Authors : Lakshman Hirulkar
Page Nos : 232-241
Description :
An ideology of Romanticism is an inevitable corollary of the Renaissance and
reformation which brought into vogue an unusual impulse in art and life. An in-depth
study of the contemporary social life reveals that certain crucial events like the
emergence of new idealistic philosophy of European thinkers, outbreak of French
Revolution, political upheaval in America and the onset of the Industrial Revolution
gave an impetus to the Romantic Movement that moulded literature into a new fashion.
William Wordsworth and S. T. Coleridge who postulated their poetic manifesto in Lyrical
Ballads (1798) emphasized the realistic representation of life and imparted a new vision
to the blooming generation of poets. As a result of this, the earlier literary trend of
classicism that lay emphasis on the faculties of reason, intellect and order paved the
way to Romanticism. The ideology of Romanticism has its superstructure on the
foundation of imagination, intuition, ethics and morality. Different interpretations of
critics and historians highlight the fact that this new trend in poetry is an all-inclusive
generalization that reveals the thoughts and feelings, the aspirations and ideas, the
doubts and struggles, the faith and hope, of a great intense, complex and turbulent
period of history, is rightly termed as Romanticism.
Keywords:
Romanticism, Classicism, Utilitarianism, Masonic, Grandeur
