Romanticism is a period that stretches from the late 18th century to the crowning of Queen Victoria (in the early 19th). This period was marked by political events such as the end of the American War of Independence, the French Revolution, the Irish Rebellion and the war with France again. At the time, poetry was the popular literary genre with poets such as Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats and Shelley. They expressed their attention to natural beauty and, in parallel, attention to the government, as they were dissatisfied with the Establishment. Indeed, the poets were at the very heart of this movement. They defended a desire for liberty and denounced the exploitation of the poor.
In an effort to define romanticism, we can say that it emphasized the aesthetic beauty of nature and characters, the awareness of emotion which helped creating sensory vivid descriptions; it stressed the importance of the individual, and loneliness was often glorified as a source of inspiration and creativity. It often focused on the self using the background and real-life surroundings of the writer, and also turned to the dark side of emotion with the appeal for supernatural and spirituality.
This led to the rise of the gothic novel with the most popular novelist Ann Radcliffe; her fiction appealed to frustrated middle-class women who experienced excitement in awe-inspiring landscapes. Thereafter Mary Shelley combined realist, gothic and romantic elements in her masterpiece Frankenstein.
Lord Byron’s Childe Harold (1812 – 1818) inspired a lot of artists with his lingering character: a solitary wanderer disillusioned with his empty way of life. He became a sort of role model, enticing for female writers, like the Brontë sisters. This resulted in the creation of a few complex and intriguing heroes such as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights and Edward Rochester in Jane Eyre (both published in 1847).
To stretch : s’étirer
To emphasize : souligner
The awareness : la conscience
Vivid : vivant
The surroundings : le milieu, l’environnement
To appeal : plaire
Awe-inspiring : impressionnant
Lingering : persistant
A wanderer : un vagabond
To entice : attirant
