Augustan vs Romantic eras

Hi ladies,

Study.com has an AMAZING looking sum-up vid here - the problem is, you can't watch ALL of it unless you sign up to be a member!  (Which I did not.  Great resource, but look at how much they charge!  The vultures...)

Anyway.

Watch as much of that vid as it will allow, then come back to this post.

So there's actually quite a lot of literature on these two subjects, and honestly there's no real substitute for doing your own research.

That said, this link will tell you that Romanticism was a huge shift in literary thinking in that they began to value the imagination of writers, believing that truth could be discovered through a deep, thoughtful focus on emotional expression rather than intelligent reasoning.

So why is this revolutionary?

The Augustans believed that we should rely heavily on reasoning.  They considered themselves enlightened, spending their literary energies seeking harmony and unity.  They were often pre-occupied with nature / pastoral themes, and had a tendency to imitate the classics such as Homer, Virgil, and others.  This is a good reference link, yet still doesn't have a lot of depth.  Having looked up quite a few different sources, the best I can tell is that the Augustan period had very few common characteristics by which to define its elements of literature.  This is helpful in a way.  The differences aren't stylistic, they are ideological.

Look at the two bulletpoints below.  It seems to me that these are the fundamental viewpoint from which all the other characteristics grew.

• Neoclassicists (those in the generally "Augustan" age) believed man was naturally flawed.
• Romanticists believed man was naturally good.

The most easily accessible summary of their contrasting thoughts goes like this, in terms of the differing beliefs of each era:

Augustan age

• ·      literature reflected society
• ·      classical themes, influences
• ·      desire for order and balance in measure;
• ·      intellect prevailed
• ·      relies on reason and fact, not speculation
• ·      trying to frame rules of writing

Romantic age

• ·      literature ‘reformed’ society (preface, Shelley’s ”Prometheus Unbound”)
• ·      moving away from the classical, rediscovery of the local
• ·      the indefinite and boundless
• ·      emotion and imagination prevailed
• ·      desires and dreams, the visionary, mystical
• ·   rejecting the rules of poetic diction (W. Wordsworth’s preface to the 2nd edition of ”Lyrical Ballads”)

(I found the list here.)

Further interesting thoughts will be in another tab I've setup on the right.

- T. Marcus