British Romanticism: Its Character and Limits

Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century, and in most areas it was at its peak in the approximately from 1800 to 1850. Romanticism can be seen as a rejection of the precepts of order, calmness, harmony, balance, idealization, and rationality that typified Classicism in general and Neoclassicism in particular in late 18th-century. It was also to some extent a reaction against the Enlightenment and against 18th-century rationalism and physical materialism in general. Historians of French and German literature are accustomed to set off a period, or a division of their subject, and entitle it “Romanticism” or “the Romantic School.” Writers of English literary history, while recognizing the importance of England''s share in this great movement in European letters, have not generally accorded it a place by itself in the arrangement of their subject-matter, but have treated it cursively, as a tendency present in the work of individual authors. Scholars have described “Englishness” as strict and honourable, and sometimes boyish. Therefore, British Romanticism continued to reflect the constant conflict and tension between reason and sensibility. This article will discuss the thesis through literature, arts, philosophy, and politics of the romantics, in order to understand the character and limits of British romanticism.