Lecturer: Dr. Catherine Coussens

 

 

New Beginnings...

 

The Romantic period in England saw a redefinition of the role of poet and of literature itself. Major social and cultural changes led to a questioning of traditional values and beliefs: the American War of Independence and the French Revolution inspired early British Romantic poets to write in praise of freedom and equality, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote about society’s unfair treatment of women (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792), and William Blake wrote bitterly about poverty, inhumanity and social hypocrisy (Songs of Innocence and of Experience). In the early stages of the nineteenth century the effects of Industrialisation and Britain’s wars with France led poets such as Percy Shelley to call on the working ‘Men of England’ to rebel against their tyrannical masters. However, Romantic poetry was frequently introspective and reflective, rather than political and topical. In 1798 William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems describing simple country lifestyles and experiences in simple language. The exploration of the role of the natural landscape in shaping man and inspiring the poetic imagination is central to Romanticism as it was expressed in England.

 

Key poets studied will include William Blake, Joanna Baillie, William Wordsworth, Charlotte Smith, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Robinson, Percy Shelley, George, Lord Byron, and John Keats.