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150-461: Wordsworth began The Prelude in 1798, at the age of 28, and continued to work on it throughout his life. He never gave it a title, but called it the "Poem (title not yet fixed upon) to Coleridge " in his letters to his sister Dorothy Wordsworth . The poem was unknown to the general public until the final version was published three months after Wordsworth's death in 1850. Its present title was given to it by his widow Mary. There are three versions of

300-660: A centre of German Romanticism, where writers and poets such as Clemens Brentano , Achim von Arnim , and Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff ( Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts ) met regularly in literary circles. Important motifs in German Romanticism are travelling, nature, for example the German Forest , and Germanic 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,

450-566: A circular journey whose end is 'to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time' ( T. S. Eliot , Little Gidding , lines 241-42). The Prelude opens with a literal journey [during his manhood] whose chosen goal [...] is the Vale of Grasmere . The Prelude narrates a number of later journeys, most notably the crossing of the Alps in Book VI and, in the beginning of the final book,

600-629: A collection of versified folk tales, in 1806–1808. The first collection of Grimms' Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm was published in 1812. Unlike the much later work of Hans Christian Andersen , who was publishing his invented tales in Danish from 1835, these German works were at least mainly based on collected folk tales , and the Grimms remained true to the style of the telling in their early editions, though later rewriting some parts. One of

750-684: A complicated history. By the 18th century, European languages—notably German, French and Slavic languages—were using the term "Roman" in the sense of the English word " novel ", i.e. a work of popular narrative fiction. This usage derived from the term "Romance languages" , which referred to vernacular (or popular) language in contrast to formal Latin . Most such novels took the form of " chivalric romance ", tales of adventure, devotion and honour. The founders of Romanticism, critics (and brothers) August Wilhelm Schlegel and Friedrich Schlegel , began to speak of romantische Poesie ("romantic poetry") in

900-709: A considerable amount of poetry, of variable quality. He published other writings while he was living at the Gillman homes, notably the Lay Sermons of 1816 and 1817, Sibylline Leaves (1817), Hush (1820), Aids to Reflection (1825), and On the Constitution of the Church and State (1830). He also produced essays published shortly after his death, such as Essay on Faith (1838) and Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit (1840). A number of his followers were central to

1050-428: A considerable number always had, or developed, a wide range of conservative views, and nationalism was in many countries strongly associated with Romanticism, as discussed in detail below. In philosophy and the history of ideas, Romanticism was seen by Isaiah Berlin as disrupting for over a century the classic Western traditions of rationality and the idea of moral absolutes and agreed values, leading "to something like

1200-578: A culture dominated by empiricism . In 1799, Coleridge and the Wordsworths stayed at Thomas Hutchinson's farm on the River Tees at Sockburn , near Darlington . It was at Sockburn that Coleridge wrote his ballad-poem Love , addressed to Sara Hutchinson. The knight mentioned is the mailed figure on the Conyers tomb in ruined Sockburn church. The figure has a wyvern at his feet, a reference to

1350-464: A day or two of preaching he received a letter from Josiah Wedgwood II , who had offered to help him out of financial difficulties with an annuity of £150 (approximately £13,000 in today's money ) per year on condition he give up his ministerial career. Coleridge accepted this, to the disappointment of Hazlitt who hoped to have him as a neighbour in Shropshire. From 16 September 1798, Coleridge and

1500-612: A defence of religion and the medieval spirit ( Génie du christianisme , 1802), and finally in the 1830s and 1840s his enormous autobiography Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe ("Memoirs from beyond the grave"). After the Bourbon Restoration , French Romanticism developed in the lively world of Parisian theatre , with productions of Shakespeare , Schiller (in France a key Romantic author), and adaptations of Scott and Byron alongside French authors, several of whom began to write in

1650-482: A distinct national identity and began to enjoy an international reputation. Allan Ramsay (1686–1758) laid the foundations of a reawakening of interest in older Scottish literature, as well as leading the trend for pastoral poetry, helping to develop the Habbie stanza as a poetic form . James Macpherson (1736–1796) was the first Scottish poet to gain an international reputation. Claiming to have found poetry written by

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1800-529: A dramatist, with his play on the life of the English poet Chatterton (1835) perhaps his best work. George Sand was a central figure of the Parisian literary scene, famous both for her novels and criticism and her affairs with Chopin and several others; she too was inspired by the theatre, and wrote works to be staged at her private estate . French Romantic poets of the 1830s to 1850s include Alfred de Musset , Gérard de Nerval , Alphonse de Lamartine and

1950-581: A fever in April 1796. Coleridge was with him at his death. In 1796, he released his first volume of poems entitled Poems on Various Subjects , which also included four poems by Charles Lamb as well as a collaboration with Robert Southey and a work suggested by his and Lamb's schoolfriend Robert Favell. Among the poems were Religious Musings , Monody on the Death of Chatterton and an early version of The Eolian Harp entitled Effusion 35 . A second edition

2100-571: A joint volume of poetry, Lyrical Ballads , which proved to be the starting point for the English romantic age . Wordsworth may have contributed more poems, but the real star of the collection was Coleridge's first version of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner . It was the longest work and drew more praise and attention than anything else in the volume. In the spring Coleridge temporarily took over for Rev. Joshua Toulmin at Taunton's Mary Street Unitarian Chapel while Rev. Toulmin grieved over

2250-574: A kind of Magus , girt in mystery and enigma; his Dodona oak-grove (Mr. Gilman's house at Highgate) whispering strange things, uncertain whether oracles or jargon." Coleridge is now buried in the aisle of St Michael's Parish Church in Highgate , London. He was originally buried at the Old Highgate Chapel, next to the main entrance of Highgate School . Coleridge could see the red door of the then new church from his last residence across

2400-402: A lifelong opium addiction. Coleridge had a turbulent career and personal life with a variety of highs and lows, but his public esteem grew after his death, and he became considered one of the most influential figures in English literature. For instance, a 2018 report by The Guardian labelled him "a genius" who had progressed into "one of the most renowned English poets." Organisations such as

2550-612: A longing for the unbounded and the indefinable, for perpetual movement and change, an effort to return to the forgotten sources of life, a passionate effort at self-assertion both individual and collective, a search after means of expressing an unappeasable yearning for unattainable goals". Romantic artists also shared a strong belief in the importance and inspirational qualities of Nature. Romantics were distrustful of cities and social conventions. They deplored Restoration and Enlightenment Era artists who were largely concerned with depicting and critiquing social relations, thereby neglecting

2700-448: A major influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson and American transcendentalism . Throughout his adult life, Coleridge had crippling bouts of anxiety and depression; it has been speculated that he had bipolar disorder , which had not been defined during his lifetime. He was physically unhealthy, which may have stemmed from a bout of rheumatic fever and other childhood illnesses. He was treated for these conditions with laudanum , which fostered

