Evolution of the Pre-Romantic Period: Freedom, Nature, and Subjectivity

Poetic Freedom and Reaction

The new elements of pre-Romantic period may be briefly summarised as follow

1.

Poets freed themselves from the rhymed couplet; they claimed greater freedom in verse, and reverted either to the blank verse of Milton or to more elaborate types, such as the stanza of Spenser. This reaction affected the spirit of poetry itself: there was a renewed of the latter’s works was succeeded by those of Warburton and Johnson, while Garrick, the famous actor, did away with the altered versions of Shakespeare’s works which were then in common use.

2.

Rediscovery of the Romantic Past

There was a revival of interest in the Romantic past, considerably stimulated by the publication of Macpherson’s Ossian and Bishop Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. Macpherson pretended to have discovered in the Highlands of Scotland fragments of ancient Celtic poetry written in the Gaelic dialect; his two poems, Fingal and Temora, given as translations from the Gaelic of Ossian, were received with wild enthusiasm in England and even on the continent. Competent critics however raised doubts as to the authenticity of the alleged originals, which Macpherson steadfastly refused to produce. There is little doubt that Macpherson’s poems were clever forgeries, but this does not detract from their importance in the history of European literature. True or false, they completely transformed the imagination of readers at the end of the eighteenth century. Bishop Percy, a friend of Johnson, devoted himself to the task of making known a large number of old heroic ballads and songs, some of which had been printed others being only preserved in manuscript form. The influence of his Reliques on the men of his generation was immense. They stirred Walter Scott “as with the sound of a trumpet”; and Wordsworth wrote: “ I do not think there is an able writer in verse of the present day who would not be proud to acknowledge his obligation to the Reliques”.

3.

Rebirth of Religious Sentiment

The religious sentiment, which had been practically discarded from poetry since the days of Milton, was revived; the gloomy fervour of Cowper and the visionary mysticism of Blake illustrate this transformation in a remarkable manner.

4. Closely connected with the religious revival was the reawakening of the spirit of philanthropy. The age of Pope had on the whole, despite the praiseworthy endeavours of Addison and Steel, been an age of selfishness and barbarity: “The society of the day is mirrored in the pictures of Hogarth, and in the works of Fielding and Smollet or Gambling, cock fighting and bull-fighting were the amusements of the people. Of humanity there was a little as there was of religion. That slave-trade vas iniquitous hardly any one suspected; even men who deemed themselves religious took part in it without scruple. Now Cowper, Blake, Burns turned their eyes towards the poor and the outcast; they re-discovered the sanctity of home and the sweetness of childhood; nay, they loved and pitied the meanest of God’s creatures, the beast, the bird and the flowers.

5.

Return to Nature

The poets of these new times turned to nature; they forsook the clubs and coteries of London and made of natural scenery not, as had been hitherto the case, a background to moral disquisition, but the subject-matter of poetry itself.

6. At last the subjective element, which was to be one of the dominant features of Romanticism, made its appearance; veiled and subdued in Gray and Collins, it asserts itself with singular directness and pathos in Cowper.