Lingual-Stylistic Peculiarities of Poetic Works of English Romanticism

CONCLUSION

  If one term can be used to describe the forces that have shaped the modern world, it is Romanticism. So potent has Romanticism been since the late 18th century that one author has called it “the profoundest cultural transformation in human history since the invention of the city (11, 218)”. Romanticism was not a movement; it was a series of movements that had dynamic impacts on art, literature, science, religion, economics, politics, and an individual’s understanding of self. Not all streams of Romanticism were the same. Some, in fact, were almost completely the opposite in their results from others. Nor was the impact the same at all times. Thus, as romantic literature everywhere developed, imagination was praised over reason, emotions over logic, and intuition over science—making way for a vast body of literature of great sensibility and passion. 

   This research was dedicated to some of the most prominent poets of English and world Romantic literature: G.G. Byron, P. B. Shelley and W. Wordsworth. Several masterpieces were taken as the basis for the study. As the result of this research certain peculiarities have been found – the texts are enriched with various stylistic devices, commonly used to describe and praise nature, doom, and human’s potential for freedom and self-realization. The nature and its elements are largely personified, and play often a meditative role, significant for understanding of reality by the reader. Allusions which can be seen throughout all the poems intend to take us back to the ancient times, so idealized by the Romantic poets. Often we observed the reference to the Bible in terms of impending doom and inevitable punishment for the deeds of the human race. God is praised as that eternal ideal which we must seek for self-development.

  Romantic poets had different views on the world; Romanticism was very contradictive because of the constant conflicts that occurred in the poets’ circles. But one should be said for sure – it is a magnificent movement, a philosophy in itself that draws our attention to the grace and power of the nature, strong will in overcoming obstacles, and faith in God as the main way of understanding man’s destination, and foremost individual freedom.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, Author of Endymion, Hyperion etc. (Pisa: With the types of Didot, 1821; Cambridge: Printed by W. Metcalfe & sold by Gee & Bridges, 1829). – 223p.
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7. Essay on Christianity, in Shelley Memorials, edited by Lady Jane Shelley (London: Smith, Elder, 1859). – 131p.
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Main Sources:

1. Rutherford, Byron: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970; New York: Barnes & Noble, 1970). – 245p.
2. The Poetical Works of Lord Byron. – London: Oxford University Press (Humphrey Milford) – 1935. - 345p.
3. George McLean Harper, William Wordsworth, His Life, Works, and Influence, 2 volumes (London: Murray, 1916).  – 128p.
4. The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 4 volumes, edited by Mary Shelley (London: Edward Moxon, 1839; 1 volume, Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1839). – 235p.