Romantic poets made daring innovations, in the themes, forms, language and style of poetry. Lowly and eccentric characters like an idiot boy or a leech gatherer are material for poetic treatment by Wordsworth. Supernatural themes are used by Coleridge (The A~zcient Mariner) and Keats (The Eve of St. Agnes). Romantic poetry often deals with the "far away and long ago", exotic places and forgotten events figure in Romantic Poetry. It draws inspiration fiom folk literature and the literature of the Middle Ages and of classical antiquity. Yet another innovation is the use of symbolist techniques, notably, by Blake and Shelley. The latter poet's "West Wind" and "Skylark" are good examples.
The Romantic poets displaced humanity by external nature as poetic subject-matter. Thus the description of landscape and its aspects become prominent. In fact, poets like Wordsworth saw in nature the power to chasten and subdue. While neoclassic poetry is written on other people - Pope's The Rape ofLock is an example - Romantic poetry is about the poet himself. The latter is highly subjective. The Romantic poets also had a fascination for solitary figures, social non-conformists, outcasts and rebels such as Prometheus, Cain, Don Juan and Satan.
Another significant innovation is the use of everyday speech of ordinary people instead of lofty poetic diction. We shall discuss this in detail later. The Romantic poets looked for new metres and stanzas to replace traditional forms. The heroic couplet gave place to the ballad, the sonnet, the Spenserian stanza and other experiinental verse fonns. Rural life is idealized in Romantic poetry. The wild, the irregular and the grotesque in Nature and art fascinated the Romantic poets. Taboo themes like incest are used without any inhibition. Conformity to tradition and decorum as observed by the earlier generation are no longer respected.
Classicism and Romanticism are generally considered somewhat antithetical. Classicism is concerned with the social, the formal, the intellectual and the static whereas Romanticism is concerned with the individual, the inforillal, the emotional and the dynamic. For instance, the common qualities, not the differences, of individuals figures in classical literature. Joseph Addison's Sir Roger is a basic human type. But the Romantics took their cue fiom Rousseau who said, "If I'm not better than other people, at least I'm different". The Neo-classical writers were interested in conformity, formality, acceptance of approved standards and patterns of behaviour. Careful workmanship is the hallmark of classicisn~. The unities are preserved by the classical writers whereas the Romantic writers do not observe them. Classicism focusses on the intellectual, romanticism on the emotional. The former is interested in' describing static scenes in Greek sculpture whereas the latter attempts to catch the transient moments. Keat's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" depicts the activities of people etched on a static urn.
Thus the Romantic Movement was a revolutionary movement in many ways.
