Page 135 - DENG402_HISTORY_OF_ENGLISH_LITERATURE

History of English Literature

Notes Conclusion

From what has gone before it is clear how powerful an influence the French Revolution
exerted on English literature. The ideas that awoke the youthful passion of Wordsworth and
Coleridge, that stirred the wrath of Scott, that worked like leaven on Byron and brought forth
new matter, that Shelley reclothed and made into a prophecy of the future, the excitement, the
turmoil, and the life-and-death struggle which gathered round the Revolution were ignored
by few poets of England. Henceforth their poetry spoke of man, of his destiny, and his wrongs,
his rights, duties, and hopes, and particularly, the gyved and fettered humanity. One is tempted
to endorse G. K. Chesterton’s paradoxical remark that the greatest event of English history
occurred outside England!

Task Write down the role of imagination in romantic literature.

16.10 Summary
Romanticism emphasized the liberty of the individual genius from the deadening weight
of tradition and rules, thereby encouraging a kind of chaotic tendency.
Coleridge, perhaps the most romantic of all the romantic poets, always lived in the won-
derful world of his dreams and imagination.
The age of Wordsworth was an age of revolution in the field of poetry as well as of politics.
The political phase of the Revolution, which started with the fall of the Bastille, sent a wave
of thrill to every young heart in Europe.
When Shelley started writing, the French Revolution had already become, as a historical
incident, a thing of the past However, the spirit of the Revolution breaths vigorously in his
poetry.

16.11 Keywords

Hellenism : Hellenism, as a neoclassical movement distinct from other Roman
or Greco-Roman forms of neoclassicism emerging after the
European Renaissance, is most often associated with Germany
and England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Medievalism : Medievalism is the system of belief and practice characteristic of
the middle ages.

16.12 Review Questions
1. What is the role of imagination?
2. What is Coleridge and the supernatural? Explain.
3. What is the difference between Medievalism and Hellenism?
4. How many phases of the French Revolution?
5. What is Coleridge and Southey?

Answers : Self Assessment
1. Dr. Johnson 2. Renascence of wonder 3. Gorgeousness
4. Christable 5. Gothicism 6. Supernaturalises

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