Pre-Romanticism

Pre-Romanticism stood in opposition to previous rationality of neo-classicism as it newly emphasized emotions rather than cold reason. It was a reaction to industrialisation, social changes, political ideas of American War of Independence of 1770s and French Revolution of 1789. Unlike intellectual poetry of the 18th century, pre-romanticism used simpler vernacular language to go back to common people. Odes and ballads became popular, rejecting neo-classicist heroic couplet.

Its main features were imagination, passion, fascination of mysterious, individual originality of an author, growing interest in country life and nature, fascination of distant past (medieval gothic), exotic (faraway places like Arabia, China), supernatural (ghosts, dreams mingling with reality), growing belief in uniqueness of every human being and professionalization in writing (before you needed a rich patron).

Early poets of 1770s

EDWARD YOUNG wrote melancholy elegies like Night Thoughts, a dark meditation on mortality. He was fascinated by death but not in a morbid sense, rather meditative.

THOMAS GRAY was of delicate physical condition which caused him pessimism. Formally he was still writing in neo-classicism style with well organised and formally perfect poetry but with emotions that were already pre-romantic. His most famous poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard in which a speaker reads inscriptions on gravestones and tells stories of people buried. It is about death but moreover appreciation of life that it is worth to live even though it ends with death.

He set his meditation in a typical English churchyard and the narrator is far from the buzzing city, alone in a quite graveyard. He invokes death symbolised by graves but also the the comfort provided by trees shading bodies that sleep. He addresses common people and also the upper classes, saying that ultimately it does not matter what glory they achieve or how elaborate a tombstone they will have, they will dies just like the poor. The churchyard graves may also contain the remains of a person who had the ability to become a great scholar, a national leader, or a great poet but now not more than “mute inglorious Milton.” In the last stanza titled Epitaph Gray concludes by imagining his own death and how he hopes to be remembered.

This poem was so influential which resulted in establishing a new school of poetry Graveyard Poets who followed the pattern of fascination with death, darkness, melancholy but were very humane at the same time. They are often considered to be precursors of the Gothic genre.

Gray also wrote light verse = poetry that attempts to be humorous like Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes about his friend Horace Walpole´s cat dying when trying to catch goldfish. In fact, the poem mocks ode which is a form that is supposed to be written in an elevated style with meditative mourning tone.  The she-cat stares at her reflection on the water's surface of fishbowl and is shown as vain: "What female heart can gold despise? What cat’s averse to fish?" Fish emerge, tempting the cat. As she stretches her paw, the cat loses balance and falls into the water. She "eight times emerging from the flood," calling desperately for help "she mewed to every watery god, some speedy aid to send" but nobody comes. It is a satire aimed at ladies that follow vanity and temptation.

THOMAS CHATTERTON (1752-1770) committed suicide at the age of 18 because he was disappointed by his failure to achieve success as a writer. He tried to establish himself by pretending to find medieval poetry but the poems were in fact his. There were quite good but the forgery ruined his reputation when the fraud was discovered. However, because of his isolation, failed ambition and disappointment, he became the model for later romantic authors who also died very young. Collection: The Rowley Poems.

Poets of 1780s

WILLIAM COWPER /kaupr/ (1731-1800) wrote very passionate and subjective poetry. His poetry is a bit outdated nowadays but he is remembered as among the first great humanist of the period who believed in ideas of French Revolution, wrote against colonialism and imperial warfare. He was one of the most popular poets of his time who changed the direction of the 18th century poetry by writing about everyday life and the English countryside. He was writing mainly hymns: Olney Hymns.

ROBERT BURNS (1759-1796)

He was a Scottish bard, considered a national poet of Scotland and a collector of Scottish folklore. He was a heavy drinker since he celebrated life with alcohol and died on heart disease, aged 37. For his handsome looks he was popular with women. Burns was really a people’s person, a great entertained, major hit in social circles and all social classes liked him, even the aristocracy, although he came from the low class. He gave self-confidence to the Scots and Robert Burns Day is still celebrated with drinking alcohol. J

He was not born in Lowlands to a family of unsuccessful farmers so they were very poor but Robert managed to educate himself. He did not expect anything from his collection Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, he wrote it for pleasure and actually wanted to move to Jamaica to try his luck with farming in colonies but he never went because immediately after publishing the collection he became a huge success. Then, he continued rewriting Scottish songs.

