Pre-Romantics

Reason vs Emotions

 

Main features of pre-Romantic poetry:

• Classical forms to express Romantic themes;

• nature over civilisation: nature is considered the right and ideal state of man in contrast with civilisation;

• exaltation of primitive life vs dehumanising effects of progress;

• meditative tone - poet’s desire to retire from the world - universal themes such as death, nature and melancholy

• rediscovery of the Middle Ages - charming and mysterious period 

• unusual themes such as ‘the exotic’,   ‘the strange’, ‘the sublime’

• New concept of beauty:the SUBLIME i.e. the feeling provoked by the contemplation of something dangerous and beautiful, which reflects a new idea of beauty in contrast with the rational beauty of Neoclassicism;

• fascination for death, graveyards and ruins.

 

James Thomson (1700-48) nature as the main source of inspiration for the poet

 

Edward Young (1683-1765) a deep meditation on the vanities of life / poems pervaded with melancholy. His masterpiece Night Thoughts (1742-46) is a collection of religious poems in which the poet represents death as the uttermost consolation in man’s life. Young’s works, in particular, were translated into many European languages and contributed to the development of European Romanticism.

 

The poems of the Scottish poet, James Macpherson (1736-96), had an enormous resonance in Europe: his Fragments of Ancient Poetry (1790) contained songs and epic poems that Macpherson presented as translations from the original works of a Homer-like legendary bard called Ossian. Macpherson’s poems gave birth to the ‘Ossianic Style’, a kind of poetry characterised by melancholy, paganism, heroism and the representation of the primitive forces of nature.

 

The ‘Graveyard School’ - main spokesperson - Thomas Gray (1716-71). The Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751) is a reflection on death and man’s mortality - set in a remote and solitary place (a churchyard). Gray was greatly admired by Ugo Foscolo