Aqeel 1

Topic: Changing Trends in Poetry from Romantic Era till Modern

ABSTRACT

This paper aims at viewing the trends of poetry in the Romantic, Victorian and Modern ages

and highlighting the differences. The Romantics are more concerned with man in relation to

nature. The tone of the Victorians is elegiac which shows the lamentation of lost connection

between man and nature. The Victorians depicted the doubt of their age. The Modern poets

depicted the chaos and turmoil of the modern world. World War I dislodged the beliefs of the

modern man and it is clear in the poetry of the era. There is a change in theme, form and

diction in all these ages.

Aqeel 2

The age which relived and revived the romanticism of Elizabethan Era was the Romantic Age

which began roughly with the publication of Lyrical ballads in 1798. Romanticism followed

the age of Enlightenment and Neo-Classicism. Towards the end of 18th century, in a reaction

against Enlightenment ideas, feeling began to be considered more important than reason, both

in literature and in ethics. The early Romantic period coincides with what is often called the

"age of revolutions"--including, of course, the American (1776) and the French (1789)

revolutions--an age of upheavals in political, economic, and social traditions, the age which

witnessed the initial transformations of the Industrial Revolution. A revolutionary energy was

also at the core of Romanticism, which quite consciously set out to transform not only the

theory and practice of poetry (and all art), but the very way we perceive the world. It

elevated the individual, the passions, and the inner life, embracing a more dramatic, personal,

and emotional style--even to the point of melancholic emotion.

Romantic Age

The Romantic period stands between and connects the Enlightenment’s promotion

of commerce, reason, and liberty and the Victorian experience of industrialization and

empire. Romanticism in both artistic production and cultural reception elevated aesthetic

practice to an almost divine activity, a realm wherein the individual might forge his or her

very self as an ethical, political, and creative being.

Characteristics of Romantic Poetry:

Romantic poets wrote about the marvelous and supernatural, the exotic, and the

medieval. But they also found beauty in the lives of simple rural people and aspects of the

everyday world. Another important subject of the Romantics was nostalgia. The main

characteristics of Romantic poetry are:

Interest in the common man and childhood

Aqeel 3

Romantics believed in the natural goodness of humans which is hindered by the urban

life of civilization. They believed that the savage is noble, childhood is good and the

emotions inspired by both beliefs causes the heart to soar. Humble, rustic subject matter &

plain style became the principal subject & medium of poetry. Poets sought to refresh readers’

sense of wonder about the ordinary things of existence, to make the “old” world seem new.

Strong senses, emotions, and feelings

Romantics believed that knowledge is gained through intuition rather than deduction.

This is best summed up by Wordsworth who stated that “all good poetry is the spontaneous

overflow of powerful feelings.”

Supernatural and Strange

Many romantic poems explore the realm of mystery & magic; incorporate materials

from folklore, superstition, etc.; & are often set in distant or faraway places. There was a

renewed interest in the middle-ages (and the ballad form) as a beautiful, exotic, mysterious

bygone era. There was also great interest in unusual modes of experience, such as visionary

states of conscious-ness, hypnotism, dreams, drug-induced states, and so forth.

Awe of nature

Romantics stressed the awe of nature in art and language and the experience of

sublimity through a connection with nature. Romantics rejected the rationalization of nature

by the previous thinkers of the Enlightenment period. They tried to give accurate observation

& description of wild nature, which serves as a stimulus to thinking & to the resolution of

personal problems & crises. In their poetry, landscape was often given human qualities or

seen as a sys-tem of symbols revealing the nature of God. Closeness to nature was seen as

bringing out humanity’s innate goodness.

"Nature" meant many things to the Romantics. It was often presented as itself a work of

art, constructed by a divine imagination, in emblematic language. Nature was seen as:

Aqeel 4

a healing power,

a source of subject and image for poetry , 

a refuge from the artificial constructs of civilization, including artificial language,

an organically unified whole.

It was viewed as "organic," rather than, as in the scientific or rationalist view, as a system of

"mechanical" laws.  Romantic nature poetry is essentially a poetry of meditation

Symbolism

It is a way of expressing so much in so little. The use of symbolism in literature

allows derivation of different meanings from a single expression. Symbolism rouses the

curiosity of readers and also adds a kind of enigma to the expressions or thoughts of the poet.

Representing a particular thing allegorically, lies at the core of symbolism. Repetitive

presentation of an object or character is one of the ways in which symbolism is depicted in

poetry.