His key to success was the fact that he started writing poetry in simple language of everyday life, a mixture of English and Scots dialect so everybody could identify with his poetry. He also chose well the subject matter so instead of distant ideas or exotic lands he was writing about ordinary subjects, trivial troubles of people of Scotland. He wrote many love poems and expresses the Scottish pride with patriotic poems which was another reason for success. He believed in believed in revolution and supported freedom, brotherhood and equality. People loved him! Even traditional aristocracy fell for his patriotism - he was a voice of Scotland, writing in Scottish dialect.

Scots Wha Hae is a patriotic rebel poem and unofficial Scottish anthem, rather a song than a poem. William Wallace (featured in the movie Brave Heart) was a Scottish patriotic hero fighting for independence. Robert Bruce was another hero of resistance.

To a Mouse is his best poem when it comes to the mixture of English and Scots dialect and also regarding the subject matter. Christianity claims that animals do not have souls so there is no need to feel empathy for them and classicism did not help much. Burns as the first states that we should not step on the little ones which also delivers a parallel to aristocracy x peasants. After a farmer plows up a mouse's nest, he apologises to it while assuring he meant no harm. He also does not mind that the mouse occasionally steals his corn. After all, the farmer owns the harvest from the land so he cannot bear grudge against the mouse taking a tiny portion. Finally, he tells the mouse that humans also fail to build wisely provisions for the future. "I'm truly sorry man's dominion has broke nature's social union." He calls the mouse "earth-born companion, fellow-mortal."

A Red, Red Rose is appealing for its ordinary languages, pleasant rhythm and melody that feels like it is flowing – something between a poem and a song. Burns romantically links love and nature by simile "my luve's like a red, red rose." Although he bids his beloved farewell, he will come back eventually just as spring comes after winter in an eternal cyclic movement.

WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827)

Totally unknown in his times, nowadays he is one of the giants of English literature. He spent all of his life in London’s Soho, nowadays a district of brothels and gambling but in his times it was a suburb, more like a village. Blake rejected rationality because it represented forces of industry he hated so he was not fond of Dryden and Pope but admired John Milton who was also a man with vision who lived a very spiritual life.

Since he was so individualistic and strange, nobody knew him but his close friends admired him as a guru. As his collections were rejected by publishers, Blake was his own editor and printer. To publish him officially was out of question, he was too rebellious, supported American and French revolution and spoke against monarchy and the Church. He was also strongly critical of Joshua Reynolds – the main literary theorist of those times, a guru of official English culture.

He made a living as engraver and lived in poverty. Although Romantics were womanizers, he was faithful to his wife whom he educated. After his death, he was buried into an unmarked gravebut a proper gravestone was erected later when Scotland Yard detectives wanted to identify his spot. They were not complete success so the title says “somewhere here lies William Blake and besides him his wife.”

Blake had two sides of him, as a social critic he criticized industry, machinery, dirt, child labour and prostitution. Industrial London was hell for him and among the very first, he wrote about these horrors and negative sides of booming economy. In Songs of Innocence he presents purity of childhood as something ideal (the poem The Lamb is the most representative of this collections.) Latter Songs of Experience lost cheerfulness and instead of childish purity and happiness there is a lot of anger, protest, disappointment because there is no longer innocence but maturity and experience of adult life in industrialized Britain (the poem The Tyger stands as symbol of power "burning bright" and contemplating "Did he who made the lamb made thee?").

As a mystic, Blake claimed to have visions about heaven and angels since he was a kid so he literally lived in a different world. His relationship with God was very personal and imagination was a a tool to keep in touch with God. He created his own mythology and named his own Gods, representing various comic energies like The Book of Los but his epic poems went a bit against him since their understanding requires a lot of intellectual work. 

Jerusalem is an unofficial English anthem sung even by Royal family, a fragment of a poem Milton. The first stanza talks about a legend that Jesus visited England but it ends with a question expressing doubts. It serves to doubt spiritual background of England as Jesus never walked upon the British soil. In the second stanza, the speaker mentions Jerusalem, the origin of Christianity. Can England become a holy land just as Jerusalem? Does it fulfil criteria for a spiritual place? He describes factories as satanic mills and the dirt is hell where spirituality is lost.

