Page 21 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

British Poetry

Notes with a very sensitive and passionate temperament. At that time Germany was a multitude of small
separate states, and Goethe’s works would have a seminal influence in developing a unifying sense
of nationalism. Another philosophic influence came from the German idealism of Johann Gottlieb
Fichte and Friedrich Schelling, making Jena (where Fichte lived, as well as Schelling, Hegel, Schiller
and the brothers Schlegel) a center for early German romanticism (“Jenaer Romantik”). Important
writers were Ludwig Tieck, Novalis (Heinrich von Ofterdingen, 1799), Heinrich von Kleist and
Friedrich Hölderlin. Heidelberg later became a center of German romanticism, where writers and
poets such as Clemens Brentano, Achim von Arnim, and Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff met
regularly in literary circles.
Important motifs in German Romanticism are travelling, nature, and ancient myths. The later German
Romanticism of, for example, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann (The Sandman), 1817, and Joseph
Freiherr von Eichendorff’s Das Marmorbild (The Marble Statue), 1819, was darker in its motifs and
has gothic elements.
Early Russian Romanticism is associated with the writers Konstantin Batyushkov (A Vision on the
Shores of the Lethe, 1809), Vasily Zhukovsky (The Bard, 1811; Svetlana, 1813) and Nikolay Karamzin
(Poor Liza, 1792; Julia, 1796; Martha the Mayoress, 1802; The Sensitive and the Cold, 1803). However
the principal exponent of Romanticism in Russia is Alexander Pushkin (The Prisoner of the Caucasus,
1820–1821; The Robber Brothers, 1822; Ruslan and Ludmila, 1820; Eugene Onegin, 1825–1832).
Pushkin’s work influenced many writers in the 19th century and led to his eventual recognition as
Russia’s greatest poet. Other Russian poets include Mikhail Lermontov (A Hero of Our Time, 1839),
Fyodor Tyutchev (Silentium!, 1830), Yevgeny Baratynsky’s (Eda, 1826), Anton Delvig, and Wilhelm
Küchelbecker. Influenced heavily by Lord Byron, Lermontov sought to explore the Romantic
emphasis on metaphysical discontent with society and self, while Tyutchev’s poems often described
scenes of nature or passions of love. Tyutchev commonly operated with such categories as night
and day, north and south, dream and reality, cosmos and chaos, and the still world of winter and
spring teeming with life. Baratynsky’s style was fairly classical in nature, dwelling on the models of
the previous century.
In Spain, the Romantic movement developed a well-known literature with a huge variety of poets
and playwrights. The most important Spanish poet during this movement was José de Espronceda.
After him there were other poets like Gustavo Adolfo Becquer, Mariano Jose de Larra and the
dramatist José Zorrilla, author of Don Juan Tenorio. Before them may be mentioned the pre-romantics
Jose Cadalso and Manuel José Quintana.
Spanish Romanticism also influenced regional literatures. For example, in Catalonia and in Galicia
there was a national boom of writers in the local languages, like the Catalan Jacint Verdaguer and
the Galician Rosalía de Castro, the main figures of the national revivalist movements Renaixença
and Rexurdimento, respectively.
Brazilian Romanticism is characterized and divided in three different periods. The first one is basically
focused in the creation of a sense of national identity, using the ideal of the heroic Indian. Some
examples include José de Alencar, who wrote “Iracema” and “O Guarani”, and Gonçalves Dias,
renowned by the poem “Cançao do Exilio” (Song of the Exile). The second period is marked by a
profound influence of European themes and traditions, involving the melancholy, sadness and
despair related to unobtainable love. Goethe and Lord Byron are commonly quoted in these works.
The third cycle is marked by social poetry, especially the abolitionist movement; the greatest writer
of this period is Castro Alves.
Romanticism in British literature developed in a different form slightly later, mostly associated
with the poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose co-authored book Lyrical
Ballads (1798) sought to reject Augustan poetry in favour of more direct speech derived from folk
traditions. Both poets were also involved in utopian social thought in the wake of the French

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