Notes about Romanticism and the Aesthetic Movement (25/5/12)

Between Romanticism and Victorian poetry there is a movement of transition, the Pre-Raphaelites. In Romantic poetry the key words are imagination, nature and solitude. Romantic poetry always expresses poet's personal response to an experience, so it is always written as the memory of the experience. The Manifesto of English Romanticism is the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, a text of literary criticism where the poet W. Wordsworth expounds his ideas about how the new poetry should be written.
English Romanticism is composed of two periods: the first one is called the "first generation" and its exponents are W. Wordsworth and S. T. Coleridge; in the "second generation" the exponents are Lord Byron, P. B. Shelley and J. Keats.
Romantic poetry recalls nature poetry and it is a reaction to 18th century poetry. For Mr Wordsworth poetry must not use "poetic diction" but "the language really used by man" and the men nearest to nature are countrymen. Their language is more simple than poetic diction, so it is nearest to man's passions and instincts. Poetry must talk about humble things, everyday life and nature. W. Wordsworth says that "Poetry is emotion recollected in tranquillity": in his poem I wandered lonely as a cloud the poet explains this concept. The poet is walking in the country (nature) and he sees many daffodyls moved by the wind. Daffodyls have a stronger energy than his and they are a lot, while he is alone. At home he his lying down on a sofa (tranquillity and solitude) and what he felt in the country is recalled to his mind and he feels again that emotion. The emotion really exists in his minds. The poet says about the emotion "it actual exists in the mind". Romantic poets do not refuse reason and their poetry is not a reaction to Illuminism. Romanticism wants to underline that there is not only rationality but also irrationality. It explains why Romantic poetry is characterized by many similes, metaphores... Romantic poetry tries to say something that there is not in objective reality, but inside the person.
The first generation poets use mainly odes, ballas and sonnets, while the second ones mostly the ode, with a high language, far from countrymen's one.
In Aesthetic Manifesto the poet is something more than the other men and he feels almost immortal.The Aesthetic movement is a reaction to the Victorian aestheticism, that is a useless and funny art. Oscar Wilde, the exponent of English Aestheticism says that the whole art is useless, that men needs beauty, and that he has to live his life like if it were a work of art.