In the third stanza the tone changes and strongly agitates people to do something and create better England that would replace the industrial satanic one. Apostle mentioned that Jesus came to Earth saying “I did not come to declare peace but war” which reveals rebellious part of Christianity that is needed now to make changes. The fourth stanza swears to never give up as he still sees the original green land under industrial England. However, it has a form of mental fight with weapons of the mind, therefore, a spiritual war. Blake believed that spiritual revolution should precede social and political changes.

London shows social critical side of Blake. The first stanza features a flow on a clean “chartered street” but London was a divided city with many restrictions. People are not really free and this imprisonment is seen in their faces. Only the speaker wanders freely and looks on it with open eyes. The second stanza reveals that bans cause fear in people the result is misery that can be heard and seen. These “mind-forged manacles” are not real chains, the bans exist in the mind of people as powerful illusions.

The third stanza talks about those who suffers like chimney-sweepers, one of the dirtiest jobs in London done by pre-school children to bring some money into poor families who died early because of fumes. The speaker blames the church for tolerating it. Then he talks about soldiers and blames the monarchy for sustaining the war at all costs for profit. Solders are innocent and suffer from it. In the fourth stanza he takes as the biggest evil is the prostitution (harlots), representing total degradation of human spirit. Marriage is corrupted by prostitution, children of prostitutes take it as normal so their innocent morality is gone and prostitutes often brought syphilis into the family (blights with plagues the marriage-hearse). It was time of zero social mobility.

To the Muses expresses the Muses are not present anymore in the world. "How have you left the ancient love, that bards of old enjoy'd in you! The languid strings do scarcely move, the sound is forced, the notes are few." Love's Secret describes a narrator who is deeply in love and confesses to the lady "I told my love, I told my love, I told her all my heart" but she leaves with another man.

Gothic novel

Gothic novel as a genre began as a reaction to growing industrialisation. Writers felt that new society of commerce lost all its magic and good old England is gone. Therefore, these authors and their readers wanted to escape harsh reality into dreams, mystic past and exotic distant places. Gothic novels are  full of fantasy, sensitivity, sentimentality, exoticism, passion but also cruelty and eroticism. They are set in medieval castles, graveyards, old ruins and faraway lands. Typical characters are tyrants, villains, maniacs, Byronic heroes, madwomen, magicians, vampires, werewolves, monsters, demons and ghosts. The difference between gothic novel and horror is that in gothic novels nobody dies without a reason.

HORACE WALPOLE was homosexual and is believed to have a sexual affairs with Thomas Gray. These two were close friends from school and Gray even dedicated one his poem to Walpole's cat. The Castle of Otranto (1764) is the first truly gothic romance. Walpole was obsessed with medieval gothic architecture and built his own house in that style.

ANNE RADCLIFFE created the gothic novel as we know it now and introduced the depressing figure of a gothic villain which developed into the Byronic hero. Her novels were best-sellers and almost everyone was reading them. She vividly described exotic places, though in reality she had rarely or never visited the actual locations. The Mysteries of Udolpho is an archetypal gothic novel and follows the destiny of heroine who suffers the death of her father and supernatural terrors in a gloomy castle. However, at the end Radcliffe explains everything that happened scientifically.

WILLIAM BECKFORD was a member of a parliament and also reputed to be the richest commoner in England. His novel Vathek is set in Arabia which was an exotic faraway place for the British readers. It tells a story how Vathek seeks out sorcery forbidden to Muslims. Tempted by the talisman that can control the world, Vathek commits crimes. When he reached the promised ruined city of vast treasure, his reward is not what he expected to be.

MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS is often referred to as "Monk" Lewis because of the success of his novel The Monk. It is set in a Spain monastery during the time of the inquisition and features a highly respected monk who attracts large crowds to his sermons. He is regarded almost as a saint but when a beautiful young woman tried to seduce him, he breaks his vows. After that, the monk goes to commit one crime after another, each worse than the one before.

   

Essays and pamphlets

THOMAS PAINE raised ideas of American and French revolution, writing against conservative politics, for state support of the poor and free education for all. His ideas were very progressive ideas, summarised in the radical pamphlet The Rights of Men.

WILLIAM GODWIN was an anarchist who believed that the power of reason and education can transform the world for the better. He wrote against private property, church and even marriage.  His first essay is promoting the idea of free love because he saw marriage as enslaving institution, hindrance to human freedom. Nevertheless, he himself was married and it was to another radical thinker MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, a mother of Marry Shelley. She was the very first female feminist who promoted women independence and education. She saw it as key to equality, her masterpiece is Vindication of the Rights of Women.