Reality and the English Romantics

Abstract

WORDSWORTH'S STATEMENT is sharply at variance with the conventional notions about poetry in general, and romantic poetry in particular. The latter has been the target of many attacks, especially since the end of the first World War. The English romantic poets have been charged with such faults as the use of conventional verse forms and idiom, prettiness in diction, lack of structure, luxuriance in mere emotion, etc.-but the most consistently recurring and most serious charge is that romantic poetry is a form of escape, a flight from the harsh problems of reality into a soothing but irresponsible dreamworld. In an often quoted definition Hoxie N. Fairchild described romanticism as an illusioned view of the universe and of human life.' A quarter of a century later, in a volume of studies devoted to the English romantic poets,2 he still regards the rejection of reality in the interests of an illusion of creativity as characteristic of the romantic outlook. But Professor Fairchild had to realize by this time that he was fighting a losing battle: among the twenty contributors to the volume who have paid their tributes to the English romantics he is, in fact, as he describes himself, the Devil's Advocate. For the anti-romantic wave seems to have spent its force, especially in literary scholarship, if less among practicing poets. It is not our task to survey, or even to indicate, the vast amount of information and criticism resulting from the patient, often inspired, study of the subject during recent decades.3 Our inquiry is directed to a single point: is it still possible to maintain that the English romantic poets represent a flight from reality, a conscious or unconscious distortion of truth, an illusioned view of the universe and of human life? There seems to be an increasing body of opinion pointing in the opposite direction. For one thing, the typological view of romanticism which regarded the history of art in general, and of poetry in particular,