English Romantics
Talk Urban Romantics
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1maxbolli
The poet and painter William Blake is the most extreme example of the Romantic sensibility in Britain.
What are the others?
What are the others?
2kswolff
Wordsworth, Keats, and Byron are the first that come to mind. Then there are the Pre-Raphaelite painters. Another outlier is Algernon Swinburne Even though he's a literary modernist, I'd also count DH Lawrence, especially Lady Chatterley's Lover with its diatribes against industrialism and its rhapsodic puritanical (maybe dogmatic is a better word?) view of nature and human sexuality.
3barney67
The major poets of the English Romantic movement are: Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge -- first generation-- and Keats, Byron, Shelley -- 2nd generation.
Swinburne, Tennyson, Browning, the Rossettis et al. fall under the category of Victorian poets.
English Romantic Writers
Victorian Poetry and Poetics
Prose of the Victorian Period
Swinburne, Tennyson, Browning, the Rossettis et al. fall under the category of Victorian poets.
English Romantic Writers
Victorian Poetry and Poetics
Prose of the Victorian Period
4maxbolli
Yes, Pre-Raphaelites are definitely in this group among the visual artists. Are there any contemporary examples?
5kswolff
What do you mean by "contemporary examples"? The question is confusing? Modern versions of Pre-Raphaelites? Or moderns who ape their style? It's difficult because the contemporary scene lacks a global coherence that surrounded Victorian, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco periods. Plus two world wars and the dissolution of European colonial empires (good riddance to the lot of them!) have created a fractured artistic environment.
There are some contemporary artists who harken back to Blake and others: Matthew Barney, especially his Cremaster Cycle, a kind of sexual-erotic-religious-geographic version of Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle And the nightmarish visions of Jake and Dinos Chapman
3: The terms "Victorian" and "Romantic" have heavy overlap. And both are so broad as to become meaningless. Queen Victoria ruled from 1837 - 1901. I'd count Swinburne as a Decadent first and foremost; and Blake deserves his own category, since his self-created politically revolutionary religiously-inspired mythology is an entirely different beast than, say, The Prelude by Wordsworth or Percy Shelley's radical atheism.
There are some contemporary artists who harken back to Blake and others: Matthew Barney, especially his Cremaster Cycle, a kind of sexual-erotic-religious-geographic version of Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle And the nightmarish visions of Jake and Dinos Chapman
3: The terms "Victorian" and "Romantic" have heavy overlap. And both are so broad as to become meaningless. Queen Victoria ruled from 1837 - 1901. I'd count Swinburne as a Decadent first and foremost; and Blake deserves his own category, since his self-created politically revolutionary religiously-inspired mythology is an entirely different beast than, say, The Prelude by Wordsworth or Percy Shelley's radical atheism.
6barney67
Well, I disagree with your distinctions, as do the editors of those standard textbooks I listed which are used by most colleges. Swinburne is a Victorian; Blake, Wordsworth, and Shelley are Romantics. I have no trouble, at the same time, in seeing the differences among them, despite their categories.
I don't think one can add contemporary examples into the mix. The Romantic movement occurred at a certain point in history which has ended. I suppose one could see strains of it in later or current thought but the movement itself is, so to speak, locked in the past. You might say influenced by instead, but those influences can be elusive to spot precisely. Ginsberg claimed to be influenced by Blake but I really don't see it, having no respect for Ginsberg, nor would that make him a Romantic per se, but simply an imitator (or poseur in this case) of certain tendencies in Blake.
I don't think one can add contemporary examples into the mix. The Romantic movement occurred at a certain point in history which has ended. I suppose one could see strains of it in later or current thought but the movement itself is, so to speak, locked in the past. You might say influenced by instead, but those influences can be elusive to spot precisely. Ginsberg claimed to be influenced by Blake but I really don't see it, having no respect for Ginsberg, nor would that make him a Romantic per se, but simply an imitator (or poseur in this case) of certain tendencies in Blake.
7maxbolli
Well, interestingly, yes Victorian does of course relate more to the specific time frame in the past. But when we talk about Romantics, I don't think there is anything restricting the flow of these ideas into the future. This is an idea, concept and a frame of mind rather than a frame of time. So Romantics shall not be a thing of the past.
