Victorian Era Vs Romanticism

The Romantic and Victorian Era’s, although similar in creating a massive impact within the literature community, are full of numerous differences. Each era dealt with their unique set of social impacts that were translated into various forms of media such as art, literature, and music so it would be fitting for the two to have different takes on their forms of expression especially when it came to poetry.

When one thinks of a novel associated with the term “romance”, the usual concept to appear in their mind is that of the works of Sarah Dessen or any other modern author whose books consists of a women meeting a man who then fall hopelessly in love with each other. The common idea of romance in literature is that there has to be the existence

The proposed starting dates range from 1776 to 1789; each of the different starting dates being linked to an event of great social and political impact within this time period. The Romantic Period was unique not only because of its literature, but of the social and political aspects of this time period that affected such literature. Unlike other eras such as the Victorian Age where it began with Queen Victoria’s rule and ended upon her death, the Romantic Period’s timeline was not restricted to the reign of the monarch who ruled during that time, which in turn, made this period one of the shortest periods of British literary history (Greenblatt). Other social aspects such as slave trading, the French Revolution, and the Americans declaring their independence affected the workings of literature as well with writers of this time period creating literature that often expressed their views on the society around them. However, romantic literature was not only just classified by its publication date, but by the characteristics the writers themselves placed upon their

Well known writers of this era had gravitated towards poetry and it is within this realm of poetry where William Wordsworth created the central concepts of what is poetry during the Romantic Period with the famous Lyrical Ballads. According to the Wordsworth, the main idea was to break away from the usage of the old ways such as Shakespearean poetry and embrace the idea of individualism. The composition of poetry should not have the purpose of being moralistic, but rather be spontaneous and free from rule (Greenblatt). He claimed that poetry should be derived strictly of the poets’ own experiences, capturing their own emotions and passions, therefore coming naturally to the authors. The aspect of making the poetry personal to the author made it so that the poetry was indistinguishable from the writers themselves. Another writer from this era by the name of Percy Shelly approved of this idea, giving emphasis to the idea of imagination within the literature. A poet must use their imagination to create a world where the ordinary things life are changed to Enlighted the readers and give them a sense of wonder. Wordsworth stated, “…situations from common life…a certain coloring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect,”