Pastoral Life

The pastoral life, culture and traditions are mentioned on a frequent basis in romantic

poetry. In most cases, the relaxed and slow-paced pastoral life of shepherds is depicted in

these poems. Romantic poetry employs this feature in order to present before readers the

complexities of life in a simple manner. Contrasting features of country and urban life can

also be depicted by the portrayal of pastoral life.

Individualism

Human beings were seen as essentially noble & good (though corrupted by society),

and as possessing great power & potential that had formerly been ascribed only to god. There

was a great belief in democratic ideals, concern for human liberty, & a great outcry against

various forms of tyranny. The human mind was seen as creating (at least in part) the world

around it, and as having access to the infinite via the faculty of imagination. The romantics

Aqeel 5

refused to accept limitations, human beings set infinite, inaccessible goals, thus making

failure & imperfection glorious accomplishments. This refusal to accept limitations found

expression in bold poetic experimentation. Many writers deliberately isolated themselves

from society to focus on their individual vision.

The use of romanticism in literature appeals to our dreamy inner-self. It helps us

transcend the boundaries that are set by rational thinking. It helps us understand the

wholesome truth instead of just making conclusions on what we see or derive by logical

reasoning. There are so many things in this world beyond our understanding. We can say that

the urge to known the unknown is expressed in the form of romantic poetry.

Victorian Age

Victorian age refers to the era ruled by Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901. There was

no great war in Europe during this period. It was an age of political peace and economic

prosperity. All sections of the people were benefitted by the all-round material progress in the

country. Transport, communication, medicine, science and electricity, considerable

advancement was seen in every field. Science helped the people in many ways. Owing to the

progress of science and industry, the Victorian period became an age of intellectual unrest

and restless questioning. People lost faith in religion. The spread of Education accelerated the

intellectual growth of the people. New scientific theories like those of Darwin revolutionized

the altitude of the people. People began to question the authenticity of the stories recorded in

the Bible. Victorian Age dwindled into an age of doubts and disputes, restlessness, skepticism

and psychological complexity. Science could not be accepted as a substitute for religion. The

age was half way between realism and romanticism, materialism and spiritualism, peace and

the unrest, science and religion, conservation and liberalism, and mechanism and humanism.

'We are between two worlds' said Arnold "one dead, the other powerless to be born'.

Politically, Victorian Age was an age of reforms. The Victorians generally adopted an

Aqeel 6

attitude of complacency. They desired to maintain the status quo, because everything was

quite satisfactory. They could not give up the conventional morality or religious practices.

They tried to reconcile religious dogma and scientific truth. Thus it was an age of

compromise. On the whole, the Victorian Age was a period of peace and prosperity, scientific

progress and imperial expansion.

Characteristics of Victorian Poetry

Realism

Realism, in the broader sense, rejects imaginative idealization in favor of a close

observation of outward appearances. Realism emerged as a form of fictional literature that

attempted to capture the qualities of real people and events. The Victorians did not follow the

exact lines of realism. Their realism came as a reaction to the extreme imagination of

Romantic poets. They worked on the verge of realism and their works still employed

romantic elements but they pursued realism with believability of characters, plot, or narrative

style. For example, in the poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade” by Alferd Tennyson we

find realism. He depicts a scene of Crimean War which was fought between Russian and

Britain during 1853-56. He says:

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred. (Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade)

The event described is taken from a real event during the war when the Britain brigade

fearlessly charged against the Russian forces.

Another example of realism can be observed in Robert Browning’s poem “My Last

Duchess” in the speech of Duke:

…Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,

Aqeel 7

Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without

Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;

Then all smiles stopped together. (Browning, My Last Duchess)

Here we see that the Duke is talking about the death of his last duchess and the events that led

to it. The presentation of the incident is realistic. From the above references we can get an

idea about the realism of Victorian literature.

Conflict between Science and Religion

In the Victorian era, a vast conflict occurred between science and religion because of

the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species. In his book, Darwin claimed that human

beings originated from the apes. This shook the faith of people in religion. Besides this, the

industrial revolution caused rapid growth of factories, mills and industries and this material

growth affected the thinking of people. Science brought new inventions which, while doing

them good, made them mechanized. They became more interested in material welfare than

religion. This conflict also affected the minds of the poets and showed through their poetry.

Tennyson, for example, adopted a compromising attitude_ he neither yielded to the crisis nor

became carefree of the problems. The conflict of age is reflected in his poem In Memoriam,

where he refers to the ‘Natural Selection’:

Are God and Nature then in strife,

That Nature lend such evil dreams?

