English Romanticism began in 1798 with the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s The Lyrical Ballads and ended in 1832 with Walter Scott’s death. William Blake and Robert Burns also belong to this literary genre, though they lived before the Romantic period.
Romanticism took place during a period of wars and revolutions, of considerable shifts and changes. It was a time of profound political and social reorganisation.
Romantic texts were varied and dealt with the Industrial Revolution and its consequences: a new class system, and a new type of economy. It’s important to emphasize the fact that this is the time when numerous kinds of problems appeared. Famous writers include William Blake, William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge.
Besides the Industrial Revolution, it is impossible to ignore the two major political upheavals that took place at that time, namely the American War of Independence (1776-1783) and the French Revolution (1789), which challenged old systems of social and political organizations.
The French Revolution struck British consciousness at first very favourably. Samuel Coleridge celebrated and praised it in a poem entitled “Destruction of the Bastille”.
Enthusiasm melted away as the war between France and Britain broke out four years later (1793), about the same time as the Reign of Terror started (1793-1794).
Romanticism was a period of constant tensions, observable in some of the poems we will study.
