Precursors of Romanticism

v  Who are the precursors of romanticism? Examine how they heralded the Age of Romanticism in their writings?

***  A few but noted writers who belonged to the transitional period between the Age of Classicism and Age of Romanticism are credited with sowing the seeds of romanticism, paving the way for Lyrical Ballads (1798) to usher in an effervescent, effusive literary era. The worthy contributors are namely James Thomson, William Collins, Thomas Gray, William Cowper, George Crabbe, Robert Burns, William Blake and, even, Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Oliver Goldsmith.

Starting from Rousseau’s breakaway philosophy the air of romanticism was gathering momentum as, in the second half of the 18^th century, English literature experienced an inclined departure from the avowed rigidity of classicism, although not entirely. Be it the graveyard school of English poetry of the 1740s or  Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740) and other sentimental novels or the “novel of sensibility” of the 1760s or the Sturm und Drang movement in Germany (1770–80) or the English Gothic novel of terror, fantasy, and mystery, as practiced by Horace Walpole in The Castle of Otranto (1765) and by Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Gregory Lewis in several works or the ambitious efforts to collect and preserve folktales and ballads of all types or the writing of odes in patches – the stage for Romanticism was set. And the following writers directly incorporated in their writings what we feel to be the essence of romanticism.

JAMES THOMSON: He began writing when Pope was at the height of his popularity, yet he broke away from the tradition of his schools to explore, "fresh woods and pastures." His poem, The Seasons, published in 1730, is an important landmark in the history of English poetry. He is fascinated by the fearful aspects of nature such as floods and storms. He is described as “a poet of pictorial landscape”. He speaks of the interactions between man and Nature in The Seasons. The great variety and beauty of Nature move him deeply. The following lines remind us of Wordsworth:

            “Now the soft Hour

            Of walking comes for him who lonely loves

            To seek the distant Hills, and there converse

            With Nature, there to harmonize his Heart...”

           

He bade good-bye to the heroic couplet, and used other measures - the blank verse and the Spenserian stanza. Spenser and Milton rather than Dryden and Pope are his masters.

THOMAS GRAY: Gray is the central figure in that drift away from the dominant school of Classicism towards the rising school of Romanticism. In his well-known poem, Elegy Written in a country Churchyard, he pays attention to nature and humble life, which are dear to the Romantic poets. Probably no poem has had a wider acceptance among all classes of readers than his Elegy.

The two Pindaric odes show Gray well on the way towards romanticism. "The two odes, especially, The Bard, are the most imaginative poetry Gray ever produced, and were distinctly in advance of the age."

WILLIAM COLLINS: His principal work was his Odes (1747), including those to Evening and The Passions, which will live as long as the language. Collins’s poetry is distinguished by its high imaginative quality, and by exquisitely felicitous descriptive phrases which is close to romanticism. He exercised pervasive influence on almost all the Romantic Poets. He finds that landscape evokes ideas and emotions. He particularly loves Nature at twilight. His Ode to Evening is the forerunner of Keats’ Ode to Autumn. Romantic tendencies such as a return to the past and anti-intellectualism may be noticed in his Ode on Popular Superstitions. Coleridge is impressed with Collin’s use of Superstitions and classical legends.

WILLIAM COWPER: His most notable poem The Task was published in 1785, and met with immediate and distinguished success. Although not formally or professedly, it was, in fact, the beginning of an uprising against the classical school of poetry, and the founding of a new school in which nature was the teacher. As Dr. Stopford Brooke points out, "Cowper is the first of the poets who loves Nature entirely for her own sake," and in him "the idea of Mankind as a whole is fully formed." Cowper also attacks Alexander pope for his smoothness and advocates the manly rough line. This idea is later developed by Wordsworth. Cowper anticipated the romantic generation in his political liberalism, in his humanitarianism, and most of all in his sympathetic and faithful rendering of external nature.

As already suggested, it is particular writings, not writers, that sparked, although inconsistently, the Romantic Revival. And this very suggestion gets vouchsafed as we recognize The Deserted Village, not Oliver Goldsmith, its creator, signalling the advent of romanticism, although it could not but encode its natural content in heroic couplets!