4.2 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!). Wordsworth lived his life in Cumbria, the English Lake District, an isolated, neglected rural region. Tramping its woods and fells, he found a natural wisdom that could inspire in ways dusty books could not. He virtually invented the tourist industry in the region, and today thousands of travelers flock to the Lake District each year.

• 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 changed English verse and helped shift broader cultural norms and values. At the time, literary elites despised the Ballad as a “primitive” mass entertainment that failed to emulate Classical models such as the ode or the elegy.   Lyrical Ballads insisted that poems of ordinary life were worthy of publication.

Wordsworth’s Preface challenged the common reader assumption that poetry employ exalted language and nobility of content appealing to elite society. He acknowledges that the poems in the volume might seem to literary readers strange and awkward because they use commonplace language to celebrate the experiences of humble folk.

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”:

To understand the mainstream American perspective, we must recognize Romanticism’s celebration of the individual. Emerson’s essay lay 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

Many of the writers of the Romantic Era expressed themselves in poetry. Some cultivated a new style of verse which may clash with our expectations. So let’s recall our tips for keeping your head above water reading verse.

Walt Whitman and 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.

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. Remembering step 1 of our approach to poetry, let’s listen to the rhythms of Whitman’s reflection on nature and the soul.

OK, what rhythms did you identify? Iambic Meter? Rhyme Schemes? No? Well how is this poetry? Whitman’s revolutionary verse style is both new and very old:

Actually, we have already dabbled in Free Verse a number of times. Whitman drew on the poetics of the King James translation of Hebrew prophets to compose lyrical flights of rhythmic eloquence that overflowed the bounds of conventional Meter. I am sure you are already hearing the rhythms of Anaphora and Parallelism. Let’s add a couple more Figures of Scheme:

If we think about it, a Catalogue is a matter of Theme as well as of Scheme. Whitman’s spider functions as a central Simile: a comparison between filaments of webbing and the soul’s outreach. In the second stanza, spider and soul fuse into a Persona sending out reflective and spiritual filaments to try to gain a perilous grip on a vast world. An American prophet of Romanticism, Whitman’s spider/soul channels Wordsworth’s notion of human inwardness as a well of truth of wisdom in dialogue 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,