2850-455: A member of St. Michael's stewardship committee states, "They put the coffins in a convenient space which was dry and secure, and quite suitable, bricked them up and forgot about them." A recent excavation revealed the coffins were not in the location most believed, the far corner of the crypt, but actually below a memorial slab in the nave inscribed with: "Beneath this stone lies the body of Samuel Taylor Coleridge". St. Michael's plans to restore

3000-408: A novel by Laurence Sterne (1759–1767), introduced a whimsical version of the anti-rational sentimental novel to the English literary public. An early German influence came from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , whose 1774 novel The Sorrows of Young Werther had young men throughout Europe emulating its protagonist, a young artist with a very sensitive and passionate temperament. At that time Germany

3150-699: A purposeful new route. He coined the term mountaineering. In 1804, he travelled to Sicily and Malta , working for a time as Acting Public Secretary of Malta under the Civil Commissioner, Alexander Ball , a task he performed successfully. He lived in San Anton Palace in the village of Attard . He gave this up and returned to England in 1806. Dorothy Wordsworth was shocked at his condition upon his return. From 1807 to 1808, Coleridge returned to Malta and then travelled in Sicily and Italy, in

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3300-483: A shift in public consciousness to the immediate impact of technology and urbanization on the working class . By World War I , Romanticism was overshadowed by new cultural, social, and political movements, many of them hostile to the perceived illusions and preoccupations of the Romantics. However, Romanticism has had a lasting impact on Western civilization, and many works of art, music, and literature that embody

3450-570: A teacup. His marital problems, nightmares, illnesses, increased opium dependency, tensions with Wordsworth, and a lack of confidence in his poetic powers fuelled the composition of Dejection: An Ode and an intensification of his philosophical studies. In 1802, Coleridge took a nine-day walking holiday in the fells of the Lake District . Coleridge is credited with the first recorded descent of Scafell to Mickledore via Broad Stand, although this may have been more due to his getting lost than

3600-583: A very typical view, and about 1830, perhaps a little later than some other critics. Others have proposed 1780–1830. In other fields and other countries the period denominated as Romantic can be considerably different; musical Romanticism , for example, is generally regarded as only having ceased as a major artistic force as late as 1910, but in an extreme extension the Four Last Songs of Richard Strauss are described stylistically as "Late Romantic" and were composed in 1946–1948. However, in most fields

3750-562: A weekly newspaper tax. The first issue of the short-lived journal was published in March 1796. It had ceased publication by May of that year. The years 1797 and 1798, during which he lived in what is now known as Coleridge Cottage , in Nether Stowey , Somerset, were among the most fruitful of Coleridge's life. In 1795, Coleridge met poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy . (Wordsworth, having visited him and being enchanted by

3900-508: Is difficult to imagine Wordsworth's great poems, The Excursion or The Prelude , ever having been written without the direct influence of Coleridge's originality. Romantic Movement Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era ) was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement

4050-481: Is evident in his letters. For instance, in 1799 he wrote to Wordsworth: "I am anxiously eager to have you steadily employed on 'The Recluse'... I wish you would write a poem, in blank verse, addressed to those who, in consequence of the complete failure of the French Revolution, have thrown up all hopes of amelioration of mankind, and are sinking into an almost Epicurean selfishness, disguising the same under

4200-446: Is his law". The Romantic poet William Wordsworth , thinking along similar lines, wrote that poetry should begin with "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings", which the poet then "recollect[s] in tranquility", enabling the poet to find a suitably unique form for representing such feelings. The Romantics never doubted that emotionally motivated art would find suitable, harmonious modes for expressing its vital content—if, that is,

4350-467: Is more than merely an affair of form , but rather something that evokes a strong emotional response. With this philosophical foundation, the Romanticists elevated several key themes to which they were deeply committed: a reverence for nature and the supernatural , an idealization of the past as a nobler era , a fascination with the exotic and the mysterious , and a celebration of the heroic and

4500-445: Is most evident in the aesthetics of romanticism, where the notion of eternal models, a Platonic vision of ideal beauty, which the artist seeks to convey, however imperfectly, on canvas or in sound, is replaced by a passionate belief in spiritual freedom, individual creativity. The painter, the poet, the composer do not hold up a mirror to nature, however ideal, but invent; they do not imitate (the doctrine of mimesis), but create not merely

4650-651: Is now most highly regarded for his short lyrics and his generally unromantic prose writings, especially his letters, and his unfinished satire Don Juan . Unlike many Romantics, Byron's widely publicised personal life appeared to match his work, and his death at 36 in 1824 from disease when helping the Greek War of Independence appeared from a distance to be a suitably Romantic end, entrenching his legend. Keats in 1821 and Shelley in 1822 both died in Italy, Blake (at almost 70) in 1827, and Coleridge largely ceased to write in

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4800-469: Is often called "romantic originality". The translator and prominent Romantic August Wilhelm Schlegel argued in his Lectures on Dramatic Arts and Letters that the most valuable quality of human nature is its tendency to diverge and diversify. According to Isaiah Berlin , Romanticism embodied "a new and restless spirit, seeking violently to burst through old and cramping forms, a nervous preoccupation with perpetually changing inner states of consciousness,

4950-458: Is the source of the psychology which is found in Frost at Midnight . Hartley argued that one becomes aware of sensory events as impressions, and that "ideas" are derived by noticing similarities and differences between impressions and then by naming them. Connections resulting from the coincidence of impressions create linkages, so that the occurrence of one impression triggers those links and calls up

5100-785: The Ancien Régime , and the French Revolution had been more of an inspiration to foreign writers than those experiencing it at first-hand. The first major figure was François-René de Chateaubriand , an aristocrat who had remained a royalist throughout the Revolution, and returned to France from exile in England and America under Napoleon, with whose regime he had an uneasy relationship. His writings, all in prose, included some fiction, such as his influential novella of exile René (1802), which anticipated Byron in its alienated hero, but mostly contemporary history and politics, his travels,

5250-481: The Arabian Nights' Entertainments – one tale of which (the tale of a man who was compelled to seek for a pure virgin) made so deep an impression on me (I had read it in the evening while my mother was mending stockings) that I was haunted by spectres whenever I was in the dark – and I distinctly remember the anxious and fearful eagerness with which I used to watch the window in which the books lay – and whenever

5400-477: The Browne Gold Medal for an ode that he wrote attacking the slave trade . In December 1793, he left the college and enlisted in the 15th (The King's) Light Dragoons using the false name "Silas Tomkyn Comberbache", perhaps because of debt or because the girl that he loved, Mary Evans , had rejected him. His brothers arranged for his discharge a few months later under the reason of "insanity" and he

5550-732: The Church of England celebrate his work during public events, such as a "Coleridge Day" in June, with activities including literary recitals. Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772 in the town of Ottery St Mary in Devon , England. Samuel's father was the Reverend John Coleridge, the well-respected vicar of St Mary's Church, Ottery St Mary and was headmaster of the King's School , a free grammar school established by King Henry VIII in