So careful of the type she seems,

That I considering everywhere

Her secret meaning in her deeds,

She often brings out one to bear,

I falter when I firmly trod (Tennyson, In Memoriam)

Love and Romance

Aqeel 8

Love and romance are major literary tendencies of the Victorian poetry. Although the

Victorian people emphasized on morality and harbored a conservative outlook towards the

relationship of men and women but the poetry of the era depicts passionate love. Especially

the poetry of Robert Browning and his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning contains some of the

best love poems of Victorian literature. Alfred Tennyson also incorporated the theme of love

and romance in his poetry. Faith in love is shown in his poem Vivien’s Song:

In Love, if Love be Love, if Love be ours,

Faith and unfaith can ne’er be equal powers:

Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all. (Tennyson, Vivien’s Song)

Robert Browning’s “Last Ride Together” depicts the lovers who are pining away for

their beloved. His idea of love is not like Romantics. He sees love as a relation capable of

giving pain and pleasure.

Pessimism

Victorian pessimism is the outcome of a deep-seated spiritual disturbance to which

the sensitive poets of the age were eminently prone. The age experienced a protracted battle

between the advancing forces of science and agnosticism and the retreating forces of

Christianity and faith which had been holding ground for times immemorial. While the

tremendous advance of science destroyed much of the existing faith, it could not provide

another spiritual anchor. Many thinkers and poets, then, felt lost. Pessimism of the Victorians

arose from impersonal grounds, not subjective experience. They found themselves blundering

between two worlds; one dead,

The other powerless to be born,

Arnold is the most consistently pessimistic of all the major Victorian poets. Much of

his pessimism comes from his ill-adjustment to the changing conditions of his times. As has

been said in the beginning, the advance of science in the Victorian age had given a rude

Aqeel 9

shock to the body of Christian beliefs. This spiritual disturbance took the form of despairing

pessimism. In Dover Beach he observes that "the Sea of Faith" has now withdrawn and the

world as he sees it:

Hath really neither joy, nor light, nor love,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain,

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant, armies clash by night. (Arnold, Dover Beach)

Mysticism

Mysticism is a belief in or the pursuit in the unification with the One or some other

principle; the immediate consciousness of God; or the direct experience of religious truth.

Mysticism is nearly universal and unites most religions in the quest for divinity.

Browning is a seer, and pre-eminently a mystic. We see at once that the main position

of Browning's belief is identical with what is said to be the characteristic of mysticism—unity

under diversity at the centre of all existence. The same essence, the one life, expresses itself

through diversity of form. He dwells on this again and again:—

God is seen

In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod.

Tennyson's mysticism came, as it were, rather in spite of himself, and is based on one

thing only—experience. He states his position quite clearly in In Memoriam, cxxiv. As is

well known, he had from time to time a certain peculiar experience, which he describes fully

both in prose and verse, a touch at intervals throughout his life of "ecstasy," and it was on this

he based his deepest belief. This is described in In Memoriam, xcv.

Aqeel 10

And all at once it seem'd at last

The living soul was flash'd on mine,

And mine in this was wound, and whirl'd

About empyreal heights of thought,

And came on that which is, and caught

The deep pulsations of the world. (Tennyson, In Memoriam)

Humanitarianism

Humanitarianism is one of the most important aspects of Victorian literature. In its

most general form, humanitarianism is an ethic of kindness, benevolence and sympathy

extended universally and impartially to all human beings. No distinction is to be made in the

face of human suffering or abuse on grounds of gender, caste, tribal, religious or national

divisions. The social ideals in the poetry of Matthew Arnold are those of Victorian

humanitarianism. In the poems of Robert Browning we also find the note of Humanitarianism

as evident in his famous poem “Andrea del Sarto”.

Morality

Victorian literature is characterized by a strong sense of morality. Morality is defined

through the traditional and religious standards that structure the way of life for many

Victorians. Morality is held in such high regard by the Victorians that many of their works of

literature are based upon the way one should morally live. Tennyson’s Idylls of the King is in

part a hypothetical portrait of high idealism and strict morality of Victorian England.

“Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” by Robert Browning utilizes a dramatic

monologue that provides aesthetic detail and moral values. The morality of the monk reflects

the often hypocritical clerical view of Christianity.

Nature

Aqeel 11

Tennyson, Browning and Arnold lost an all-embracing enthusiasm for Nature like the

Romantic poets. In the most cases the influence of Nature was on them wholesome and

salutary, and symptomatic of spiritual unity of the universe. The Victorians were not able to

maintain the confidence and optimist possible for the Romantics. On the one hand, as we

shall see, science cultured a love for Nature in some ways as intense, as anything that one can

recognize in previous centuries, but on the other hand, by stressing the mechanical and

chemical aspects of natural process, it look away the magic and left no room for spiritual

direction.

