his homeland for Italy, hoping that his health would be restored there. He died in Italy and was buried in a Protestant cemetery at 25 years of age. His premature death was a great loss in the history of English literature.
Keats was a different literary man from his contemporaries. Unlike Shelley and Byron who used poetry as a means toward their aims - the former using it for explaining political doctrines; – Keats was a pure poet writing poems for expressing beauty and rendering the experience of beauty. Beauty was a great joy for him.
His most important poem was written in 2 years: "Endymion". In the Greek mythology, Endymion is a shepherd with whom Synthia, the goddess of the moon falls in love. Whereas in Keats" work Endymion falls in love with Synthia; but it is a hopeless love. He seeks her throughout the world and at last, when he gets disappointed, he finds Phoebe, an earthly real woman and falls in love with her, and later, he finds that Phebe was actually Synthia herself. They have a Platonic love and Phoebe takes him to the eternal territory.
"The Fall of Hyperion" is an unfinished epic in 2 versions (both incomplete); also inspired by mythology. In Roman mythology, Saturn, the god of gods, is dethroned by his son Jupiter. Keats" story of Hyperion is that of the fall of Saturn. Saturn talks to his fellow Titans and tries to retain his kingdom, so he asks the help of Hyperion, the God of the Sun. The story reminds one of "Paradise Lost" by Milton although Keats did not mean to be after anybody"s fashion.
Other works by Keats are as the following:
Ode to Psyche
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Ode to Melancholy
Ode to Nightingale
Ode to Indolence
Ode to Autumn
Keats was a pagan; he was mostly concerned with mythological figures rather than Christianity.
Differences between the Prose and Poetry of the Romantic Period
Before Romanticism it was believed that prose is plain, dull, commonplace and dealing mostly with facts. But the Romantic Movement made a great change in prose. During this era, prose was not simple or practical anymore; it was emotional and subjective and it concerned with the writers" experiences. Their prose works were mostly imaginative and poetic. A common form of essays during this period was: Familiar Essays.
Familiar Essay is a kind of essay dealing with a sort of imaginative fact – not general facts – which is considered only by the writer to be a fact. A Familiar Essay is a very confessional type of writing; conveying personal interests. It is analytical since in these works the writers analyze everything.
The Romantic writers were very personal and egoist and a veil of their imagination falls between them and the fact they express.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797 – 1851)
The Gothic tradition is completely in the mood of Romanticism; concerned with supernaturalism and strange things. The best English Gothic novelist is Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the 19 year-old wife of Shelley. Together with Byron, the couple spent a summer in Switzerland where they read Gothic novels. Each one decided to write one but only Mary succeeded to finish hers. Her work was titled "Frankenestein" and was considered the best among the Gothic novels.
Dr. Frankenestein is a genius student of natural philosophy who tries to achieve immortality. In university, he discovers the secret of parting life in inanimate objects. Thus, he gathers different parts of the bodies of different people, puts the together and structures a Creature similar to a human being but in a gigantic size and very ugly and horrible in appearance. Opposite to his countenance, The Creature is very friendly at heart; he is also a literate one since his brain belongs to a professor. He feels lonely, so he asks Frankenestein for a mate but his request is refused. Consequently, he takes revenge on Frankenestein who just created him regardless of his emotional and spiritual needs. He kills his brother, friend and bride. Frankenestein pursues him to destroy him but he fails and dies and finally The Creature ends his life.
"Frankenestein" is considered a Gothic novel. It has a very profound philosophical idea. The Creature is a symbol of human being and the Frankenestein himself represents God. The loneliness and misery of man is conveyed through the story.
Mary Shelley was only 19 when she wrote this novel. So it is very surprising of so young a girl to have such a profound insight.
Jane Austin (1801 – 1858)
Although this novelist lived during the Romantic period, she remained detached from romanticism. Her father, Reverend George Austin was a cultivated clergyman who encouraged her in reading and writing. Jane led an ordinary life without any noticeable incidents. She wrote about the limited experiences of the lives of the southern English villagers to whom she was in touch with; the upper- middle class gentlemen who have good incomes, seeking wives and the young girls trying to find husbands for their mothers or aunts and gentlemen trying to induce young girls to elope with them.
The superficiality of Austin"s subject matters might appear very surprising; but great critics recognized her in one of the two greatest novelists of the period.
Unlike Bronte Sisters, Austin is detached from feelings and is not under the control of passion. She is a great realist. To her, literature is not the imitation of life but is making an illusion of life through imagination. She can render this illusion especially by her use of everyday language. Her humor is so delicate that if not being a professional reader, one might miss her witty turn of mind i.e. the satirical aspects of her works are difficult to detect. Her prose is subtle, exact and straight to the point. It is more beautifully constructed than that of Addison. She is regarded as the best successor of Addison. Austin"s type of writing is conversational rather than descriptive. Her novels are as follows:
Sense and Sensibility
Pride and Prejudice
Ema
Northanger Abbey
Mansfield Park
Persuation
Neo-Classicism versus Romanticism
1. Reason / Feelings and Emotion
Reason is the most important and the dominant factor in Neo-Classicism. It was greatly regarded by Plato and Aristotle and all their followers in the Neo-Classical period. According to them, reason is the only voice to answer and to obey; it is the source of evaluation to be distinct from animals. They believed that man should act just according to his mental power.
On the other hand, Romanticists, especially Wordsworth (the father of Romanticism), believed that poetry is nothing but the overflow of emotions. It originates from the poet"s feelings and its aim is to produce the same emotions in the readers.