5700-581: The Crusades that he had researched to a degree that was new in literature. In contrast to Germany, Romanticism in English literature had little connection with nationalism, and the Romantics were often regarded with suspicion for the sympathy many felt for the ideals of the French Revolution , whose collapse and replacement with the dictatorship of Napoleon was, as elsewhere in Europe, a shock to

5850-450: The Lake District of Cumberland to be near Grasmere , where Wordsworth had moved. He stayed with the Wordsworths for eighteen months, but was a difficult houseguest, as his dependency on laudanum grew and his frequent nightmares would wake the children. He was also a fussy eater, to the frustration of Dorothy Wordsworth , who had to cook. For example, not content with salt, Coleridge sprinkled cayenne pepper on his eggs, which he ate from

6000-545: The Lake Poets were widely regarded as a marginal group of radicals, though they were supported by the critic and writer William Hazlitt and others. In contrast, Lord Byron and Walter Scott achieved enormous fame and influence throughout Europe with works exploiting the violence and drama of their exotic and historical settings; Goethe called Byron "undoubtedly the greatest genius of our century". Scott achieved immediate success with his long narrative poem The Lay of

6150-615: The Oxford Movement , and his religious writings profoundly shaped Anglicanism in the mid-nineteenth century. Coleridge also worked extensively on the various manuscripts which form his " Opus Maximum ", a work which was in part intended as a post-Kantian work of philosophical synthesis . The work was never published in his lifetime, and has frequently been seen as evidence for his tendency to conceive grand projects which he then had difficulty in carrying through to completion. But while he frequently berated himself for his "indolence",

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6300-674: The Sockburn Worm slain by Sir John Conyers (and a possible source for Lewis Carroll 's Jabberwocky ). The worm was supposedly buried under the rock in the nearby pasture; this was the "greystone" of Coleridge's first draft, later transformed into a "mount". The poem was a direct inspiration for John Keats ' famous poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci . Coleridge's early intellectual debts, besides German idealists like Kant and critics like Lessing, were first to William Godwin 's Political Justice , especially during his Pantisocratic period, and to David Hartley 's Observations on Man , which

6450-473: The deconstruction of traditional tonal harmony in music. They continued the Romantic ideal, stressing depth of emotion in art and music while showcasing technical mastery in a mature Romantic style. By the time of World War I , though, the cultural and artistic climate had changed to such a degree that Romanticism essentially dispersed into subsequent movements. The final Late Romanticist figures to maintain

6600-486: The literary criticism of the 18th-century dramatist Gotthold Lessing . Coleridge studied German and, after his return to England, translated the dramatic trilogy Wallenstein by the German Classical poet Friedrich Schiller into English. He continued to pioneer these ideas through his own critical writings for the rest of his life (sometimes without attribution), although they were unfamiliar and difficult for

6750-404: The national poet of Scotland and a major influence on the Romantic movement. His poem (and song) " Auld Lang Syne " is often sung at Hogmanay (the last day of the year), and " Scots Wha Hae " served for a long time as an unofficial national anthem of the country. Scott began as a poet and also collected and published Scottish ballads. His first prose work, Waverley in 1814, is often called

6900-625: The rationalism and classicism of the Enlightenment , Romanticism revived medievalism and juxtaposed a pastoral conception of a more "authentic" European past with a highly critical view of recent social changes, including urbanization , brought about by the Industrial Revolution . Romanticism lionized the achievements of "heroic" individuals—especially artists, who began to be represented as cultural leaders (one Romantic luminary, Percy Bysshe Shelley , described poets as

7050-501: The sublime . The Romanticist movement had a particular fondness for the Middle Ages , which to them represented an era of chivalry , heroism, and a more organic relationship between humans and their environment. This idealization contrasted sharply with the values of their contemporary industrial society, which they considered alienating for its economic materialism and environmental degradation . The movement's illustration of

7200-572: The supernatural / occult and human psychology . Romanticism tended to regard satire as something unworthy of serious attention, a view still influential today. The Romantic movement in literature was preceded by the Enlightenment and succeeded by Realism . The precursors of Romanticism in English poetry go back to the middle of the 18th century, including figures such as Joseph Warton (headmaster at Winchester College ) and his brother Thomas Warton , Professor of Poetry at Oxford University . Joseph maintained that invention and imagination were

7350-730: The "romantic harp" and "classic lyre", but in 1820 Byron could still write, perhaps slightly disingenuously, It is only from the 1820s that Romanticism certainly knew itself by its name, and in 1824 the Académie française took the wholly ineffective step of issuing a decree condemning it in literature. The period typically called Romantic varies greatly between different countries and different artistic media or areas of thought. Margaret Drabble described it in literature as taking place "roughly between 1770 and 1848", and few dates much earlier than 1770 will be found. In English literature, M. H. Abrams placed it between 1789, or 1798, this latter

7500-452: The "unacknowledged legislators of the world" in his " Defence of Poetry "). Romanticism placed the highest importance on the freedom of the artists to authentically express their sentiments and ideas. Romantics like the German painter Caspar David Friedrich believed that an artist's emotions should dictate their formal approach; Friedrich went as far as declaring that "the artist's feeling

7650-479: The 1790s, contrasting it with "classic" but in terms of spirit rather than merely dating. Friedrich Schlegel wrote in his 1800 essay Gespräch über die Poesie ("Dialogue on Poetry"): The modern sense of the term spread more widely in France by its persistent use by Germaine de Staël in her De l'Allemagne (1813), recounting her travels in Germany. In England Wordsworth wrote in a preface to his poems of 1815 of

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7800-586: The 1820s that he had in fact completed a long translation of the work. In September 2007, Oxford University Press sparked a heated scholarly controversy by publishing an English translation of Goethe's work that purported to be Coleridge's long-lost masterpiece (the text in question first appeared anonymously in 1821). From 1814 to 1816, Coleridge rented from a local surgeon, Mr Page, in Calne , Wiltshire. He seemed able to focus on his work and manage his addiction, drafting Biographia Literaria . A blue plaque marks

7950-406: The 1820s. Wordsworth was by 1820 respectable and highly regarded, holding a government sinecure , but wrote relatively little. In the discussion of English literature, the Romantic period is often regarded as finishing around the 1820s, or sometimes even earlier, although many authors of the succeeding decades were no less committed to Romantic values. The most significant novelist in English during

8100-541: The Enlightenment's position that humans can fully comprehend the world through rationality alone, suggesting that intuition and emotion are key components of insight and understanding. Published in 1774, " The Sorrows of Young Werther " by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe began to shape the Romanticist movement and its ideals. The events and ideologies of the French Revolution were also direct influences on

8250-601: The French retreat from Moscow in 1812, fantasies of heroism and adventure had little appeal for him, and like Goya he is often seen as a forerunner of Realism. His most important works are Le Rouge et le Noir ( The Red and the Black , 1830) and La Chartreuse de Parme ( The Charterhouse of Parma , 1839). Romanticism in Poland is often taken to begin with the publication of Adam Mickiewicz 's first poems in 1822, and end with