Tennyson takes great interest in Nature. "In Memoriam" is one of the most

outstanding poem that serves immense evidence of Tennyson's great interest in and love for

Nature. In this poem there is calm and tranquil morning with the faded leaves, silvery

gossamers, the crowded farms, ambrosial air, towering sycamore, bats went round in fragrant

skies, the trees laid their dark arms about the field, the grey old orange, the lonely field, the

ship walk up the windy world etc. the pictures of Nature in this poem give pleasure and

sorrow, because the poet shows that moonlight not only falls upon the poet's bed but also on

the dead friends grave in the church.

Robert Browning also has a remarkable love of the color of nature. His vivid painting

of brief landscapes, his minute observation, his flashing way of description, his feeling for the

breadth and freshness of Nature, his love of flowers and animals, and the way he has of

hitting and emphasizing the central point or light of a landscape is considerable. The first

natural description he published is in the beginning of Pauline:

Thou wilt remember one warm morn when winter

Crept agèd from the earth, and spring's first breath

Blew soft from the moist hills; the blackthorn boughs,(Browning,

Pauline)

Aqeel 12

Symbolism

Symbolism is something that has taken on a meaning beyond what the object actually

is. For example the winter season is sometimes used as a symbol which represents aging,

decay and death. Spring is often used to represent energy, birth and hope. In Robert

Browning’s “My Last Duchess” the portrait of the Duchess is a fresco, a type of work painted

in watercolors directly on a plaster wall. The portrait symbolizes the duke’s possessive and

controlling nature in as much as the duchess has become an art object which he owns and

controls.

Matthew Arnold also uses symbolism in “Dover Beach”. In the poem the sea is both a

symbol and metaphor, referencing the “eternal note of sadness” as well as the “Sea of faith”.

The sea shows the fact that man float in their life on a series of waves that move up and

down, that bring us close to happiness but only to pull us out again. Dove is a white bird that

is often used as a symbol of peace. Arnold could turn this noun and symbol into an adjective,

“Dover”_ The Peaceful beach. This fact highlights the idea of God’s light and white cliff of

the Dover strait.

Modern Age

Twentieth century was an age of unstableness, wars and sharp contrast between the

wealthy and the poor shattered the dreams of people who tended to seek an ideal equitable

society. Meanwhile European society was experiencing great changes: two world wars broke

the old social system. Modern poetry was born in such an era of change, which becomes

central to any discussion of 20th century art and literature.

The horrors of World War I (1914-19), with its accompanying atrocities and

senselessness became the catalyst for the Modernist movement in literature and art.

Modernist authors felt betrayed by the war, believing the institutions in which they were

Aqeel 13

taught to believe had led the civilized world into a bloody conflict. They no longer considered

these institutions as reliable means to access the meaning of life, and therefore turned within

themselves to discover the answers. Modernist writers proclaimed a new "subject matter" for

literature and they felt that their new way of looking at life required a new form, a new way

of writing. Writers of this period tend to pursue more experimental and usually more highly

individualistic forms of writing. The main features of the Modern Age are:

Break with Tradition

The modern poetry is marked with a strong and intentional break with tradition. This break

includes a strong reaction against the political, established religious and social views. The

modern poets thought on a different level than their predecessors. They took poetry as a

means to convey their ideas_ rather than just inspiring the senses. This can be clearly seen in

the poetry of T. S. Eliot and W. B. Yeats.

The Waste Land by Eliot conveys the idea of chaos and disharmony in the modern world. He

says:

Unreal City, 60

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

A crowd flowed over London Bridge…. (The Waste Land,

Eliot)

The above lines do not give an inspiring or romantic picture of the city. They show the

mechanical routine of the people who have lost their purpose and seem to be unreal.

The Second Coming by Yeats conveys the breaking of all the ideals and the chaos thus

created. He responds sharply to the situation of the modern world and says:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, (Second Coming,

Yeats)

Aqeel 14

Yeats very clearly tells the situation of modern world. There is chaos all around. The religion

seems to be missing and there is no harmony.

Experimentation in Form and Style

There is a marked change in form and style in the modern poetry. The modernists

used free verse or 'vers libre'. The poets no longer stick to the old forms of poetry. They laid

stress on ideas rather than form. The new form also shows the de-centered modern world.

