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History of English Literature Jayatee Bhattacharya, Lovely Professional University

Notes Unit 17: The Triumph of Romanticism

(Elements of Medievalism,
Escapism and Supernaturalism)

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
17.1 Elements of Medievalism
17.2 Escapism
17.3 Supernaturalism
17.4 Summary
17.5 Keywords
17.6 Review Questions
17.7 Further Readings

Objectives
After studying this unit, you will be able to:
Define pater’s explanation.
Describe coleridge and scott.
Explain escapism.
Define supernaturalism.

Introduction

The generation of a new interest in the middle ages was one of the hallmarks of the Romantic
Movement in England, as in the rest of Europe. Heine went so far as to define romanticism as the
reawakening of the middle Ages. H. A. Beers in A History of English Romanticism (1902) was also
mainly concerned with the revival of medievalism. It is, however, too lop-sided an interpretation
of romanticism which was, in fact, a very complex and composite phenomenon.

17.1 Elements of Medievalism

Why were most romantic poets interested in the Middle Ages? The answer to this question is not
far to seek. The romantics were, essentially, critical of intellectualism, sophisticated civilisation,
and harsh humdrum reality. The desire to get rid of them made them “amorous of the far.” They
sought an escape into regions and states of beings as far removed in time and space as possible. It
is this love of the remote, the strange, and the mysterious which induced in them an interest in the
Middle Ages. The romantic poet is impatient of the real and the earth-bound. He is often
discontented with the state of things as they are. Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, and Scott are notably
so. Being dissatisfied with oppressive reality they either sing of the glorious past or project their
imagination into the womb of futurity to raise a shape that answers their own desire. Thus Keats
sings of the glory that was Greece; Scott endeavours to recapture the splendour of the past ages,
particularly, the Middle Ages; Shelley sings of the golden age to come; and Coleridge is lost in a
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world of his own making. Says Shelley:
We look before and after
And pine for what is not.

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