8400-546: The High Street at Shrewsbury . He is said to have read his Rime of the Ancient Mariner at a literary evening in Mardol. He was then contemplating a career in the ministry, and gave a probationary sermon in High Street church on Sunday, 14 January 1798. William Hazlitt , a Unitarian minister's son, was in the congregation, having walked from Wem to hear him. Coleridge later visited Hazlitt and his father at Wem but within

8550-616: The Last Minstrel in 1805, followed by the full epic poem Marmion in 1808. Both were set in the distant Scottish past, already evoked in Ossian ; Romanticism and Scotland were to have a long and fruitful partnership. Byron had equal success with the first part of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in 1812, followed by four "Turkish tales", all in the form of long poems, starting with The Giaour in 1813, drawing from his Grand Tour , which had reached Ottoman Europe, and orientalizing

8700-510: The Middle Ages was a central theme in debates, with allegations that Romanticist portrayals often overlooked the downsides of medieval life. The consensus is that Romanticism peaked from 1800 until 1850. However, a "Late Romantic" period and " Neoromantic " revivals are also discussed. These extensions of the movement are characterized by a resistance to the increasingly experimental and abstract forms that culminated in modern art , and

8850-537: The Principles of Poetry." Coleridge's ill-health, opium-addiction problems, and somewhat unstable personality meant that all his lectures were plagued with problems of delays and a general irregularity of quality from one lecture to the next. As a result of these factors, Coleridge often failed to prepare anything but the loosest set of notes for his lectures and regularly entered into extremely long digressions which his audiences found difficult to follow. However, it

9000-511: The Romantic ideals died in the 1940s. Though they were still widely respected, they were seen as anachronisms at that point. Romanticism was a complex movement with a variety of viewpoints that permeated Western civilization across the globe. The movement and its opposing ideologies mutually shaped each other over time. After its end, Romantic thought and art exerted a sweeping influence on art and music , speculative fiction , philosophy , politics , and environmentalism that has endured to

9150-553: The Romantic ideals have been made after the end of the Romantic Era. The movement's advocacy for nature appreciation is cited as an influence for current nature conservation efforts. The majority of film scores from the Golden Age of Hollywood were written in the lush orchestral Romantic style, and this genre of orchestral cinematic music is still often seen in films of the 21st century. The philosophical underpinnings of

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9300-436: The Romantic interest in folk literature, but neither had a fully Romantic approach to life or their work. Though they have modern critical champions such as György Lukács , Scott's novels are today more likely to be experienced in the form of the many operas that composers continued to base on them over the following decades, such as Donizetti 's Lucia di Lammermoor and Vincenzo Bellini 's I puritani (both 1835). Byron

9450-472: The Romantic period is said to be over by about 1850, or earlier. The early period of the Romantic era was a time of war, with the French Revolution (1789–1799) followed by the Napoleonic Wars until 1815. These wars, along with the political and social turmoil that went along with them, served as the background for Romanticism. The key generation of French Romantics born between 1795 and 1805 had, in

9600-495: The Wordsworths left for a stay in Germany; Coleridge soon went his own way and spent much of his time in university towns. In February 1799 he enrolled at the University of Göttingen , where he attended lectures by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and Johann Gottfried Eichhorn . During this period, he became interested in German philosophy, especially the transcendental idealism and critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant , and in

9750-657: The ancient bard Ossian , he published translations that acquired international popularity, being proclaimed as a Celtic equivalent of the Classical epics . Fingal , written in 1762, was speedily translated into many European languages, and its appreciation of natural beauty and treatment of the ancient legend has been credited more than any single work with bringing about the Romantic movement in European, and especially in German literature, through its influence on Johann Gottfried von Herder and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe . It

9900-600: The artist steered clear of moribund conventions and distracting precedents. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others thought there were natural laws the imagination of born artists followed instinctively when these individuals were, so to speak, "left alone" during the creative process. These "natural laws" could support a wide range of different formal approaches: as many, perhaps, as there were individuals making personally meaningful works of art. Many Romantics believed that works of artistic genius were created " ex nihilo ", "from nothing", without recourse to existing models. This idea

10050-542: The artist's unique, individual imagination above the strictures of classical form. The movement emphasized intense emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience. It granted a new importance to experiences of sympathy , awe , wonder , and terror , in part by naturalizing such emotions as responses to the "beautiful" and the "sublime". Romantics stressed the nobility of folk art and ancient cultural practices, but also championed radical politics , unconventional behavior, and authentic spontaneity. In contrast to

10200-448: The beginning of a tradition of resistance to Enlightenment rationalism—a "Counter-Enlightenment"— to be associated most closely with German Romanticism . Another early definition comes from Charles Baudelaire : "Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in the way of feeling." The end of the Romantic era is marked in some areas by a new style of Realism , which affected literature, especially

10350-486: The best known works, which became a paradigm of the French Romantic movement. The preface to his unperformed play Cromwell gives an important manifesto of French Romanticism, stating that "there are no rules, or models". The career of Prosper Mérimée followed a similar pattern; he is now best known as the originator of the story of Carmen , with his novella published 1845. Alfred de Vigny remains best known as

10500-478: The brothers, Jacob , published in 1835 Deutsche Mythologie , a long academic work on Germanic mythology. Another strain is exemplified by Schiller's highly emotional language and the depiction of physical violence in his play The Robbers of 1781. In English literature , the key figures of the Romantic movement are considered to be the group of poets including William Wordsworth , Samuel Taylor Coleridge , John Keats , Lord Byron , Percy Bysshe Shelley and

10650-418: The chief qualities of a poet. The Scottish poet James Macpherson influenced the early development of Romanticism with the international success of his Ossian cycle of poems published in 1762, inspiring both Goethe and the young Walter Scott . Thomas Chatterton is generally considered the first Romantic poet in English. Both Chatterton and Macpherson's work involved elements of fraud, as what they claimed

10800-421: The climactic ascent of Snowdon . In the course of the poem, such literal journeys become the metaphorical vehicle for a spiritual journey—the quest within the poet's memory [...]". Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge ( / ˈ k oʊ l ə r ɪ dʒ / KOH -lə-rij ; 21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who

10950-540: The course of his life. Its focus and mood present a sharp and fundamental fall away from the neoclassical and into the Romantic. Milton , who is mentioned by name in line 181 of Book One, rewrote God's creation and The Fall of Man in Paradise Lost in order to "justify the ways of God to men," Wordsworth chooses his own mind and imagination as a subject worthy of epic. This spiritual autobiography evolves out of Wordsworth's "persistent metaphor [that life is]

11100-707: The crushing of the January Uprising of 1863 against the Russians. It was strongly marked by interest in Polish history. Polish Romanticism revived the old "Sarmatism" traditions of the szlachta or Polish nobility. Old traditions and customs were revived and portrayed in a positive light in the Polish messianic movement and in works of great Polish poets such as Adam Mickiewicz ( Pan Tadeusz ), Juliusz Słowacki and Zygmunt Krasiński . This close connection between Polish Romanticism and Polish history became one of