The free verse is used by Eliot in Love Song of J. Alferd Prufrock:

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent (Eliot, Love Song of J. Alferd Prufrock)

The modernists are keen to convey the problems of their age than looking for style.

Ezra Pound remarked: 'To Break the Pentameter, that was the first heave'.

The fragmentation in T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land and Ezra Pound's Cantos is an innovation

never used by the Romantics or the Victorians. They were more flexible in the length of

poetic lines. Alliteration and assonance were used massively. There is no traditional meter

and no rhyme scheme. There is a frequent use of visual images in the poetry of Ezra Pound:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough. (Pound, A Station in the Metro)

Sense of Alienation and Loss

The frequent theme for the modern poets was of alienation and loss. In a modernist

poem the speaker himself is uncertain about his or her own ontological bearings. The speaker

of modernist poems characteristically wrestles with the fundamental question of “self,” often

feeling fragmented and alienated from the world around him. In other words, a coherent

Aqeel 15

speaker with a clear sense of himself/herself is hard to find in modernist poetry, often leaving

readers confused and “lost.”

Such ontological feelings of fragmentation and alienation, which often led to a more

pessimistic and bleak outlook on life as manifested in representative modernist poems such as

T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” were prompted by fundamental and far-

reaching historical, social, cultural, and economic changes in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

The rise of cities; profound technological changes in transportation, architecture, and

engineering; a rising population that engendered crowds and chaos in public spaces; and a

growing sense of mass markets often made individuals feel less individual and more

alienated, fragmented, and at a loss in their daily worlds. World War I (WWI), moreover,

contributed to a more modern local and world view.

Subjective Perception of Reality

The modern poets were very much impressed by the new philosophies and scientific

knowledge. They did not proclaim the ideas of absolute good or absolute truth which

prevailed in the Romantics and the Victorians. The modern poetry is subjective but it is not

necessarily emotional. The modern poet does not use the poem as a means to give voice to his

inner experiences but rather uses the poem as a stage on which he enters as an actor in order

to give a performance. There is therefore a degree of separation between the “I” of the poet

and the ”I” voice of the poem. The emotions which resonate in the poem are, therefore,

performed emotions and not necessarily real ones, though they may emerge from the

recollection of an emotional experience, the “emotion recalled in tranquility”.

Concerned with Psychology

The modern poets are keen to present the inner movement of the mind. The theories

of Sigmund Freud influenced almost all the writings of this age. The poets tried to show the

psychology of the modern man which is quite clear by the element of fear. The problems of

Aqeel 16

modern man are material as well as psychological. Sailing to Byzantium by Yeats is a good

example of the psychological situation of the poet.

Conclusion

There is a marked difference between the ages above discussed. The Romantics

looked towards nature as an escape from their problems. The Victorians on the other hand

saw nature as an opponent of man. The modernists do not even look at nature because their

problems are the problems of material world on the political scene. The inner turmoil of the

modern man is financial crisis. The thinking styles of the ages are different and their form is

different. The Romantics looked for an escape, the Victorians tried to find their existence in

the world and the Modern poets find themselves alienated and forlorn in the world. The

poetic diction too changed with the passage of time. The Romantics used rural language to

establish a connection with nature but the Victorians and the Moderns were more concerned

with ideas than language. The main idea in Romanticism was nature and man’s connection

with nature which was losing control at that time, the Victorians lamented the lost connection

with nature and were in doubt about the new relation with machines and the Modernists were

bewildered by the intervention of machinery and the loss of center. In fine the poetry in the

Romantic era is a far cry from the Modern poetry in form, diction, themes and problems.

Aqeel 17

BibliographyArmstrong, Isobel. Victorian Poetry Poetry, Poetics and Politics. Routledge, n.d.

Bloom, Harold. English Romantic Poetry. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 2004.

—. Poets and Poems. USA: Chelsea House Publishers, 2005.

Bristow, Joseph. Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry. Cambridge University Press, n.d.

Flesch, William. The Facts on File Companion to British Poetry, 19th Century. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2010.

Fletcher, Robert Huntington. A History of English Literature. n.d.

Glancy, Ruth. Thematic Guide to British Poetry. London: Greenwood Press, 2002.

http://education-portal.com. 8th December 2012.

http://www.poets.org. 2012.

Persoon, James and Robert R. Watson. The Facts on File Companion to British Poetry 1900 to the Present. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009.

Roberts, Neil. A Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry. Blackwell Publishing, 2003.

Untermeyer, Louis. Modern British Poetry. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920.