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Romanticism was a reaction to the thought that everything had to be political, and everything had a (logical) explanation. The Romanticism was especially apparent in Germany and UK. It does of course exist periods of time called “romanticism” in other countries’ literary history as well, for instance in Norway the Romantic period contains works by Henrik Wergeland and Johann Sebastian Welhaven, and they’re often about Norwegian nature and the nationalistic feeling.
SparkNote writes that “Romanticism can be construed as an opposite to 'classicism,' drawing on Rousseau's notion of the goodness of the natural. Romanticism holds that pure logic is insufficient to answer all questions.” I want to show you and explain some frequently used genre characteristics in poems. I’ve chosen pretty easy poems, so that everyone can fully understand what I’m talking about here. First I’ve read the poem “Daffodils” by William Wordsworth, published 1804.
I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the Milky Way, They stretch'd in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.
William Wordsworth is one of the most famous and typical Romanticism poets. This poem is written about a man who sees a lot of Daffodils, and he cannot help to think how wonderful they were.
His “heart is filled with pleasure”, and it “dances with the daffodils”. What he actually writes is that when he’s feeling down, he thinks of daffodils, and he feels fine. It sounds silly, and there is probably not a pure logic reason behind it, but it is about so much more than just daffodils. The daffodils represent parts of the nature, which is often used in Romantic poems. The I-character describes the daffodils as “golden”, and he also uses another typical characteristic: he gives something inhuman a human ability, in Norwegian we call it “besjeling”, he says that the daffodils were “dancing in the breeze”: of course, a daffodil cannot dance, but it’s a metaphor. The wind is blowing so it looks like the daffodils are dancing. Did you also notice how the poem rhymes? It rhymes a, b, a, b, c, c.
These are typical genre characteristics. It rhymes, nature or something natural is emphasized, and inhuman things have human abilities.