11250-478: The crypt and allow public access. Says vicar Kunle Ayodeji of the plans: "...we hope that the whole crypt can be cleared as a space for meetings and other uses, which would also allow access to Coleridge's cellar." Coleridge is one of the most important figures in English poetry . His poems directly and deeply influenced all the major poets of the age. He was known by his contemporaries as a meticulous craftsman who

11400-437: The defining qualities of the literature of Polish Romanticism period, differentiating it from that of other countries. They had not suffered the loss of national statehood as was the case with Poland. Influenced by the general spirit and main ideas of European Romanticism, the literature of Polish Romanticism is unique, as many scholars have pointed out, in having developed largely outside of Poland and in its emphatic focus upon

11550-524: The difficulty of defining Romanticism in his seminal article "On the Discrimination of Romanticisms" in his Essays in the History of Ideas (1948); some scholars see Romanticism as essentially continuous with the present, some like Robert Hughes see in it the inaugural moment of modernity , while writers of the 19th Century such as Chateaubriand , Novalis and Samuel Taylor Coleridge saw it as

11700-401: The drowning death of his daughter Jane. Poetically commenting on Toulmin's strength, Coleridge wrote in a 1798 letter to John Prior Estlin , "I walked into Taunton (eleven miles) and back again, and performed the divine services for Dr. Toulmin. I suppose you must have heard that his daughter, (Jane, on 15 April 1798) in a melancholy derangement, suffered herself to be swallowed up by the tide on

11850-612: The early nineteenth century, caused Edinburgh to emerge as the cultural capital of Britain and become central to a wider formation of a "British Isles nationalism". Scottish "national drama" emerged in the early 1800s, as plays with specifically Scottish themes began to dominate the Scottish stage. Theatres had been discouraged by the Church of Scotland and fears of Jacobite assemblies. In the later eighteenth century, many plays were written for and performed by small amateur companies and were not published and so most have been lost. Towards

12000-444: The end of the century there were " closet dramas ", primarily designed to be read, rather than performed, including work by Scott, Hogg, Galt and Joanna Baillie (1762–1851), often influenced by the ballad tradition and Gothic Romanticism. Romanticism was relatively late in developing in French literature , more so than in the visual arts. The 18th-century precursor to Romanticism, the cult of sensibility, had become associated with

12150-414: The exotic and historical settings pioneered by the Romantics, but experimentation with form and technique was generally reduced, often replaced with meticulous technique, as in the poems of Tennyson or many paintings. If not realist, late 19th-century art was often extremely detailed, and pride was taken in adding authentic details in a way that earlier Romantics did not trouble with. Many Romantic ideas about

12300-668: The fields of intellectual history and literary history throughout the 20th century, without any great measure of consensus emerging. That it was part of the Counter-Enlightenment , a reaction against the Age of Enlightenment , is generally accepted in current scholarship. Its relationship to the French Revolution , which began in 1789 in the very early stages of the period, is clearly important, but highly variable depending on geography and individual reactions. Most Romantics can be said to be broadly progressive in their views, but

12450-499: The first historical novel. It launched a highly successful career, with other historical novels such as Rob Roy (1817), The Heart of Midlothian (1818) and Ivanhoe (1820). Scott probably did more than any other figure to define and popularise Scottish cultural identity in the nineteenth century. Other major literary figures connected with Romanticism include the poets and novelists James Hogg (1770–1835), Allan Cunningham (1784–1842) and John Galt (1779–1839). Scotland

12600-409: The flamboyant Théophile Gautier , whose prolific output in various forms continued until his death in 1872. Stendhal is today probably the most highly regarded French novelist of the period, but he stands in a complex relation with Romanticism, and is notable for his penetrating psychological insight into his characters and his realism, qualities rarely prominent in Romantic fiction. As a survivor of

12750-436: The green, where he lived with a doctor he had hoped might cure him (in a house owned until 2022 by Kate Moss ). When it was discovered Coleridge's vault had become derelict, the coffins – Coleridge's and those of his wife Sarah, daughter Sara Coleridge , son-in-law Henry Nelson Coleridge , and grandson Herbert Coleridge , were moved to St. Michael's Highgate after an international fundraising appeal in 1961. Drew Clode,

12900-599: The hope that leaving Britain's damp climate would improve his health and thus enable him to reduce his consumption of opium. Thomas De Quincey alleges in his Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets that it was during this period that Coleridge became a full-blown opium addict, using the drug as a substitute for the lost vigour and creativity of his youth. It has been suggested that this reflects De Quincey's own experiences more than Coleridge's. His opium addiction (he

13050-448: The last three years of our school education) he showed no mercy to phrase, metaphor, or image, unsupported by a sound sense, or where the same sense might have been conveyed with equal force and dignity in plainer words...In fancy I can almost hear him now, exclaiming Harp? Harp? Lyre? Pen and ink, boy, you mean! Muse, boy, Muse? your Nurse's daughter, you mean! Pierian spring? Oh aye! the cloister-pump, I suppose! ...Be this as it may, there

13200-495: The late 1820s. Cliques of pro- and anti-Romantics developed, and productions were often accompanied by raucous vocalizing by the two sides, including the shouted assertion by one theatregoer in 1822 that "Shakespeare, c'est l'aide-de-camp de Wellington" ("Shakespeare is Wellington 's aide-de-camp "). Alexandre Dumas began as a dramatist, with a series of successes beginning with Henri III et sa cour (1829) before turning to novels that were mostly historical adventures somewhat in

13350-472: The law of all moral and rational beings. Essay on Faith Carlyle described him at Highgate: "Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate Hill, in those years, looking down on London and its smoke-tumult, like a sage escaped from the inanity of life's battle...The practical intellects of the world did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer: but to the rising spirits of the young generation he had this dusky sublime character; and sat there as

13500-401: The lessons too, which required most time and trouble to bring up, so as to escape his censure. I learnt from him, that Poetry, even that of the loftiest, and, seemingly, that of the wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as severe as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more, and more fugitive causes...In our own English compositions (at least for

13650-456: The lives of the poor in his native Lake District , or his feelings about nature—which he more fully developed in his long poem The Prelude , never published in his lifetime. The longest poem in the volume was Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner , which showed the Gothic side of English Romanticism, and the exotic settings that many works featured. In the period when they were writing,

13800-492: The long list of his published works calls this myth into question. Critics are divided on whether the "Opus Maximum", first published in 2002, successfully resolved the philosophical issues he had been exploring for most of his adult life. Coleridge died in Highgate, London on 25 July 1834 as a result of heart failure compounded by an unknown lung disorder, possibly linked to his use of opium. Coleridge had spent 18 years under

13950-444: The manner of Scott, most famously The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo , both of 1844. Victor Hugo published as a poet in the 1820s before achieving success on the stage with Hernani —a historical drama in a quasi-Shakespearean style that had famously riotous performances on its first run in 1830. Like Dumas, Hugo is best known for his novels, and was already writing The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831), one of

