Preface: What Was British Romanticism?
I was originally introduced to Romanticism back in 2018 after watching Jane Campion’s 2009 film Bright Star about the romance between Romantic poet John Keats and his muse, Fanny Brawne. A beautiful film that seemed to have it all you could want from a period piece: gorgeous cinematography, emotion, longing stares, a passionate forbidden romance doomed from the beginning, and the cherry on top, the beautiful and intoxicating poetry of John Keats. Immediately, I was intrigued.
From there, it was a sure gateway into the world of 19th century literature. Among the Romantics, I found like many, a group of intelligent, funny, moody, and outrageous people. From the over-sexed, bear-owning Byron to the witty and intelligent Jane Austin. But above all, it was the lives of the British Second-Wave romantics that seemed to stick with me. For me, the whole concept of people that were always unashamedly human, so unafraid to feel, unafraid to live life and experience all it had to offer really resonated with me. Two months ago, I was given a project for English to write a creative writing piece that featured at least 4 different genres/styles of writing that all fell under a similar idea or theme. Immediately, the first thought that came to me was to write about the Romantics.
Romanticism itself was a European artistic movement that lasted from the end of the 18th century and lasted as far as into the early 20th century in some areas. In Britain, the Romantic movement began around the 1780’s and ended after the passing of the 1834 Reform Act. British Romanticism can draw its origins from the Enlightenment Movement a century before that emphasized the importance of the individual and the importance of living to one’s own inclination instead of the Church’s.
The Romantic movement can also be seen as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution. Through the end of the 18th and into the 19th century, Britain was moving quickly to industrialize the nation, and as a result, the once peaceful areas of wilderness, untouched since the middle ages, were being cleared to make way for grey concrete factories that polluted the air and surrounding water. Because of this rapid change, the Romantics chose to emphasize the epic beauty and power of nature. They began to romanticize the idea of the past as a simpler, more chivalrous time and looked specifically to the societies of Medieval Europe and Ancient Greece for inspiration, using the past to move forward.
Ideas from our modern era like the rejection of organized religion, mottos like “Eat the Rich” encouraging the dismantling of Capitalism and popular aesthetics from social media like Cottage Core and Dark Academia are all things that the Romantics were interested in more than 200 years ago.
Romantics like Percy Shelley were Atheists and championed religious skepticism, many were leftist radicals. They participated in plots to overthrow the various monarchies of Europe and advocated for ideas like Anarchy and the destruction of the richest 1%. They romanticized the ideas and aesthetics of wandering through dark, mysterious woods and crumbling Gothic castles. They were intellectuals who were widely read and loved the writers that had come before them like John Milton and Shakespeare.
Romantic literature could range anywhere from a grand epic to a simple sonnet rich with feeling. Themes could be anywhere from very subtle to down right pretentious. Common tropes such as morally grey characters, as seen through the Byronic hero, depression, melancholy, obsessive love, and more helped to define to movement. Many of these elements I chose to bring out in this short collection of stories in my attempt to resurrect the voices of the Romantics.
My main inspirations for each of my pieces besides the history itself were the works of each of my selected writers. Each piece- with the exception of Byron- is structurally modeled after each writer’s preferred medium (i.e, A lyric poem, narrative, ect). The tone of each piece also attempts to emulate each writer's own unique natural speaking voice and how I felt each individual would answer the piece’s main question “What is it that makes a human life worth living?”
I hope you all enjoy my little passion project and get as much joy reading it as I got from writing it.
Thank you a million times over.
Isabella
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