The Life Within

The Romantic era spanned approximately fifty years, from 1774 to the early 1820s, influencing European poetry into the twenty-first century. The movement, a response to the Enlightenment’s focus on reason and science, paradoxically embraced individual freedom and natural justice while often rejecting established power structures. Post-French Revolution, the Romantic tradition shifted towards personal and apolitical expressions.

Here, romanticism in English poetry is explored - focusing on poets such as Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, with a contextual reference to Goethe and Chateaubriand. This essay reflects on the collective impact of the Romantic poets on intellectual thought – and on modern poetry, which is too often simply descriptive and autobiographical, evading broader intellectual engagement.