14100-408: The means but the goals that they pursue; these goals represent the self-expression of the artist's own unique, inner vision, to set aside which in response to the demands of some "external" voice—church, state, public opinion, family friends, arbiters of taste—is an act of betrayal of what alone justifies their existence for those who are in any sense creative. Arthur Lovejoy attempted to demonstrate

14250-433: The melting away of the very notion of objective truth", and hence not only to nationalism, but also fascism and totalitarianism , with a gradual recovery coming only after World War II. For the Romantics, Berlin says, in the realm of ethics, politics, aesthetics it was the authenticity and sincerity of the pursuit of inner goals that mattered; this applied equally to individuals and groups—states, nations, movements. This

14400-526: The memory of those ideas with which it is associated (See Dorothy Emmet, "Coleridge and Philosophy"). Coleridge was critical of the literary taste of his contemporaries, and a literary conservative insofar as he was afraid that the lack of taste in the ever growing masses of literate people would mean a continued desecration of literature. In 1800, he returned to England and shortly thereafter settled with his family and friends in Greta Hall at Keswick in

14550-526: The mid-century the undoubtedly Romantic novels of the Yorkshire -based Brontë family appeared, most notably Charlotte 's Jane Eyre and Emily 's Wuthering Heights , both published in 1847, which also introduced more Gothic themes. While these two novels were written and published after the Romantic period is said to have ended, their novels were heavily influenced by Romantic literature they had read as children. Byron, Keats, and Shelley all wrote for

14700-411: The movement have influenced modern political theory, both among liberals and conservatives . Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as the glorification of the past and nature, preferring the medieval over the classical. Romanticism was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution , and the prevailing ideology of the Age of Enlightenment , especially

14850-607: The movement. Though his novels celebrated Scottish identity and history, Scott was politically a firm Unionist, but admitted to Jacobite sympathies. Several Romantics spent much time abroad, and a famous stay on Lake Geneva with Byron and Shelley in 1816 produced the hugely influential novel Frankenstein by Shelley's wife-to-be Mary Shelley and the novella The Vampyre by Byron's doctor John William Polidori . The lyrics of Robert Burns in Scotland, and Thomas Moore from Ireland, reflected in different ways their countries and

15000-483: The movement; many early Romantics throughout Europe sympathized with the ideals and achievements of French revolutionaries. A confluence of circumstances led to Romanticism's decline in the mid-19th century, including (but not limited to) the rise of Realism and Naturalism , Charles Darwin 's publishing of the Origin of Species , the transition from widespread revolution in Europe to a more conservative climate, and

15150-436: The much older William Blake , followed later by the isolated figure of John Clare ; also such novelists as Walter Scott from Scotland and Mary Shelley , and the essayists William Hazlitt and Charles Lamb . The publication in 1798 of Lyrical Ballads , with many of the finest poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge, is often held to mark the start of the movement. The majority of the poems were by Wordsworth, and many dealt with

15300-557: The nature and purpose of art, above all the pre-eminent importance of originality, remained important for later generations, and often underlie modern views, despite opposition from theorists. In literature, Romanticism found recurrent themes in the evocation or criticism of the past, the cult of " sensibility " with its emphasis on women and children, the isolation of the artist or narrator, and respect for nature. Furthermore, several romantic authors, such as Edgar Allan Poe , Charles Maturin and Nathaniel Hawthorne , based their writings on

15450-472: The necessary condition of everything desirable for me..." Subsequent biographers have not agreed with Coleridge's negative view of the wife he called his 'Sally Pally' when he first married her. A third sister, Mary, had already married a third poet, Robert Lovell , and both became partners in Pantisocracy. Lovell also introduced Coleridge and Southey to their future patron Joseph Cottle , but died of

15600-414: The novel and drama, painting, and even music, through Verismo opera. This movement was led by France, with Balzac and Flaubert in literature and Courbet in painting; Stendhal and Goya were important precursors of Realism in their respective media. However, Romantic styles, now often representing the established and safe style against which Realists rebelled, continued to flourish in many fields for

15750-422: The peak Romantic period, other than Walter Scott, was Jane Austen , whose essentially conservative world-view had little in common with her Romantic contemporaries, retaining a strong belief in decorum and social rules, though critics such as Claudia L. Johnson have detected tremors under the surface of many works, such as Northanger Abbey (1817), Mansfield Park (1814) and Persuasion (1817). But around

15900-554: The playwright as a model for contemporary writers. Much of Coleridge's reputation as a literary critic is founded on the lectures that he undertook in the winter of 1810–11, which were sponsored by the Philosophical Institution and given at Scot's Corporation Hall off Fetter Lane, Fleet Street. These lectures were heralded in the prospectus as "A Course of Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, in Illustration of

16050-483: The poem consists of Wordsworth's interactions with nature that 'assure[d] him of his poetic mission.' The goal of the poem is to demonstrate his fitness to produce great poetry, and The Prelude itself becomes evidence of that fitness." It traces the growth of the poet's mind by stressing the mutual consciousness and spiritual communion between the world of nature and man. The work is a poetic reflection on Wordsworth's own sense of his poetic vocation as it developed over

16200-404: The poem: The Prelude was the product of a lifetime: for the last part of his life Wordsworth had been "polishing the style and qualifying some of its radical statements about the divine sufficiency of the human mind in its communion with nature". The poem was intended as the prologue to a long three-part epic and philosophical poem, The Recluse . Though Wordsworth planned this project when he

16350-462: The present day. The movement is the reference for the modern notion of " romanticization " and the act of "romanticizing" something. For most of the Western world, Romanticism was at its peak from approximately 1800 to 1850. The first Romantic ideas arose from an earlier German Counter-Enlightenment movement called Sturm und Drang (German: "Storm and Stress"). This movement directly criticized

16500-439: The property today. In April 1816, Coleridge, with his addiction worsening, his spirits depressed, and his family alienated, took residence in the Highgate homes, then just north of London, of the physician James Gillman, first at South Grove and later at the nearby 3, The Grove . It is unclear whether his growing use of opium (and the brandy in which it was dissolved) was a symptom or a cause of his growing depression. Gillman

16650-557: The publication of the journal entitled The Friend . It was a weekly publication that, in Coleridge's typically ambitious style, was written, edited, and published almost entirely single-handedly. Given that Coleridge tended to be highly disorganised and had no head for business, the publication was probably doomed from the start. Coleridge financed the journal by selling over five hundred subscriptions, over two dozen of which were sold to members of Parliament, but in late 1809, publication

16800-451: The reader to identify the protagonists with the poets themselves." This quality in Romantic literature, in turn, influenced the approach and reception of works in other media; it has seeped into everything from critical evaluations of individual style in painting, fashion, and music, to the auteur movement in modern filmmaking. The group of words with the root "Roman" in the various European languages, such as "romance" and "Romanesque", has

