Pre-Romantic Poetry

Pre-Romantic Poetry

• Emerged as a reaction to Neo-Classical poetry, but did not appear suddenly, rather it was a gradual shift through the works of precursors to Romanticism, known as Pre-Romantics.

Characteristics

• Pre-Romanticism as a literary term was first introduced in 1912 by Fortunat Strowski.
• The Pre-Romantic school was a period of transition between Neo-Classicism and Romanticism.
• The industrial revolution led to a dissatisfaction with the present situation, causing men to turn their attention to feelings and emotions.
• Nature became a real and living entity, existing as a person exists.

Themes and Features

• Everyday life, stories of poor people, and folk traditions became common themes.
• Poetry was strictly related to the poet as a person, reflecting their feelings, thoughts, and personal experiences.
• Melancholy and sadness were dominant feelings, connected to the historical and social context.

Poetic Features

• Poetry combined classical forms with romantic content, anticipating the romantic idealization of nature.
• It combined the forms of John Dryden and Alexander Pope with the themes of the Romantics.
• Topographical poetry was a unique feature, but with highly artificial diction.

Key Pre-Romantic Poets

• James Thomson, William Collins, Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Thomas Gray, Robert Burns, Thomas Percy, William Cowper, and William Blake were key forerunners of Romanticism.

James Thomson

• Was a forerunner of Romanticism in the age of Classicism.
• His poem, The Seasons (1726-1730; revised edition, 1744), anticipated the romantic idealization of nature and inspired William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
• His work, The Castle of Indolence (1748), is regarded as his finest work, consisting of two cantos in Spenserian verse about the pleasures and pitfalls of idleness.