The Occurrence of Romantic Poetry in the 18th Century

When the kind of poetry that is called "Romantic Poetry" today emerged in England, the purpose was not to create a poetic or literary movement. The reason poets shared similar opinions in their works was that they were impacted by the same events and conditions during their times. In 18th-century England, which was going through the effects of the Augustan Age and defending the resurrection of the classical works under the name of "Neo-classicism" and putting reason and science in the forefront with the influence of the Enlightenment, industrialization was gaining speed, and the Industrial Revolution, as we call it today, occurred after the invention and development of the steam engine. In addition to this, the ideologies of the French Revolution were spreading all over the world: "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity." In this environment, the ideas of the poets and authors of the time were shaped accordingly. The French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and the social, economic, political, and literary conditions of England after the Augustan Age affected the Romantic ideology and works and opinions of certain artists such as William Blake and William Wordsworth in the 18th century.

After the Age of Reason or the Augustan Age, the concept of "reason" affected the social and literary environments. Neo-classical poets valued reason in their works, and the men of the Enlightenment defended exploring nature and humans from the perspective of reason and empiricism. The Romantics, however, found the excessive emphasis on reason restricting both art and individual human life. They defended intuition, emotion, and imagination. They suggested that the five senses and reason are not enough to explore the world, nature, and art. Imagination and intuition were the real vehicles that could free a man and provide a vision beyond what the five senses could perceive. William Blake, for example, suggested that solely depending on the five senses along with what is told by the religious authorities would be putting one’s soul in chains through this quote from his work The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite" (14). Thus, the opposition to the ideas of Neo-classical poets was one of the things that affected Romantic ideology.

The Industrial Revolution, for one thing, was the event that prepared a base for the ideas of the French Revolution to have a big impact in England as a consequence of the changes it caused in society, economy, and politics. Among these changes were diminishing job opportunities and economic unrest for the common folk. People had to work in factories for the minimum wage and were barely able to live on that money since the handcraft industries ceased to exist. Women were not able to sustain themselves, and children had to work to provide a little more money for the family. All these negative effects caused people to become aware of their condition as non-aristocrats, poor people without lands or personal jobs. Under these conditions, England could have had a revolution of its own but did not because of its inability to come together. So, without the occurrence of a revolution to change things, the weight of speaking for the citizen fell on the shoulders of the poets and artists, who had already been troubled by the conditions of the age and society they lived in. Romantic poets believed that the rising dependence on mechanization caused people to cut their ties with nature, themselves, their own culture, and the common folk. William Wordsworth, one of the Romantic poets, thought that the language used in the poetry should be close to or the same as the language that was used by the rustic people. He touches on this idea in "Preface to the Second Edition of the Lyrical Ballads" by stating that the purpose was "to choose incidents and situations from common life" and "relate or describe them […] in a selection of language used by men" in his poems (2–3). This way, the Industrial Revolution and everything it brought affected romantic ideas and poetry.

The most important event that affected the Romantic ideology was the French Revolution, which caused an age to change and shape especially the ideas of Blake. The consequences of the Industrial Revolution helped the ideas of the French Revolution spread, and including Blake at the top of the list affected the Romantic Poets because the revolution seemed like a solution. After the Revolution, however, Blake saw and learned that revolution on its own is not a solution but a tool for chaos, thus suggesting that its "counterpart, order," was needed as well (Alphas, 19). His most famous quote emerged from this view: "Without Contraries is no progression" (3). So, the idea of embracing contraries together occurred. This belief in the union of contraries caused Blake’s hatred for authorities to increase because, especially religious authorities, supported the dichotomies and the separation between "good" and "evil," thus making people believe that, to be a good person, one must restrain their desires fully. So, it can be suggested that the French Revolution caused the Romantics to be revolutionary artists and poetry to be more than a tool for pleasure and a tool for reflecting ideas and the soul of one.

Briefly, the after-effects of the Augustan Age, the impact of the Industrial Revolution on society, and the ideologies that were spread after the French Revolution caused Romantic Poetry to take the form that is known today, and the Romantic Poets to shape their ideologies accordingly.