16950-399: The relationship between people and Nature. Romantics generally believed a close connection with Nature was beneficial for human beings, especially for individuals who broke off from society in order to encounter the natural world by themselves. Romantic literature was frequently written in a distinctive, personal "voice". As critic M. H. Abrams has observed, "much of romantic poetry invited

17100-484: The rest of the century and beyond. In music such works from after about 1850 are referred to by some writers as "Late Romantic" and by others as "Neoromantic" or "Postromantic", but other fields do not usually use these terms; in English literature and painting the convenient term "Victorian" avoids having to characterise the period further. In northern Europe, the Early Romantic visionary optimism and belief that

17250-435: The roof of the Gillman family, who built an addition onto their home to accommodate the poet. Faith may be defined as fidelity to our own being, so far as such being is not and cannot become an object of the senses; and hence, by clear inference or implication to being generally, as far as the same is not the object of the senses; and again to whatever is affirmed or understood as the condition, or concomitant, or consequence of

17400-423: The same kind were found in one exercise, the irrevocable verdict followed, the exercise was torn up, and another on the same subject to be produced, in addition to the tasks of the day. He later wrote of his loneliness at school in the poem Frost at Midnight : "With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt/Of my sweet birth-place." From 1791 until 1794, Coleridge attended Jesus College, Cambridge . In 1792, he won

17550-438: The same. This will be best explained by an instance or example. That I am conscious of something within me peremptorily commanding me to do unto others as I would they should do unto me; in other words a categorical (that is, primary and unconditional) imperative; that the maxim ( regula maxima , or supreme rule) of my actions, both inward and outward, should be such as I could, without any contradiction arising therefrom, will to be

17700-441: The scientific rationalization of Nature. The movement's ideals were embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature; it also had a major impact on historiography , education, chess , social sciences , and the natural sciences . Romanticism had a significant and complex effect on politics: Romantic thinking influenced conservatism , liberalism , radicalism , and nationalism . Romanticism prioritized

17850-615: The sea-coast between Sidmouth and Bere [ sic ] ( Beer ). These events cut cruelly into the hearts of old men: but the good Dr. Toulmin bears it like the true practical Christian, – there is indeed a tear in his eye, but that eye is lifted up to the Heavenly Father." Coleridge also worked briefly in Shropshire , where he came in December 1797 as locum to its local Unitarian minister, Dr. Rowe, in their church in

18000-558: The soft titles of domestic attachment and contempt for visionary philosophies. It would do great good, and might form a Part of 'The Recluse'." (STC to WW, Sept. 1799). Wordsworth pays tribute to Coleridge in his introduction to the edition of 1850: "work [is] addressed to a dear friend, most distinguished for his knowledge and genius, and to whom the author's intellect is deeply indebted." According to Monique R. Morgan's "Narrative Means to Lyric Ends in Wordsworth's Prelude ," "Much of

18150-528: The stage, but with little success in England, with Shelley's The Cenci perhaps the best work produced, though that was not played in a public theatre in England until a century after his death. Byron's plays, along with dramatizations of his poems and Scott's novels, were much more popular on the Continent, and especially in France, and through these versions several were turned into operas, many still performed today. If contemporary poets had little success on

18300-563: The stage, the period was a legendary one for performances of Shakespeare , and went some way to restoring his original texts and removing the Augustan "improvements" to them. The greatest actor of the period, Edmund Kean , restored the tragic ending to King Lear ; Coleridge said that "Seeing him act was like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning." Although after union with England in 1707 Scotland increasingly adopted English language and wider cultural norms, its literature developed

18450-590: The sun lay upon them, I would seize it, carry it by the wall, and bask, and read." Coleridge seems to have appreciated his teacher, as he wrote in recollections of his school days in Biographia Literaria : I enjoyed the inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though at the same time, a very severe master...At the same time that we were studying the Greek Tragic Poets , he made us read Shakespeare and Milton as lessons: and they were

18600-490: The surroundings, rented Alfoxton Park , a little over three miles [5 km] away.) Besides The Rime of the Ancient Mariner , Coleridge composed the symbolic poem Kubla Khan , written—Coleridge claimed—as a result of an opium dream, in "a kind of a reverie"; and the first part of the narrative poem Christabel . The writing of Kubla Khan , written about the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan and his legendary palace at Xanadu ,

18750-424: The themes of the Gothic novel in verse. These featured different variations of the " Byronic hero ", and his own life contributed a further version. Scott meanwhile was effectively inventing the historical novel , beginning in 1814 with Waverley , set in the 1745 Jacobite rising , which was a highly profitable success, followed by over 20 further Waverley Novels over the next 17 years, with settings going back to

18900-655: The town. He had previously been master of Hugh Squier 's School in South Molton , Devon, and lecturer of nearby Molland . John Coleridge had three children by his first wife. Samuel was the youngest of ten by the Reverend Mr. Coleridge's second wife, Anne Bowden (1726–1809), probably the daughter of John Bowden, mayor of South Molton, Devon, in 1726. Coleridge suggests that he "took no pleasure in boyish sports" but instead read "incessantly" and played by himself. After John Coleridge died in 1781, 8-year-old Samuel

19050-544: The wilderness of Pennsylvania. In 1795, the two friends became engaged to sisters Sara and Edith Fricker, with Sara becoming the subject of Coleridge's poem, The Eolian Harp . They wed that year in St Mary Redcliffe , Bristol, but Coleridge's marriage with Sara proved unhappy. By 1804, they were separated. When Coleridge wrote to his brother he laid all the blame on Sara: "The few friends who have been Witnesses of my domestic life have long advised separation as

19200-422: The words of one of their number, Alfred de Vigny , been "conceived between battles, attended school to the rolling of drums". According to Jacques Barzun , there were three generations of Romantic artists. The first emerged in the 1790s and 1800s, the second in the 1820s, and the third later in the century. The more precise characterization and specific definition of Romanticism has been the subject of debate in

19350-490: The world was in the process of great change and improvement had largely vanished, and some art became more conventionally political and polemical as its creators engaged polemically with the world as it was. Elsewhere, including in very different ways the United States and Russia, feelings that great change was underway or just about to come were still possible. Displays of intense emotion in art remained prominent, as did

19500-698: Was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets with his friend William Wordsworth . He also shared volumes and collaborated with Charles Lamb , Robert Southey , and Charles Lloyd . He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan , as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria . His critical works were highly influential, especially in relation to William Shakespeare , and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking cultures. Coleridge coined many familiar words and phrases, including " suspension of disbelief ". He had

19650-555: 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 centre for early German Romanticism (see Jena Romanticism ). Important writers were Ludwig Tieck , Novalis , Heinrich von Kleist and Friedrich Hölderlin . Heidelberg later became

19800-460: Was also popularised in France by figures that included Napoleon . Eventually it became clear that the poems were not direct translations from Scottish Gaelic , but flowery adaptations made to suit the aesthetic expectations of his audience. Robert Burns (1759–96) and Walter Scott (1771–1832) were highly influenced by the Ossian cycle. Burns, an Ayrshire poet and lyricist, is widely regarded as