2. Urban Life / Rural Life
In all works of the Neo-Classicists as Pope and Johnson we could observe traces of urban life. They were not interested in the wild nature; whereas the Romanticists were deeply interested in nature especially in its wild aspects. To them, a beautiful garden or landscape, meadows and country sides are components of nature and they were influenced by the secrets which existed in nature. Neo-Classicists cared for nature as man"s nature but a Romanticist cares for nature as the natural world as a stimulus for thinking and as a source of inspiration and imagination.
3. Aristocracy / Simple Characters
Neo-Classicists mostly wrote for and about the upper-class gentlemen and ladies. Their subject matters were about the aristocratic life of such people while there is no trace of such characters in Romanticism. In the latter we have humble people, little country girls and boys, farmers, etc. The reason for choosing such common people instead of courtiers is that a courtier is much more able of hiding his personality whereas a Romanticist is in search of human desires and common people are easier to reach to their desires. They are not able to hide their true selves.
4. External / Internal Life
In Neo-Classicism man is mostly important regarding his social and external personality. In other words man in his social and external aspects is considered more important than in his individual and internal life; whereas the Romanticists" aim is to penetrate the internal life of man not his external one. Thus, man"s hopes, wishes, desires, love, pains and philosophy are important to them. Therefore, as far as human life is concerned, a Romanticist is more profound than a Neo-Classicist. The former is egoistic and self-centered. A Romantic writer or poet believes that every human being has a hidden life which is much more active than his external life. The predominant genre of Romanticism was Lyric. The Lyric poets express their own feelings openly. On the other hand, to the latter, man among men is important; he deals mostly with Social Satires.
5. Limitation (Rules and Laws) / Freedom
A Neo-Classicist believes that a poet is a maker and an imitator who should have a model (like Virgil) in order to create. He should use certain rhythm, rhyme scheme and figurative languages. He has a framework of strict, oriented rules. According to the supporters of this school, art is created only when the artist is able to limit his imagination according to his masters.
On the contrary, Romanticists believe in no limitation for anything in life and all of them led a wild life. According to them, poetry should be free and imagination should go wherever it wants to go. A romantic poet is limitless and a free creator who is able to experience unbelievable experiences. According to Wordsworth, poetry is the overflow of emotions; it is spontaneous and nobody, even the poet himself is able to stop it. Romanticists believed in no limitation for genre, subject matter and also versification but absolute freedom of artist.
6. Stock Diction / Simple and Fresh Language
Neo-Classicism started with simplicity (prose of Addison and Steele) but did not remain so up to the end. Its followers used repeated words i.e. stock diction, and the same phraseology. They divided the words into poetic and non-poetic ones and used the poetic words repeatedly. But Wordsworth believed that all words are poetic even those spoken by farmers and villagers. He was sick of ordinary daily language which was used since the time of Chaucer up to his time.
The Dominant Religious Beliefs
Deism
It is applied to a sort of religious belief according to which all the incidents observed in this universe are the results of some causes. There are a few principles in Deism:
1. First Cause
There is a supreme being, i.e. God (all the creatures must have a creator)
2. Order and Wisdom of the Creator
The universe is an ordered system in which we can perceive law and regularity; it is not a chaotic one; consequently, there must be wisdom.
3. Purposefulness
The whole universe is planned wisely; therefore, the creator must have a purpose. (According to Deists, Scripture is a part of the universe).
4. Benevolence
In the process of the purposeful world"s going to its end smoothly and beautifully, God"s gift to all creatures are perceptible – that of existence and that of freedom to live.
Deism spread in the Augustan Age and was appropriate for the Neo-Classicists and many people both Christian and Neo-Classicist believed in it. The Christian Deists believed that the world is perfectly built and one must go after the model of the Supreme Being – i.e. one has to have order, wisdom and purpose, so that one would become happy in life.
Methodism
This religious viewpoint was spread after the age of reason, during the age of sentimentality, emotion and feeling (i.e. the period of Emotionalism). The founder of Methodism was John Wesley.
John Wesley (1703 – 1791)
He was the 15th child of a clergyman and educated at Oxford. Together with his brother Charles and his friend, he founded a society of 20 young men who started series of self examination according to an orderly life. He started preaching Bible to common people in open fields, bars, cities, streets and so on – not inside a church. Primarily, Methodism started in the Anglican Church but later on, it was parted from the church. John Wesley spread it as an individual religious movement but Charles never abandoned his tendency to the Anglican Church.
In one of his sermons, he asserted that human being has to awaken the love of God inside his soul; through his heart and his faith to Bible, he is able to achieve salvation. Wesley"s ideas were somehow attached to Puritanism. He gave 400 sermons and rode miles to preach. It was a tremendous religious movement which stressed on the working class, sympathizing with them and encouraging a pious life. His audiences were really influenced by him, trembling, crying and experiencing convulsive emotions. This powerful movement influenced many Anglican preachers.
Evangelicanism
It is another religious movement very similar to the previous one. It has the same method of preaching but is performed inside the Anglican Church. The title is related to Bible. It refers to those 4 people who reported the Gospels: Peter, Luke, John and Mathew, the original evangelists. They believed that The New Testament should be taken to people. They started preaching the gospels to them and putting the central significance on faith as a means for salvation. They also believed in a life of individual piety and in Sabbatarianism i.e. avoidance of any worldly activities on Sundays. They believed that anything but religious affairs would be a sin. Besides, they believed in the abolition of slavery but not in a radical form. A Sabbaterian never cared about what a factory owner did to poor children working in a factory, but they interrogated him why he had read a fragment of literature instead of a verse of Bible on Sunday. They just cared for slogans irrelevant to the condition of people.
These three religious movements had great significance in the next age, The Victorian Age.
