The Romantic Rebellion

In several European languages, a romance is a prose narrative, that is, a novel. (We should also note the phrase Romance languages, a term that refers to languages descended from Latin.) In English, the word romance denotes passionate love and romantic designates conditions leading to it. But in cultural history, High Romanticism was more, a rebellion against Classicism.

Age of Neo-classical Reason

After nearly two centuries of social chaos and bloodshed triggered by the protestant Reformation, European culture in the 18th Century embraced a vision of restraint that is often called the Enlightenment. The era celebrated Reason as the highest of human virtues, and sought to bring its order to bear on nature and on society.

In this age, empirical science staked its claim to authority. In Britain, Sir Isaac Newton applied mathematical rigor to the study of the cosmos, and Adam Smith invented economics to analyze the function of financial markets. Political philosophers in France, England, Scotland, and Germany analyzed the structure and ethics of states and government. In the English colonies of North America, revolutionaries drew on these theories to justify the radical idea of human rights. In Paris, Edinburgh, and other cities, classical models guided the purposeful re-organization of city streets and architecture.

Raguenet, J-P. (1763). A View of Paris from the Pont Neuf. Oil on canvas.

During this Neo-Classical age, traditional social and aesthetic rules strictly governed social behavior and provided standards of assessment. Arts throve insofar as they followed rules and affirmed the new versions of classical society. Of course, strict rules lead to rebellion.

The Romantic Rebellion

You may be surprised to hear that the Romantic Era formulated core cultural orientations that dominate contemporary Western society even today. During the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, artists and thinkers began to push back against the idea that wisdom is to be found solely in reason and tradition.

William Shuter. (1798). Portrait of William Wordsworth.

Have you ever chafed at a classroom expectation that you read ponderous texts written long ago by dead wizards who make no sense to you? (I mean, not in this class, right?) If so, you may appreciate a poetic dialogue in which William Wordsworth’s Persona responds to a friend who had been chiding him about wasting too much time exploring the woods and failing to devote enough time to study.

William Wordsworth championed the Romantic rebellion in English verse because he loved nature. I mean, he really loved Nature (capital N!). This champion of the individual imagination lived most of his life in the English Lake District. In his day, Cumbria was an isolated, neglected rural region. Yet Wordsworth tramped across its fells for a lifetime, watching and listening to what he saw as a natural wisdom that could inspire in ways dusty books could not. He virtually invented the tourist industry in the region, and today tens of thousands of travelers from near and far flock to the Lake District each year. (For more information on Wordsworth, explore this article: Wordsworth, William.)

• A suspicion of academic and scientific lore
• A reliance upon one’s own sense of truth
• A conviction that the individual’s heart channels wisdom
• A resolution to “go out” to encounter the world, especially of nature

The lyric above appeared first in an anthology that Wordsworth edited in 1798. Lyrical Ballads not only changed English verse but helped shift broader cultural norms and values. By including the word Ballad in his title, Wordsworth challenged the assumption that great poetry had to emulate classical models such as the ode or the elegy. The learned might dismiss ballads as trivial verse amusements of the lower classes, but Lyrical Ballads insisted that poems of ordinary life were worthy of publication.

In the Preface to the 1800 edition, Wordsworth challenged everyone’s idea of what poetry is. He observes that people expect from poetry a certain kind of exalted language and nobility of content. (That is, a focus on the affairs of social elites.) He acknowledges that readers may “have to struggle with feelings of strangeness and awkwardness”  when reading “Ballads” that use commonplace language to celebrate the experiences of humble folk. But he pronounces the collection’s principles in ringing tones:

American Romanticism: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Romanticism translated very well to the new nation of America. The early 19th Century educator and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson embraced a transcendental vision of the human self, as expressed in essays such as “The Oversoul” and “Self-Reliance”:

If you want to understand the mainstream American perspective on life, you need to have at least a sense of the way Romanticism celebrated and explored the individual. Emerson’s essay lays down the themes of individualism that drive American society and values to this day.

Bonus coverage: if you’d like to read more of the perspective that, along with life on the frontiers, shaped the American mind, read Emerson’s essay, “Self-Reliance.”

[3] Whoso would be a man: again, sadly, women are effaced, though Emerson’s ideas apply well to women in a patriarchal society.

A Gentle Reminder

Free Verse

Wordsworth imagines his readers asking, In what sense is this poetry?  A kind of poetry even more revolutionary than Wordsworth could imagine debuted in America during the latter decades of the 19th Century. It came to be called Free Verse:

Walt Whitman Sings of Himself

Armed with a grasp of these figures of speech we are ready for the American pioneer of Free Verse.

Samuel Hollyer. (1854). Engraving of Whitman.

Walt Whitman was an American poet. That is, he wrote verse that expressed the American spirit in an American voice that could not have arisen anywhere else. (For more information on Whitman, explore this article: Loving.)

Now this poem does not establish a Metrical pattern. You won’t find any metrical Feet or Iambs or Spondees. But it has strong albeit subtle rhythms based on patterns of Scheme. Try to hear them in this reading:

By now, the poem’s rhythms should be familiar to you. They are the same as those of Hebrew verse. Whitman’s style of free verse is steeped in Old Testament poetics. But notice as well the poem’s central Simile: a comparison between the poet’s soul and a spider sending forth filaments of webbing to try to organize the vast world. In the second stanza, the simile becomes a Metaphor, the soul addressed as a spider being sending out reflective and spiritual filaments to try to gain a foothold in the wide world. This is one of American poetry’s most resonant characterizations of the Romanticism’s conception of human inwardness as a spiritual channel for finding wisdom in communion with the outer world, with time, space, and infinity.

The 52 cantos of Song of Myself comprise perhaps Whitman’s most famous poem. Before proceeding, however, let’s pause on that title. Song of Myself?  What sort of colossal ego would choose such a narcissistic title and begin “I celebrate myself, and sing myself”?

The answer is, a democratically minded American mind which had adopted the Romantic conception of the self as a standard more authentic than social norms. And this, of course, is how many Americans think today, prioritizing their own viewpoints over “society’s” or over those of “the experts.”  Whitman represented the democratic spirit of a nation eager to shrug off the traditions of the old world and follow the banner of rugged individualism.

And it isn’t just egoism. In “Self-Reliance,” Emerson sees the “self” as a spiritual opening onto infinity. Whitman’s self lies within him and within everyone: “For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” Today, social media venues teem with thousands of voices singing of themselves under the assumption that their thoughts, behaviors and meals are worthy,