Romantics...again?!

So the Romantics...we're not really romantic in terms of love at all! What a poor choice of title for the group. Who came up with that anyway?!

I first encountered the Romantics back in high school, but was given no background information on them or why they wrote the way that they did. So I read Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, trying hopelessly to grapple the idea that the text was "romantic" in any way shape of form. Hmmm...creating a Mr. Potatoe Head type creature out of human parts = love and warm bunny feelings? I some how missed that link. Thanks Mr. Byron for the stellar background information, you're a champ!

I then had the pleasure of being properly introduced to them last year. I listened intently in lecture and was provided with the reasons that the Romantics wrote the way that they did, some of the common devices that they employed and shown who some of the great writers were of that time. Thanks Prof. Campbell for the proper introduction which has made me fall in love with the writing style of the Romantics!

Since everyone will probably be talking about Wordsworth, Blake or Keats and their poetry, I'm going to do something a bit different. First, I'm going to focus on Gothic Romance...haha take that Romanticism! Second I will be looking at the work of Ann Radcliff who was a gothic novelist...oh no not a novel! Damn I'm in a rebellious mood...oh well =)

The genre of Gothic Romance came about in the 18th century, and would portray great stories that would focus on horror, murder, or villainy. They were considered romance in the way that a character loved what she couldn't see; she loved whatever her imagination put forth for her. That overwhelming power of the imagination is critical because it is so strong that it takes over from logic. Some common conventions used were: untamed or barren wilderness, crumbling buildings, ghosts, young and beautiful heroes/heroines who must over come obstacles such as witches, the wilderness or even their own family.

So I've decided to lift a passage from page 104 of a Sicilian Romance, which is to me just so poetic though a piece of a novel. Let it be known that I have put the original text into the lines that you see here to make the text look more like a poem:

She followed the windings of a stream,
which was lost at some distance
amongst luxuriant groves of chestnut.
The rich colouring of evening glowed through the dark foliage,
which spreading a pensive gloom around, offered a scene
congenial to the present temper of her mind
and she entered the shades.
Her thoughts, afffected by the surrounding objects,
gradually sank into a pleasing and complacent melancholy,
and she was insensibly led on.
She still followed the course of the stream
to where the deep shades retired,
and the scene again opening to day, yeilded to her a view so various
and sublime, that she paused in thrilling and delightful wonder.
A group of wild and grotesque rocks rose in a semicircular form,
and their fantastic shapes exhibited Nature
in her most sublime an striking attitude.
Here her vast magnificence elevated
the mind of the beholder to enthusiasm.
Fancy caught the thrilling sensation,
and at her touch the towering steeps became shaded
with unreal glooms; the caves more darkly frowned -
the projecting cliffs assumed a more terrific aspect,
and the overhanging shrubs waved to the gale in deeper murmurs.
The scene inspired madame with reverential awe
and her thoughts involuntarily rose,
'from Nature up to Nature's God.'

How can I not consider that poetry? Ok granted there is no definite rhyme pattern, nor is there any meter to the lines, but those aren't the only things that constitute a poem. Look at the language that Radcliffe utilizes to create her scene... foliage, pensive, grotesque, sublime or murmurs. Words like that just scream out to be part of a poem and help recreate the image of the scene within my mind's eye.

Any thoughts...
sv