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Unit 16: The Triumph of Romanticism (Renascence of Wonder and Influence of French Revolution.....

been fixed long ago by certain inspired writers whose authority it would be ever unlawful to Notes
question.) But such views did not represent the spirit of the age which had come under the liberating
influence of the French Revolution.
It is perhaps quite relevant to point out here the folly of the belief that the new literary and
political tendencies, which had a common origin and were almost contemporaneous with each
other, always influenced a given person equally strongly, that a person could not be a revolutionary
in politics without being a revolutionary in literature, and vice versa. Scott, for example, was a
romantic, but a Tory. Hazlitt, on the contrary, was a chartist in politics but was pleased to call
himself an “aristocrat” in literature. Keats did not bother about the French Revolution, or even
politics, at all.

Notes Wordsworth and Coleridge, the two real pioneers of the Romantic Movement in
England, started as radicals and ended as tenacious Tories.

16.8 Three Phases of the French Revolution

It is wrong to think of the French Revolution as a sudden coup unrelated to what had gone before
it. In fact, the seeds of the Revolution had been sown long before they sprouted in 1789. We can
distinguish three clear phases of the French Revolution, which according to Compton-Rickett, are
as follows:
The Doctrinaire phase-the age of Rousseau;
The Political phase-the age of Robespierre and Danton;
The Military phase-the age of Napoleon.”
All these three phases considerably influenced the Romantic Movement in England.

16.8.1 The Influence of the Doctrinaire Phase
The doctrinaire phase of the French Revolution was dominated by the each thinker Rousseau.
His teachings and philosophic doctrines were the germs that brought about an intellectual and
literary revolution all over England. He was, fundamentally considered, a naturalist who gave
the slogan “Return to Nature.” He expressed his faith in the elemental simplicities of life and his
distrust of the sophistication of civilisation which, according to him, had been curbing the
natural (and good) man. He revived the cult of the “noble savage” untainted by the so-called
culture. Social institutions were all condemned by him as so many chains. He raised his powerful
voice against social and political tyranny and exhorted the downtrodden people to rise for
emancipation from virtual slavery and almost hereditary poverty imposed upon them by an
unnatural political system which benefited only a few. Rousseau’s primitivism, sentimentalism,
and individualism had their influence on English thought and literature. In France they prepared
the climate for the Revolution.
Rousseau’s sentimental belief in the essential goodness of natural man and the excellence of
simplicity and even ignorance found a ready echo in Blake and, later, Wordsworth and Coleridge.
The love of nature and the simplicities of village life and unsophisticated folk found ample
expression in their poetic works. Wordsworth’s love of nature was partly due to Rousseau’s
influence. Rousseau’s intellectual influence touched first Godwin and, through him, Shelley. Godwin
in Political Justice embodied a considerable part of Rousseauistic thought. Like him he raised his
voice for justice and equality and expressed his belief in the essential goodness of man.

Notes Referring reverently to Political Justice Shelley wrote that Rousseau’s had learnt “all
that was valuable in knowledge and virtue from that book.”

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