Exploring the Characteristics of Pre-Romantic Poetry

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The period 1750-1800 marks the shift from one distinct school or convention of English poetry to another. The Neo-classical period, which began with Dryden in the late seventeenth century and continued well into the eighteenth century, had specific, very definite characteristics. The Romantic period, which began near the end of the eighteenth century with the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads (1798), had characteristics that opposed them. During the eighteenth century, as early as 1730, there were poets, including Thomson,Crabbe, Blake, Goldsmith,Cowper, Collins, Burns and Gray, who formed a bridge, as it were, between the two schools/periods and whose works have specific characteristics of both. These poets are called Pre-Romantics/ the Poets of Transition.

THE CHIEF CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PRE-ROMANTIC/TRANSITION POETRY

The rejection of the Heroic Couplet

The Heroic Couplet, used by Dryden and Pope, suited only satirical and didactic poetry. As poetic subjects changed, the couplet’s spell began to weaken. True, its use persisted throughout the century and into the next, but poets, having found other themes, sought different measures. So, the transitional poets experimented with a variety of metrical forms. Their poetry represents a movement away from the rigidity of the heroic couplet. They revived the four-line stanza, the Spenserian stanza, blank verse, and several other metres.

The persistence of the Neo-classical diction

The pre-romantics did not escape the age’s conventional diction so quickly. Only at intervals do we find in them the less formal and more lyrical language of the late age. Classical personifications and Latinisms persist in their poetry. This artificial diction hampers the free expression of passion and imagination, which are the very essence of poetry.

Return to Nature

By returning to nature, they meant returning to the countryside’s ordinary physical reality. We see this in Thomson’s The Seasons, Gray’s The Elegy, and Collins’s Ode to Evening. Interestingly, Gray was one of the first English writers to appreciate and describe nature in its wilder state.

Interest in humble life

A return to nature renewed interest in man in both country and town settings, as well as in peasants and other characters of humble life. Gray’s  Elegy, Cowper’s The Task, and Crabbe’s poetry exemplify this renewed interest in simple humanity.

Seeking inspiration from the poets before Dryden and Pope, notably Spenser, Milton, and Shakespeare

Thomson and Gray enthusiastically admire Spenser, who greatly influenced their work. Milton also strongly influenced them, as seen in their Latin inversions and the melancholy tone of their poetry.

Interest in the Middle Ages

The Middle Ages were romantic, full of pageantry and adventure. They stirred the imagination of the pre-romantics, who turned back to these ages for theme and inspiration. They studied not only the ancient masters, but also revived English metres and poetic forms. Bishop Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) fired the imagination and stimulated interest in medieval ballad literature. It was an epoch-making work that inspired Coleridge, Scott, and Keats. Equally far-reaching was the influence of Chatterton’s Rowley Poems. Their rapid, widespread popularity shows people’s curiosity about everything from the Middle Ages. The publication of James Macpherson’s Ossian in 1760 introduced the Celtic spirit of the North to the English Romantic movement. The Ossianic poems are, in matter and spirit, wildly romantic. They are filled with supernaturalism and steeped in melancholy. They exhibited a striking development in the treatment of nature. They also appealed powerfully to the imagination of men tired of artificiality and conventionalism, who longed for nature’s freshness and simplicity.

The Poets of the Churchyard also participated in this movement. Pre-Romantic poetry is a curious mixture of the old and the new, the classic and the romantic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WORKS CITED

 Abrams, M. H., and Geoffrey Galt Harpham. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. D: The Romantic Period. 9th ed., W. W. Norton & Company, 2012.

McGann, Jerome J. The Romantic Ideology: A Critical Investigation. University of Chicago Press, 1983.

The Romantic Revival of English Poetry Or, Romantic Poetry. https://easyenglishnotes.com/the-romantic-revival-of-english-poetry-or-romantic-poetry/