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SLST English 2025-26
IX-X , XI-XII
📜 ROMANTIC AGE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE (1798–1837)

🔹 Historical Background
• Began in 1798 with the publication of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
• A reaction against:
o The Age of Reason / Enlightenment (focus on logic and rationality).
o The Industrial Revolution (mechanization and urbanization).
o Neoclassicism (order, decorum, rules).
• Emphasized individual emotion, nature, imagination, and freedom.

🔹 Key Features of Romanticism
1. Glorification of Nature
o Nature as a living spirit and teacher.
o Example: Wordsworth’s Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey.
2. Emotion Over Reason
o Deep personal feelings over cold logic.
o Example: Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind expresses revolutionary zeal and despair.
3. Imagination and Creativity
o Imagination seen as the highest human faculty.
o Example: Coleridge’s Kubla Khan — dream-like, surreal world.
4. Interest in the Supernatural and Mysterious
o Fascination with ghosts, dreams, ancient myths.
o Example: Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
5. Love for the Past
o Especially Medievalism and folklore.
o Example: Keats’ La Belle Dame sans Merci.
6. Rebellion and Individualism
o Poets stood against political oppression and celebrated personal freedom.
o Example: Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage — the Byronic Hero archetype.
7. Focus on the Common Man and Rural Life
o Democratic spirit; poetry of the everyday man.
o Example: Wordsworth’s Michael, The Solitary Reaper.

🔹 Major Romantic Poets
🧾 1. William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
• “Poet of Nature”
• Believed poetry is the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”
• Key Works: Tintern Abbey, Ode: Intimations of Immortality, The Prelude
🧾 2. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
• Poet of supernatural and imagination
• Called imagination the supreme faculty of the poet
• Key Works: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Christabel
🧾 3. Lord Byron (1788–1824)
• Rebel poet; creator of the Byronic Hero
• Bold, passionate, cynical
• Key Works: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Don Juan
🧾 4. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
• Idealist, revolutionary, anti-establishment
• Believed poetry can reform society
• Key Works: Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, Prometheus Unbound
🧾 5. John Keats (1795–1821)
• Poet of sensuousness, beauty, and mortality
• “A thing of beauty is a joy forever”
• Key Works: Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, La Belle Dame sans Merci

🔹 Other Important Romantic Writers
📘 Prose
• William Hazlitt – Essays on literature and politics
• Charles Lamb – Essays of Elia
• Thomas De Quincey – Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
• Jane Austen – Though not a Romantic in style, she wrote during the era (Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility)

🔹 Romantic Novelists (Minor figures)
• Sir Walter Scott – Historical novels (Ivanhoe, Waverley)
• Mary Shelley – Frankenstein (1818), blends Gothic and Romanticism

🔹 Romanticism vs Neoclassicism
Feature Neoclassicism Romanticism
Inspiration Classical Greece & Rome Nature, Imagination, Emotion
Focus Reason, Order, Society Emotion, Individual, Nature
Language Elevated, formal Simple, natural, everyday
Subjects Upper class, politics Common man, personal feelings
Tone Satirical, controlled Passionate, lyrical

🔹 Legacy of the Romantic Age
• Shifted literature to personal experience, freedom, and emotional authenticity
• Inspired later movements like the Victorian poets, Transcendentalists (Emerson, Thoreau), and Modern lyricism

📌 Summary (Quick Points)
• Timeframe: 1798–1837
• Started with: Lyrical Ballads (1798)
• Key Traits: Nature, Emotion, Imagination, Freedom
• Big Five: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats
• Prose: Lamb, Hazlitt, De Quincey
• Novelists: Austen, Scott, Mary Shelley

Note these collective nouns down in your copy
List of collective nouns

A pair of shoes
A catalog of prices
A class of students
A swarm of bees
An anthology of prose
An army of ants
A battery of artillery
A patrol of policemen
A colony of badgers
A fleet of vehicles
A hail of bullets
A line of kings
A pack of wolves
A shoal of fish
A gang of prisoners
A bouquet of flowers
A bowl of rice
A bunch of keys
A bundle of sticks
A hedge of bushes
A chest of drawers
A cluster of coconuts
A cloud of dust
A party of friends
A heap of rubbish
A posse of policemen
A regiment of soldiers
A staff of employees
A team of players
A tribe of natives
A troop of scouts
A bunch of crocks
A caravan of gypsies
A choir of singers
A library of books
A company of actors
A congregation of worship
A haul of fish
A string of horses
A stud of horses
An outfit of clothes
A quiver of arrows
A sloth of bears
A host of sparrows
A pod of birds
A chatter of budgerigars
A herd of cattle
A hive of bees
A team of oxen
A herd of curlew
A mob of deer



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