The Literary Scene In 1832

Abstract

Abstract In the year 1819 an Italian spy reported that Byron belonged to a secret society called the ‘Societa Romantica’, that he was in the habit of writing ‘poetry of this new school’, and that he had composed ‘certain rules, entitled “Statutes of the Joyous Company”‘. Like the spy, foreign historians of our literature have long taken it for granted that Byron belonged to the Romantic Movement; and some of them have even attempted to formulate the ‘certain rules’ of the Company—though none of them seems to have called it Joyous. English literary historians have usually followed their lead, though with greater caution. Since the word ‘romantic’ has not been used in this book—except in one or two quotations—something must now be said to explain this abstention. I do not wish to argue that the word is useless, but merely that the idea that there was a Romantic Movement in· England at this time is accompanied by certain dangers-above all the danger that it tempts us to over-simplify the complicated literary landscape of the age.