19950-437: Was also the location of two of the most important literary magazines of the era, The Edinburgh Review (founded in 1802) and Blackwood's Magazine (founded in 1817), which had a major impact on the development of British literature and drama in the era of Romanticism. Ian Duncan and Alex Benchimol suggest that publications like the novels of Scott and these magazines were part of a highly dynamic Scottish Romanticism that by

20100-404: Was approached by John Murray , Lord Byron 's publisher, about the possibility of translating Goethe's classic Faust (1808). Coleridge was regarded by many as the greatest living writer on the demonic and he accepted the commission, only to abandon work on it after six weeks. Until recently, scholars were in agreement that Coleridge never returned to the project, despite Goethe's own belief in

20250-465: Was crippled by a financial crisis and Coleridge was obliged to approach "Conversation Sharp" , Tom Poole and one or two other wealthy friends for an emergency loan to continue. The Friend was an eclectic publication that drew upon every corner of Coleridge's remarkably diverse knowledge of law, philosophy, morals, politics, history, and literary criticism. Although it was often turgid, rambling, and inaccessible to most readers, it ran for 25 issues and

20400-455: Was darker in its motifs and has gothic elements. The significance to Romanticism of childhood innocence, the importance of imagination, and racial theories all combined to give an unprecedented importance to folk literature , non-classical mythology and children's literature , above all in Germany. Brentano and von Arnim were significant literary figures who together published Des Knaben Wunderhorn ("The Boy's Magic Horn" or cornucopia ),

20550-474: Was earlier literature that they had discovered or compiled was, in fact, entirely their own work. The Gothic novel , beginning with Horace Walpole 's The Castle of Otranto (1764), was an important precursor of one strain of Romanticism, with a delight in horror and threat, and exotic picturesque settings, matched in Walpole's case by his role in the early revival of Gothic architecture . Tristram Shandy ,

20700-542: Was in his late 20s, he went to his grave at 80 years old having written to some completion only The Prelude and the second part ( The Excursion ), and leaving no more than fragments of the rest. Wordsworth initially planned to write this work together with Samuel Taylor Coleridge , their joint intent being to surpass John Milton 's Paradise Lost . If The Recluse had been completed, it would have been about three times as long as Paradise Lost (33,000 lines versus 10,500). Wordsworth often commented in his letters that he

20850-482: Was more rigorous in his careful reworking of his poems than any other poet, and Southey and Wordsworth were dependent on his professional advice. His influence on Wordsworth is particularly important because many critics have credited Coleridge with the very idea of "Conversational Poetry". The idea of utilising common, everyday language to express profound poetic images and ideas for which Wordsworth became so famous may have originated almost entirely in Coleridge's mind. It

21000-464: Was one custom of our master's, which I cannot pass over in silence, because I think it ...worthy of imitation. He would often permit our theme exercises...to accumulate, till each lad had four or five to be looked over. Then placing the whole number abreast on his desk, he would ask the writer, why this or that sentence might not have found as appropriate a place under this or that other thesis: and if no satisfying answer could be returned, and two faults of

21150-517: Was partially successful in controlling the poet's addiction. Coleridge remained in Highgate for the rest of his life, and the house became a place of literary pilgrimage for writers including Carlyle and Emerson. In Gillman's home, Coleridge finished his major prose work, the Biographia Literaria (mostly drafted in 1815, and finished in 1817), a volume composed of 23 chapters of autobiographical notes and dissertations on various subjects, including some incisive literary theory and criticism. He composed

21300-499: Was plagued with agony because he had failed to finish the work. In his introduction to the 1850 version, Wordsworth explains that the original idea, inspired by his "dear friend" Coleridge, was "to compose a philosophical Poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society, and to be entitled the Recluse ; as having for its principal subject, the sensations and opinions of a poet living in retirement". Coleridge's inspiration and interest

21450-432: Was printed in 1797, this time including an appendix of works by Lamb and Charles Lloyd , a young poet to whom Coleridge had become a private tutor. In 1796, he also privately printed Sonnets from Various Authors , including sonnets by Lamb, Lloyd, Southey and himself as well as older poets such as William Lisle Bowles . Coleridge made plans to establish a journal, The Watchman , to be printed every eight days to avoid

21600-436: Was readmitted to Jesus College, though he would never receive a degree from the university. At Jesus College, Coleridge was introduced to political and theological ideas then considered radical , including those of the poet Robert Southey with whom he collaborated on the play The Fall of Robespierre . Coleridge joined Southey in a plan, later abandoned, to found a utopian commune -like society, called Pantisocracy , in

21750-531: Was republished in book form a number of times. Years after its initial publication, a revised and expanded edition of The Friend , with added philosophical content including his 'Essays on the Principles of Method', became a highly influential work and its effect was felt on writers and philosophers from John Stuart Mill to Ralph Waldo Emerson . From 1810 to 1820, Coleridge gave a series of lectures in London and Bristol – those on Shakespeare renewed interest in

21900-407: Was said to have been interrupted by the arrival of "a person on business from Porlock " – an event that has been embellished upon in such varied contexts as science fiction and Nabokov's Lolita . During this period, he also produced his much-praised " conversation poems " This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison , Frost at Midnight , and The Nightingale . In 1798, Coleridge and Wordsworth published

22050-590: Was sent to Christ's Hospital , a charity school which was founded in the 16th century in Greyfriars, London , where he remained throughout his childhood, studying and writing poetry. At that school Coleridge became friends with Charles Lamb , a schoolmate, and studied the works of Virgil and William Lisle Bowles . In one of a series of autobiographical letters written to Thomas Poole , Coleridge wrote: "At six years old I remember to have read Belisarius , Robinson Crusoe , and Philip Quarll – and then I found

22200-542: Was the lecture on Hamlet given on 2 January 1812 that was considered the best and has influenced Hamlet studies ever since. Before Coleridge, Hamlet was often denigrated and belittled by critics from Voltaire to Dr. Johnson . Coleridge rescued the play's reputation, and his thoughts on it are often still published as supplements to the text. In 1812, he allowed Robert Southey to make use of extracts from his vast number of private notebooks in their collaboration Omniana; Or, Horae Otiosiores . In August 1814, Coleridge

22350-416: Was to advocate for the importance of subjectivity , imagination , and appreciation of nature in society and culture in response to the Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution . Romanticists rejected the social conventions of the time in favour of a moral outlook known as individualism . They argued that passion and intuition were crucial to understanding the world, and that beauty

22500-423: Was using as much as two quarts of laudanum a week) now began to take over his life: he separated from his wife Sara in 1808, quarrelled with Wordsworth in 1810, lost part of his annuity in 1811, and put himself under the care of Dr. Daniel in 1814. His addiction caused severe constipation, which required regular and humiliating enemas. In 1809, Coleridge made his second attempt to become a newspaper publisher with

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