15.0: Transitions from Augustan Literature to the Romantics

The Transition between the Augustan period and the Romantic period was a drastic shift in literary ideals. The Augustans followed the works of former classical writers, such as Horace, Virgil, and Homer. To them this was the proper and only way to write. They followed the views of Aristotle, which led them to an empirical way of teaching.

The beginning of the romantic period was marked by the writers, William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge. In 1798, when they published Lyrical Ballads. This started the idea that it was intuition within the writer that made them a good poet. The romantics saw writers to be similar to the common man, but with a higher sense of the natural world. They threw out the manuals and empirical way of teaching that was once set in place by the Augustan writers and found that using imagination and deep thought, one could find the truth in the world.

Some characteristics of Augustan poetry are:

• response against rival authors
• the concept of individualism versus society
• the imitation of the classics
• politics and social issues
• satire and irony
• empiricism
• comedy

Some characteristics of Romantic poetry are:

• prominent role of the poet
• the importance of the imagination nature
• the use of emotion
• ordinary subjects
• interest in the spiritual or supernatural

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